NTSB to Review Pilot Distractions

Over its relatively brief existence, the airline industry has made numerous advances in technology. From efforts to improve the comfort and safety of passengers to reducing strain on pilots and crew, the industry has made monumental strides. However, some of the efforts to make a pilot's job easier can have serious unintended consequences.

In October of 2009, a Northwest Airlines flight headed for Minneapolis overshot the airport by 150 miles, forcing the plane to turn back. The pilot and co-pilot had become distracted while using a personal laptop computer in the cockpit, violating airline policy. The autopilot was engaged and the plane was over northern Wisconsin before a flight attendant questioned the pilots about the plane's flight path.

More tragically, in February 2009, a flight to Buffalo, New York, crashed after the pilots became distracted while talking and stopped paying attention to weather conditions. Forty-nine passengers and crew were killed in the accident, along with one person on the ground.

These are only two of the many incidents and accidents that distracted pilots cause each year. The National Transportation Safety Board recently held a three-day conference in Washington, D.C., where one of the items on the agenda was the issue of whether technology has made pilots too complacent in the cockpit.

Some observers wonder if planes are on the path to becoming over-automated. With the pilots doing less of the actual flying, they occupy their time with more non-flight-related activities. A consultant to the FAA and former airline pilot Hemant Bhana cautions that pilots are becoming over reliant on the technology and that the returns that these advancements make in terms of safety may be diminishing. He argues that when planes were less advanced, more of a pilot's attention and focus was required to operate an aircraft.

Conversely, some argue that automation is not the problem and that overall, planes are much safer today than in previous decades. Federal Aviation Administrator J. Randolph Babbit says that automation didn't have anything to do with the pilots overshooting the Minneapolis airport. He argues that the problem in that incident was that the pilots simply were not doing their jobs properly, and that more training and familiarity with airline and FAA procedures can avoid future problems.