Washington, Oct 28 (THAINDIAN NEWS) The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday revoked the licenses of the two Northwest Airlines pilots Timothy Cheney of Gig Harbor, Wash., the captain, and Richard Cole of Salem, Ore., the first officer. They had overshot their Minneapolis destination by around 150 miles.

The pilots — Timothy Cheney of Gig Harbor, Wash., the captain, and Richard Cole of Salem, Ore., the first officer — told safety investigators they were working on their personal laptop computers and lost track of time and place. Initially they had told the investigators that they were discussing an airline policy and got so involved in it that they didn’t realize that they had over shot their destination.

“The pilots, who were out of communications with air traffic controllers for 91 minutes, violated numerous federal safety regulations in the incident last Wednesday night”, the FAA said in a statement. “The violations included failing to comply with air traffic control instructions and clearances and operating carelessly and recklessly”, the agency said.

“You engaged in conduct that put your passengers and your crew in serious jeopardy,” FAA regional counsel Eddie Thomas said in a letter to Cheney and to Cole as well. Northwest Flight 188 was not in communications with controllers or the airline dispatchers “while you were on a frolic of your own. … This is a total dereliction and disregard for your duties.”

The pilots realized that they had gone too far, when they were brought back to awareness when a flight attendant contacted them on the aircraft’s intercom. By then, they were over Wisconsin at around 37,000 feet. They turned the Airbus A320 with its 144 passengers around and landed safely in Minneapolis later after establishing contact with the Air traffic controller.

The revocations of the pilots’ commercial licenses are effective immediately, FAA said.