A Northwest plane overshot a runway by 100 miles

The National Transportation Safety Board is looking into exactly why a Northwest Airlines airplane that was headed to Minneapolis would have overshot the airport by more than 100 miles this week.

Northwest Flight 188 was on its way to Minneapolis from San Diego when it lost radio contact with air traffic controllers. While the radio was out, the plane flew right over the airport and failed to land. Once the radio was working again, the plane was able to turn around and land safely at the airport.

There have been a couple of rumors floating around suggesting that the flight crew were arguing and that was the reason for the radio black out. Then again, there were other rumors suggesting that they simply fell asleep.

This isn’t the first issue that Delta Airlines (which now owns Northwest Airlines) has had in the past few weeks. Just last week, a Delta flight was flying from Brazil to the company’s hub at Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport and it landed on a taxiway instead of the runway, which was right next to it. The crew had been flying all night and landed the plane in the dark. Luckily, no one was injured in this incident either.

Both incidents happened right as the Federal Aviation Administration began reviewing and updating rules as to how long a pilot can fly over a given amount of time.

Plane incidents like this can be avoided by the FAA simply putting the rules into place now. People shouldn’t be falling asleep while they’re operating an airplane. If they could take shifts (like any other kind of job) then perhaps this wouldn’t happen. More people are feeling as though they have to outperform everyone now just so that they can keep their jobs.

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