Not long after Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger helped restore the good name of the piloting profession with his extraordinary water landing in the Hudson River, a pair of Northwest Airlines pilots did their part to remind the general public of its shortcomings with perhaps an equally extraordinary act of distraction while flying 144 passengers between San Diego and Minneapolis.
Although the
October 21 incident remains under investigation and the two pilots have appealed the FAA’s
revocation of their licenses to fly, the flight’s captain, Timothy Cheney of Gig Harbor, Wash., and first officer, Richard Cole of Salem, Ore., admitted to investigators that they became
distracted while working on their laptop computers, causing them to fly past their destination airport–Minneapolis-St. Paul International– by 150 miles. Not until a flight attendant contacted them on the intercom to ask about the flight’s status did they realize what they had done.
