Have you heard about Northwest flight 188?

They missed Minneapolis. They overflew it, then turned, and returned to land at the airport, and the plane was promptly swarmed by cops.

The facts that we know are that the flight lost contact with air traffic controllers for over an hour, that they over-flew Minneapolis by about 150 miles, and landed over an hour late.

Well, at first they said that they had a “heated discussion,” and now they have provided further detail, saying that, “they became distracted during an extended discussion of crew scheduling that included their use of personal laptops.”

Seriously, this is nuts. They were out of contact with ATC for over an hour and missed Minneapolis by 150 miles.

This is not a discussion of “crew scheduling”.

Maybe one of them is sleeping with the other’s wife, maybe they are sleeping with each other, or maybe they were playing a MMORPG like World of Warcraft, or doing a Doom death match over a null modem cable.

It could also be that they just dozed off, the airlines are doing their best to work these guys to death…But a “heated discussion of crew scheduling”?

Yeah, and my dog ate my homework.