Texting While Flying Linked to Commercial Crash - NTSB

[trey kule]

No, but lets look a bit deeper. If a regulation should say, for example, cell phone usage only in emergency, or in non critical phases of flight for operational reasons.......
And you taxii onto a live runway and After the accident it is found you made four personal texts to your girlfriend asking what he was wearing........it would be very enforceable

The media, politicians, and of course TC senior management who are looking for more money, all have given the impression that enforcement is proactive. It is typically not. Enforcement comes after the accident as a rule. Because you get away with something is not reason to believe that if you hurt someone or bend some metal, you will not be caught if something happens.

The problem there is the self assessed super pilots who think flying is so mundane they can load themselves up with non essential additional distractions will continue to delude themselves until one day they are unlucky.....and then, of course, they will feel bad, and take the opportunity to celebrate their error as a learning experience.

We all talk about making flying as safe as possible....at least as long as it does not interfere with our personal interests. One of the major accident situations now is runway incursions and ground taxiing.
Read the accident reports as to how many times one crew had their head down doing FMCS input, or paperwork....or talking on the phone.

[xsbank]

The first thing insurance companies do in a car crash is subpoena the driver's cell phone records. Are ya feelin lucky, punk? Drive your car around with no insurance? Try death and destruction and then add bankruptcy to ice the cake. Might as well tattoo "MORON" on your own forehead.

[CD]

As we discussed in a similar discussion earlier, the FAA tried through advisory material to get the message out and then in January, introduced a proposed regulation to try and impose common sense...

FAA SAFO 09003 - Cellular Phone Usage on the Flight Deck
FAA NPRM - Docket No. FAA–2012–0929 - Prohibition on Personal Use of Electronic Devices on the Flight Deck - January 15, 2013

[5x5]

Texting with friends while in a critical phase of flight is just dumb. Using a handheld device (no different than a gps, comm or anything else in the cockpit that takes your focus) appropriately should not be unnaceptable.

I'm not sure that's entirely correct. There are other things that need to be done as part of your task of flying. Using a GPS, a comm radio or an autopilot require the interface of hand and mind, BUT they are integral to and part of what you are trying to achieve. They fit in the flow.

While using a cell phone to text or call has the same physical entanglement and outwardly seems to be the same, the activity it is supporting is non-related to the task of flying. That is where the distraction comes from. Your mind has to leave the task of flying and concentrate on whatever extraneous thing it is your texting/calling about.

There really is no such thing as multi-tasking, it's actually fractured tasking. You do a number of things in slices interspersed with each other. The more widely divergent they are, the more distracting and the more difficult it is to complete each task successfully.

Cell phones are great for comm failure situations and for communicating on the ground, but I think they should be pretty much ignored during the flight itself.

[MacStork]

For F#@K sake! Has this industry gone completely NUTS or is it just me?
We used CELL phones all the time in the Maldives for dispatch purposes.
We got new route and fuel requirements and PAX loads via text messages and it was a very reliable system!
We passed weather info via text messages. Every pilot was issued a company cell phone for this purpose and it worked very well. It is not like driving down a highway trying to text and drive at the same time.
We had really good cell coverage all over the Maldives, and we would lose our VHF com about 30 miles out of Male! This was a great system and to say that it would be a contributing factor in an accident is about the same as talking on the radio!
Where do they find these idiots?

[trey kule]

Has this industry gone completely NUTS or is it just me?

It is just you....seek help!

what you are describing is the use of cell phones in a two crew situation for activities directly related to flight.
That is not the problem. The problem is texting and calling for non related activities such as texting your girlfriend while taxiing to find out why your best friends car is parked in your driveway.it is unnecessary use, and in many cases today, a compulsive thing.

Some people don't seem to recognize the difference. And unfortunately the legitimate use of cell phones in the cockpit is going to be a causality of their inability to recognize this difference.

[Siddley Hawker]

Some people don't seem to recognize the difference. And unfortunately the legitimate use of cell phones in the cockpit is going to be a causality of their inability to recognize this difference.

(my italics) Agreed. Regulators are rarely known to be students of the law of unintended consequences.