NTSB Seeks Better Communications After NWA Mishap

Federal safety officials recommended Thursday that better communications procedures be adopted in the wake of a fatal Montana plane crash and a Northwest Airlines flight that overshot the Minneapolis airport by more than 100 miles last year.

The National Transportation Safety Board issued its recommendations to the Federal Aviation Administration, which runs the nation's air traffic control system. The report comes after the board investigated the Northwest flight, whose pilots failed to talk to air traffic controllers for more than an hour, and the Montana crash that killed 14 people.

One recommendation called for controllers to better document their communication with pilots to ensure that critical information gets passed from one controller to another. The board also said controllers should always begin transmissions on emergency frequencies by saying "on guard." Although a common practice, the phrasing isn't required.

Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said the union declined immediate comment because officials had not had a chance to closely review the report.

The pilots of Northwest Flight 188 failed to communicate with controllers for about 77 minutes before discovering they were over Wisconsin in October. The pilots, whose licenses were revoked, said they became distracted while working on laptop computers.

Although the NTSB officially ruled Thursday that the probable cause of the incident was "the flight crew's failure to monitor the airplane's radio and instruments," it found room for improvement on the ground.

The crew lost contact when a controller in Denver told them to change frequencies as the plane moved into different airspace. The handoff came during a shift change, and the plane's crew failed to contact controllers on the new frequency. A Minneapolis controller tried unsuccessfully to contact the plane on the emergency frequency.