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The only negative consequence of Northwest Airlines 188 veering off over Wisconsin en route to Minneapolis from San Diego was that its 147 passengers arrived an hour late. It was hardly the most important story of the day and CBS, properly, mentioned the incident only in passing. By contrast, the other two newscasts led with the automatic pilot's overshoot. ABC's Lisa Stark and NBC's Tom Costello both cited the National Transportation Safety Board's version of the crew's explanation: "They had been in a heated conversation about airline policy and lost situational awareness." ABC spent most time on the snafu, with anchor Charles Gibson asking in-house aviation consultant John Nance (at the tail of the Stark videostream) for his assessment: "This bears all the earmarks of a crew that has gone to sleep. I would say actually that there is less than a 1% chance that there is any other rational explanation."
On a serious note, ABC consultant Nance criticized the Federal Aviation Administration for prohibiting planned in-flight naps by cockpit crews, despite 35 years of lobbying. The FAA refuses "to acknowledge that pilots are humans and get sleepy."
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