A Northwest Airlines flight overshot it's destination of Minneapolis,MN by 150 miles. Both of the pilots agreed and told the news that they were not sleeping or arguing with eachother. One of the pilots, Richard Cole, says that for about 78 minutes there was nothing on the radio frequency for 78 minutes, meaning they were trying to get ahold of the base for that long. Did this stop them from overshooting their destination, he could not say. Due to trials that weekend and following Tuesday he could not speak on anything yet. We will find out in the near future though.
This pilot business is a touchy subject. It is dangerous to say whether the base command center is right or the pilots are telling the truth. It would be hard to believe that the pilots overshot their destination by 150 miles by accident, but if again they did not have their navigator on base to tell them that they were approaching the airstrip, then I could see that as well. People all of a sudden want to go straight to the fact that the pilots were not doing their job and that it is all their fault. We need to consider technology failure though, we are sure quick not to point fingers at that. We need to consider that technology is never 100% safe and never will be. To rely on such technology over someone's abilities would be rather schrewed. I think this mysterious technology that is too old to be checked needs to be checked. If the technology was designed to record then figure out a way to listen to the recordings. Like Waylan Hedine said, yes these pilots are dangerous and have no excuses if they actually missed the stop on purpose, they did put many lives at risk while messing up at their jobs that they should be doing it right, but we have to remember not to point fingers until the hard facts are hit.
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