(Jim Mone / AP)
Federal safety authorities have revoked the licenses of the two Northwest Airlines pilots who overshot their destination by more than 100 miles when flying from San Diego to Minneapolis-St. Paul last week. The Federal Aviation Administration said in a public statement that the license revocations were issued on an "emergency" basis and cited a number of alleged violations by the pilots of federal aviation regulations, including failing to comply with air traffic control instructions and operating carelessly and recklessly. The FAA announcement did not name the pilots, but they have been identified in news reports as Captain Timothy Cheney and First Officer Richard Cole. The "emergency" label on the FAA action means the pilots are grounded and their licenses revoked immediately. (After this item was initially published, NEWSWEEK obtained the letters sent to both Cheney and Cole).
The FAA announcements noted that the pilots were "out of contact with air-traffic controllers for an extended period of time and told federal investigators that they were distracted by a conversation." As reported by Declassified yesterday, the pilots told investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board that they had "lost track of time" and failed to respond to increasingly frantic voice and text messages from the ground because they were fiddling with their laptop computers, trying to figure out a new crew scheduling system that had been imposed on Northwest crews following the airline's takeover by Delta. The airline suspended the pilots shortly after the incident was first reported.
Cheney and Cole have 10 days to appeal the revocations to the NTSB, which acts as an independent authority to investigate and adjudicate appeals of license suspensions by the FAA. The pilots can appeal an adverse verdict by an NTSB administrative law judge to members of the NTSB itself, and then appeal further to the courts. The NTSB has expedited procedures to process an appeal of an emergency license revocation within a matter of days.
