James Lileks: What's that? Speak up, you [unintelligible] pilots!

The transcripts from Flight 188, the plane that famously overshot Minneapolis and wandered into Cheeseland because the pilots were ether figuring out work schedules or playing World of Warcraft on their laptops, have been released.

There's a bit too much (unintelligible) for my tastes. I'd like to think these guys speak with crisp military diction, but apparently the first thing they do after takeoff is fill their mouths with oatmeal and marbles. So you get this:

GROUND CONTROL: [Unintelligible].

PLANE IN SKY FILLED WITH HUNDREDS OF TRUSTING PEOPLE: [Unintelligible].

GROUND: "Cow [unintelligible] retracted."

PLANE: "[unintelligible] over."

GROUND: "Repeat, you have a [unintelligible] cow stuck in landing gear, it has not retracted."

GROUND: [Very loud angry unintelligible].

PLANE: "Roger that, you [unintelligible] dillweed."

Here's my favorite, and it has the ring of an oh-crap response to the air-traffic controllers who've just asked why the pilots were so gosh-darn busy they couldn't answer the phone:

"Ah we're just dealing with some company issues here."

It's placed in brackets, and according to the story that means "the recording is not entirely clear." That's a lot of words to presume, and it suggests there were other responses, perfectly reasonable.

You spend an hour dealing with a werewolf in the cockpit and tell me how focused you'd be on such luxuries as "descending" and "landing."

It's as good an explanation as any. Personally, I think the pilots were (unintelligible), but that's just my suspicion.