​They've already lost their pilot's licenses. Now, Timothy Cheney and Richard Cole, the pilots at the controls of Northwest Airlines flight 188 as it blew past Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport last October, have lost their jobs.

The National Transportation Safety Board concluded in March that Cole and Cheney were distracted by a conversation unrelated to the operation of the aircraft when they realized somewhere over the middle of Wisconsin at 37,000 feet that their radio was off.

Once they stopped whatever it was they were doing and realized their goof, they first thought they were over Winnipeg. And the military said it was ready scramble fighter jets because it was worried the plane had been hijacked.

​The National Transportation Safety Board makes it official: Northwest Airlines flight 188 blew past Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport and failed to maintain radio communications last October because its pilots -- Richard Cole and Timothy Cheney -- were distracted by a conversation unrelated to the operation of the aircraft.

The NTSB report, issued today, also found air traffic control shortcomings during the event.

At one point the pilots thought they were over Winnipeg. The military said it was ready scramble fighter jets because it was worried the plane had been hijacked. And just two days ago, the pilots agreed to lose their licenses.

From the report:

The NTSB said that the pilots continued to fly through several air traffic control sectors without replying to any radio commands. The investigation found that the pilots had become engaged in a conversation dealing with the process by which pilots request flight schedules and during the conversation each was using his personal laptop computer, contrary to company policy. The pilots were not aware of the repeated attempts by air traffic controllers' and the airline to contact them until a flight attendant used the intercom to inquire about the progress of the flight.

​Richard Cole and Timothy Cheney, the two Northwest Airlines pilots who somehow managed to overshoot Minneapolis-St. Paul airport by 150 miles last October, won't fight the revocation of their licenses, the Federal Aviation Administration announced today.

The FAA first revoked the pilots' licenses a week after the incident. But Cole and Cheney had been fighting the move, and fighting between themselves over who was to blame for the error, which brought the flight from San Diego well into Wisconsin before the pilots realized something was wrong.

Under the terms of their agreement with regulators, neither pilot is admitting any wrongdoing, and both can reapply for their licenses this summer.

​UPDATE: It turns out the bag was not in-bound passenger luggage, as had been previously reported, but rather the "end bag" the crew uses to mark the end on the carousel, according to airport spokesman Pat Hogan. So the suspicious bag was not a passenger's--it belonged to MSP airport. This is an embarassing revelation that will likely lead to further recrimination and questions about the competency of airport security at MSP.

Business is returning to normal after a suspicious bag put the Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport on lockdown.

"Everything's been cleared and no hazardous material has been found," says Melissa Slovronski, public information officer from MSP. "They're in the midst of taking down barriers."

The ticketing and baggage claim areas have reopened, but Slovronski expected it to take longer for traffic on the roads to return to normal, but the bomb threat has lifted.

"We were able to determine it was clear, a false alarm if you will," says Mark Stehlik, spokesman for the Bloomington Police.

More >>

​Northwest Flight 188, which blew past Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport on Oct. 21 by more than 100 miles as air traffic controllers tried in vain to reach its cockpit crew, is the gift that keeps on giving. Pilot Timothy Cheney and co-pilot Richard Cole said they were on their laptops when they should have been landing the plane.

The military said it was ready scramble fighter jets because it was worried the plane had been hijacked. The FAA revoked Cheney's and Cole's licenses, and later released transcripts and audio in which the two can be heard trying to get the flight back on course. Then there was the story about Cole pointing the blame at Cheney as he fought to get his licese reinstated. Now, the National Transportation Safety Board has dumped hundreds of pages of documents on its Web site, covering everything from when the cockpit crew went to the bathroom to how long the pilot has been married. It's a banner day for government transparency.

More >>

Photo by x-ray delta one

​The co-pilot of Northwest Flight 188, which overshot Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport by more than 100 miles in October as air traffic controllers tried in vain to make contact via radio, is telling investigators that he deserves a break as he tries to get his license back because he was following the lead of his pilot.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Richard Cole told the Federal Aviation Administration that he "reasonably relied on the performance" of the captain, he "reasonably relied on the performance" of the captain, as the flight from Houston blew past the airport and on into Wisconsin:

More >>

Photo by x-ray-delta-one

​When air traffic controllers were finally able to establish contact with a Northwest Airlines flight that overshot Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport in October, the pilots explained their vanishing act by saying, "We got distracted."More >>

Photo by mashleymorgan

Imagine looking out your window and seeing these folks coming to call

​Had air traffic controllers been working by the book the way the FAA said today that it prefers, two Northwest Airlines pilots might have figured out they had overshot Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport a few weeks ago because some antsy fighter pilots might have been looking in on them from their wingtips.

Instead, Northwest Flight 188 was well on its way to being halfway across Wisconsin on Oct. 21 before the pilots got their act together, broke more than an hour of radio silence, and turned their jet around. The military says fighter jets were ready to intercept the flight, but they didn't hear from air traffic controllers until after the pilots were  back on the radio.

That, as they say, was not standard operating procedure.
More >>