1 Aliens, but dumb ones.

I mean, they borrowed 2 NWA pilots when they could have had 2 Hooters Air flight attendants.

(Sure am glad my office is under the flight paths for MSP. Not.)

2 Why can't it be both A and E?  These days, Unreal Tournament probably would put you to sleep. 

3 Obviously, they stumbled on TvTropes and everything went downhill from there.

4

I personally don't believe their story for a minute. I really do think they were asleep.

This story about laptops sounds like a coverup. If that was what happened, then those guys will lose their pilot's licenses and be fired. But if they really were asleep, they could be jailed. So this story sounds like their way of avoiding that fate.

5 I have a hard time wrapping my mind around both pilot and copilot falling asleep simultaneously for that long. . . but I suspect thats because I'd prefer not to believe it.

Maybe they should have the stewardesses regularly check in at the cockpit ( or rather, cockpit intercomm ) to see whether they want any food or drink, as a way to help ensure they stay awake. . .

6

It is an evil plot by the onboard computers.  See, since there is no longer attentive flight engineers to keep the rogue AIs in check (Or to actually keep the rogue AIs completely out.), they can start screwing with the minds of the pilots...

C.T.

7

The pilots being asleep is my guess, too.  The first thing I thought when hearing the news was "Those guys were conducting a rack attack."  Although, if they were using their laptops, watching a movie isn't out of the question, (hard to get a WiFi signal at 36,000 feet) and that could certainly distract you just as well for that long.

I remember my flight instructor telling me about a cargo pilot he knew years ago.  He said the guy would program the autopilot to fly inbound to a VOR (a radio transmitter used for navigation).  The system sends out signals that tell what heading you're on, but there is a "cone of confusion" over the transmitter where the receiver in the plane can't tell exactly what radial it's on.  Therefore the autopilot would get confused and the wheel would start shaking.  The pilot would just set the autopilot, and fall asleep with his head on the wheel so it would wake him up when it finished with that leg of the trip.

It sounds apocryphal to me, but it always stuck with me that you really don't know what's going on in the cockpit of a commercial flight.

8 They were reading the Chizumatic archives and your reviews page.

I mean, they sure weren't reading Bridgebunnies.  Unless that was just before they fell asleep.....

9 I don't know whether to believe asleep, doing Unreal Tournament, or TvTropes.

Is it good or is it bad that the plane can fly itself safely for 150 miles with two asleep people at the controls?

Side question: how long does it take an airliner to travel 150 miles?

The news story says Airbus A320...the manufacturer lists speeds in km/h and knots, while Wiki lists a Mach number...assume cruising speed, so 840 km/h = 520 mph, giving 17.2 minutes of nap time, assuming that the distinction between airspeed and groundspeed isn't important.

Possibly a 16-minute nap for the both of them. I imagine that they didn't start talking over the radio immediately after waking up.

Scary.

10 The ground speed depends on the wind a lot. Two weeks ago I was flying from Narita (Tokyo) to San Francisco using the southern route. Ground speed hit 1110 km/h at one point. That's how powerful jetsteam can be.

11

There's also no guarantee that they fell asleep just as they flew over Minneapolis.

Modern jets largely fly themselves. Interestingly enough, many of them can land themselves, at properly equipped airports. The 747 was one of the first jets to be able to do that.

That's why the "Airport" nightmare, i.e. both pilots dead or unconscious and someone with no training trying to bring the plane in, isn't really a threat now. There are other safeguards in place to prevent that, but if both pilots were out, the expert on the ground would just tell whoever was in the cockpit how to activate the auto-landing program. After which, everyone would just sit back and wait (presumably with white knuckles) until the plane was stopped on the runway.

12

In figuring out sleep time, it's important to remember that they didn't just overshoot their destination, but that they were out of contact with ATC for 78 minutes prior to turning around.

They were declared NORDO (a status indicating a lack of radio contact) by Denver Center not far east of Denver, and remained so during the handoff to Minneapolis Center and until they reached mid-Wisconsin.

13 Flight deck is closed and locked after 9/11. There's nobody onboard to help if anything goes wrong in the cockpit (this may be easier for long-haul flight with the crew rotation).

14 And when they finally regained contact, they were at 37,000 feet, so they hadn't even started to make an approach.

15 One wonders whether a review of the cockpit voice recorder might be informative.

16 I saw mention of that in one of the news reports. It also mentioned that there are two different kinds. One stores the last 6 hours of sound, but the other only stores the last half hour. If they'd had the latter kind, all the evidence would have scrolled off the back end by the time they landed.

17

There's another reason for more people to be willing to go along with the "laptop" excuse for what was actually "pilots falling asleep at the controls." The airline itself might have come under investigation. Like trucking companies, many airlines have the unofficial "we can't legally require you to stay up 48 hours at a time, but we can fire you if you don't" rule. With the airlines struggling financially already, it's entirely possible that an investigation that unearths a pattern of enforcing such a rule could put the airline permanently out of business. From a public safety standpoint that's a very good thing, but from a soon-to-be-unemployed flight crew's standpoint, it's better to just tell anyone who asks whatever the official company line is.

After all, they weren't the ones who ended up dying in a plane crash, right? Not yet, anyway...

18 After all, they weren't the ones who ended up dying in a plane crash, right?

As the old joke goes, "I always wanted to die in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming in terror like his passengers."