Northwest Pilot Who Overshot Runway Calls Gig Harbor Home

These pilots are demonstrating an underrated skill of the modern flight-jockey: consciousness.

The captain of the Northwest Flight that overshot its intended destination by 150 miles lives outside Seattle. Tim Cheney of Gig Harbor and co-pilot Richard Cole of Salem, Oregon, were identified late last week after a preliminary report showed the two had passed their breathalyzer tests.

Cheney and Cole were unresponsive for most of last Wednesday's flight from San Diego to Minneapolis. Despite attempts by air traffic control to reach them using radio and text messages, the pilots didn't make contact until they were halfway across Wisconsin.

The pilots initially told investigators that they lost track of time because of an argument. But now Cole says there was no fight. And experts are calling BS on their original explanation.

The leading theory goes that the Cheney and Cole had to be asleep. How else could they forget to land a plane with 144 passengers? But Cole, talking to a TV crew that had staked out his house, said that's bunk.

"Things are being said that didn't happen, but I can't get into any details," said Cole. "Nobody was asleep in the cockpit. No arguments took place. But other than that, I cannot tell you anything that went on because we're having hearings on Tuesday."

The pilots are both temporarily suspended and will be talking to the NTSB tomorrow. Ironically, the one independent party that could clear everything up, the cockpit's flight recorder, isn't talking.

New models record up to two hours of chatter. The version inside Northwest's plane, however, was old, so only the last half hour of the trip, after Cheney and Cole realized their error, is available for review.

UPDATE: Cheney and Cole say they were distracted by a bathroom break, a chat with a stewardess and their laptops.

That's the explanation uncovered by Andy Pasztor at the Wall Street Journal. Investigators are still pursuing evidence to support the theory that one or both of the pilots fell asleep. But for now, it looks like a series of really boring, everyday events are what led to the distraction. As always, we blame Twitter.

UPDATE: Cheney and Cole are now pilots without the credentials to fly. But strangely enough, the FAA doesn't want their laptops.

"The pilots said they were using them. So I don't know what any examination of them" would do to further the investigation, NTSB spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz told the AP.

Are we missing something? The mystery was what were the pilots doing while the plane went off course. Now the group charged with solving that mystery doesn't want to see the one piece of equipment that can verify the pilots' claims? Weird.