OK, I am very surprised and disappointed nobody took this news story and ran a thread about it, so I am going to. I am curious to wonder what everyone's thoughts are on it.

Did they fall asleep? or were they having a heated discussion?

I talked to my cousin Sunday about it, he is a pilot with United. He said "it is very unlikely that they had a heated discussion for that long, Over an hour without radio communication? I have missed a radio call once or twice but center calls back and asks if we are ok, then alarms can go off. They were sleeping. If they had just fessed up to it, they might still have a job, but lying about it, I doubt it."

Scary.

I say they fell asleep. Pilots are taking double and triple shifts to make up for the loss in pay due to budget cuts and so forth. They frequently fly into the wee hours of the morn, and then are back at the airport at 5am for the first flights out. its a VERY common occurance for pilots to fly "sleepy"

Greater than 25% of all airline occurances are due to a "sleepy" pilot. I love that the first words out of one pilot's mouth was "I can tell you for sure, we were not sleeping." well....then ....thats the first thing I think of, you must have been sleeping. That is the only way you can miss so many visual and audible alarms dope!

There isnt much they can do to either of them, since only the last 30 minutes of the flight are on the flight recorder! there is NO proof other than their own words about what happened up there.

Why didnt the flight attendants KNOCK! or use the phone to ask "why are we an half hour late sir?" many folks dropped the ball that day.

we have had some posts removed here as they are not appropriate for this forum and are offensive to some of the members

Sorry, my bad, won`t happen again.

Darn, I miss everything..

It seems to me that I heard yesterday that they were both playing on their laptops with their headphones off. Was I sleeping (it's entirely possible)?

I agree about the flight attendants!

It was the flight attendent who called up to the cabin asking why they were so late that finally alerted the pilots to the problem. They were on their computers, "company business" checking on pilot schedules (yeah, they were Facebooking) and lost track of time as well as didn't notice any flashing lights or anything as the control tower tried to contact them. What a couple of idiots .

NW airlines has said they will FIRE both pilots and revoke their license. Now there is also a FIRM rule in play "no electronics" in the cockpit. How many train wrecks have there been because of texting or talking on the phone while driving a train? Boston city proper has a NO electronics rule, and its ONE strike and you are out. Bus drivers are texting, and using blackberries to check their FB pages, and taxi drivers are working out schedules on their laptops...its crazy! We have become a nation of distracted folks.

My DH always says it by the time we reach where ever we are going. "what does everyone have to talk about?" we see car after car after car of folks on the phone, or texting or playing on their black berries WHILE DRIVING! HAng up and drive!

I say if you are flying a plane, driving a taxi, driving a train or bus or ferrying the public ANYWHERE you should be paying attention to what you are doing! not worried about whatever else is going on in the world. My life is in your hands, lets act that way.

I dont know how people can drive and text at the same time. I cant even use the handsfree voice-dial mode on my phone and drive at the same time.

I always stop if I can to answer the phone or make a call. If I cant stop, I figure that's what the voice mail is for, or that they'll call back if it was really important.

Once I was getting a ride home from the local car dealership. The courtesy van driver was a 19yr old girl. I dont know how she drove with one hand on the wheel, and her other hand frantically thumb typing messages to her boyfriend. Sometimes she'd use both hands to text (look mom! I can drive with NO hands! Wheee!!!) Oh, and when her work cellphone went off, she'd drive with the work phone on her ear, her personal cellphone doing the thumb typing thing, and then use her elbows to keep the car going straight. (eeeeeeek!)

She also, instead of dropping me off because I lived closer, made me ride along with her halfway downtown before she took me home. (I lived within 4 miles of the dealership...the other 2 people she had to drop off lived about 10 miles away in the opposite direction from my house) I asked her to drop me off first, but the very-SELF-important jerk that lived the furthest away just had to be dropped off first because he had important things to do. (he probably just wanted to play Worlds Of Warcraft or something)

I was in terror for half...most...ok...ALL of the drive. When I got home, I called the dealership and complained. Never saw that courtesy van driver again.

I think she created a new phobia for me. I get nervous when my boyfriend gets a phone call when we're driving somewhere. He uses a bluetooth headset, and keeps his hands on the wheel, but still, it scares the heebie jeebies out of me. At least he's not a texter..