Distracted flying
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share thisThe good news is that a plane flying at more than 500 miles per hour, seven miles off the ground, won't hit a tree if the pilot is distracted. But as the bizarre case of an Oct. 21 Northwest Airlines flight demonstrates, distracted flying poses its own serious set of dangers.
Pilots of the Northwest flight from San Diego to Minneapolis did not respond to radio calls for more than 90 minutes. Then, they failed to descend and overflew the destination airport by 150 miles.
Because traffic controllers feared that the plane had been hijacked, National Guard fighters were about to be dispatched after the aircraft when the pilots finally responded.
One of the pilots subsequently told investigators that he and his colleague both were engrossed in a new scheduling program for flight crews on one of their laptop computers.
Delta Airlines, which recently acquired Northwest, later said that use of the computer in the cockpit violated company policy. It fired both pilots.
But company policy clearly is inadequate to the task of minimizing electronic distractions in the cause of public safety. A commuter train engineer was found to be texting as his train collided with a freight train in California last year, for example, and numerous highway accidents have been attributed to drivers using cell phones and texting while driving.
Remarkably, the Federal Aviation Administration precludes use of personal electronic devices by commercial pilots only when planes are below 10,000 feet. At those altitudes pilots typically are in direct control of planes as they land or take off. At higher altitudes, planes often are on auto-pilot.
Whether the FAA should enact an outright ban on personal electronic devices is subject to debate because the devices can be useful in an emergency. But, clearly, the FAA must move aggressively against pilot distraction.
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