It turns out that the Delta-Northwest merger and the integration of the two airlines has a lot more twists and turns than originally envisioned.
Several publications, including the New York Times, are reporting that the two Northwest pilots, who passed up their aircraft’s scheduled landing at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport last week, say they were distracted because they had broken out their personal laptops so they could discuss Delta’s new pilot-scheduling system.
At least they weren't texting. The Airbus A320 they were flying likely wasn’t outfitted with Wi-Fi yet.
The use of personal laptops in the cockpit of Flight 188 was a no-no, as was flying past a destination airport with 144 passengers on board.
Delta’s integration with its Northwest subsidiary obviously is no yawner, and, if their stories are true, we can at least take some solace in the fact that the two pilots were not asleep at the jet’s controls.
So much for all of the initial press reports stating there was a 99% chance that the pilots were snoozing.