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AN airliner flew 150 miles past its destination because the two pilots were arguing with each other.

Controllers tried in vain to contact the Northwest Airlines crew to tell them they were approaching Minneapolis airport.

But the Airbus A320, travelling from San Diego with 144 passengers, passed over the city at 37,000 feet.

Contact was not established until 14 minutes later, by which time the plane had overshot the airport by 150 miles before the pilots turned it round and landed safely.

They didn't discover their mistake until a flight attendant contacted them over the intercom, said a source close to a National Transportation Safety Board probe.

The pilots told investigators they had become "distracted" by a conversation about airline policy and lost track of their location. Officials were investigating if pilot fatigue could have played a role and that the pilots may have fallen asleep.

The two pilots were suspended from flying while the airline held their own investigation.

Flight Safety Foundation chief Bill Voss said: "It just doesn't make any sense.

"The pilots are saying they were involved in a heated conversation. Well, that was a very long conversation."

The federal investigators were yesterday examining the plane's cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder.

Ben Berman, an airline pilot and former chief of major accident investigations at the NTSB, said it became second nature for pilots to know when they needed to begin landing preparations.

He said these should have begun when the flight was 100 miles or more from Minneapolis. Berman said it would require a "fairly dramatic event" to lose track of that kind of awareness.

And he added: "Shop talk pretty clearly wasn't all that was going on."

In January last year, two go!

airline pilots fell asleep for at least 18 minutes during an internal flight in Hawaii.

The plane was heading out over open ocean before controllers raised the pilots. The captain was later diagnosed with a sleeping disorder.