Computers in the Sky- What a Headline: Wayward pilots were working on their laptops
As a frequent flier with millions of air miles I was as shocked as anyone to learn that a pilot and first officer were preoccupied with their laptops while flying to Minneapolis from San Diego last week. The crew apparently was so mentally invested in their laptops that they did not hear their radios for more than an hour and over flew their destination by 150 miles. Surely new rules will be instituted to protect the flying public.
Computers are Addictive!
In 1967 I took a course in statistics, but the first half of the course was FORTRAN programming, and I’ve been addicted to computers ever since. Many of you reading this blog know that one loses all sense of time and space when sitting at a computer, and with the advent of the flood of information on the Internet losing oneself into a computer has never been easier. Is it any wonder that this flight crew were deeply engrossed and lost all sense of time and space?
Wifi in the Air
Now that airlines are providing wifi services on aircraft one might wonder if wifi will be a good thing or bad. It’s impossible to be on a plane going anywhere today where passengers are not using laptops, netbooks, and cell phones, whether they are checking email, or preparing spreadsheets, powerpoints, documents, or just watching movies. So it seems the sky is full of computers and unlikely to ever be less, however the flying public should have better expectations of the pilots.
Much as I accept that one can become engrossed in one's computer, it defies plausibility to suggest that two alert and experienced flight crew can ignore all radio contact for more than an hour, and forget to land their aircraft until a member of the cabin crew enquires about the prospect of that occuring.
Much more credible is the hypothesis that they were asleep, and then upon realising what had happened, decided to use up the 30 minutes of cockpit voice recorder loop by staying in the air long enough to erase all record of their period of silence!
Philip makes some great points, and clearly sleeping makes much more sense than looking at a new scheduling software system!
Surely a little bit of forensic investigative work can determine if those laptops were indeed powered up and what they were looking at, correct?
It will be interesting to see what further investigation reveals. Seems a no-brainer that this crew should lose their jobs - whether sleeping or engrossed in their laptops.Either way, they clearly were not doing their jobs and created a potentially dangerous situation for their passengers.