On December 17th 2009, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released to the public the docket on their investigation into Northwest Flight 188, the plane that on October 21st inexplicably failed to talk to air traffic controllers for over an hour and then overflew its destination airport (Minneapolis) before realizing their mistake.
This incident made national headlines, in part because of the FAA’s delaying in notifying the military (through the Domestic Events Network or DEN), that in turn failed to get fighter jets airborne to intercept the wayward flight.
“Air traffic controllers” were faulted in the press for failing to follow procedure. However, as I noted in an earlier blog, it was actually FAA managers that chose to …
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