Laptops weren’t the problem on Flight 188, senator

Sen. Byron Dorgan, chairman of the Senate aviation subcommittee, said Tuesday that he intends to file a bill that will ban laptops in airplane cockpits.

If he does, it would be a quintessential federal overreaction to the now-infamous incident involving the two Northwest Flight 188 pilots who were out of communication with the ground for 91 minutes as they overshot their destination by 140 miles.

Blaming the laptops is akin to blaming the car and not the driver for running over the neighbor’s mailbox.

Two years ago, the Federal Aviation Administration approved and the airlines began converting all flight manuals to PDF files for use in the "electronic flight bag," or EFB.

Instead of thousands of pages of information that has to be manually updated — a hundred pages can change in a month — the PDF files are safer, lighter and more accurate with timely automatic revisions.

The next generation of laptop software being phased in to advanced airline fleets contains navigation data for routes and approaches. Newer aircraft, such as the 777s, have a plug at each seat with a USB connector to the aircraft’s files of manuals, schematics and operating procedures.

Dorgan said he intends to exempt electronic flight bags from the bill, and that would be a great idea if pilots weren’t using their personal laptops as EFBs. Airlines that are scrambling to save every dime possible aren’t handing out company-provided laptops like they once handed out pillows and peanuts. Pilots are downloading the EFB material onto laptops they supply.

The Northwest pilots are sticking to the story that they were "on their laptops, distracted" when they missed Minneapolis by 140 miles. Talk to professional pilots and they’ll say that’s just not possible if you’re conscious, because they see the fuel flow as the clock of doom and never lose track of how many minutes until they fall out of the sky.

Flight 188 took off from San Diego, with a notoriously short runway that necessitates lowering the fuel weight on takeoff. Minneapolis is a long flight for a plane with a light fuel load. Tack on an additional 40 minutes of flying and the fuel on landing must have been horrifyingly low.

A big piece of the Northwest Flight 188 puzzle is still missing. Whatever the pilots did inside that cockpit smacks of a gross dereliction of duty that erodes public trust. But the laptops weren’t the problem.

Lawmakers shouldn’t jump to an unnecessary conclusion of banning a valuable tool for pilots.

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