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Leibson's Law

Steve LeibsonLeibson's Law: It takes 10 years for any disruptive technology to become pervasive in the design community. This blog is about the disruptive technologies that either have or will win over electronic engineers, some that won't, and why. Please feel free to link to these blog entries! Written by Steve Leibson, a marketing consultant specializing in lead generation and content creation for high-tech companies, former VP of Content for Reed Business, and former Editor in Chief of EDN. See my consulting Web site at www.sleibson.com and my history site at www.hp9825.com. You can email me at steven.leibson followed by the magic email symbol @ followed by att.net.

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Monday, October 26, 2009

Texting While Driving a Car? Ha! How About Browsing While Flying a Commercial Jet?

Oct 26 2009 5:54PM | Permalink |Comments (11) |


You may be aware that a Northwest Airlines commercial flight overflew its destination, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, by 150 miles last week taking the 144 passengers on a bit of a joyride. Worse, the radio silence caused NORAD to scramble fighter jets from two separate locations, just in case the airliner had been hijacked by terrorists. I’ve just read of the reason for the overshoot, courtesy of CNN. The pilot and copilot were both engaged in working on their laptop computers and didn’t notice that it was time to land. The aircraft was on autopilot while the copilot was reportedly showing the pilot something related to crew scheduling on his laptop. The pilot’s laptop was also reportedly in use.

It’s not clear to me whether this particular Northwest aircraft was equipped with WiFi in the sky, but it is apparent that the possibility of such incidents increases as more planes are so equipped. Once more, it appears that the march of technology can easily outpace common sense.

Fortunately, no one was hurt in this particular incident. However, in the current climate where we scramble armed fighter escorts when anything unusual happens in the sky, caution is of paramount importance.


Related entries in: Society & Culture | 

Reader Comments



at 10/26/2009 6:29:55 PM, Andy T said:
Speaking as a pilot, I don't know what the fuss is all about - commercial planes pretty much fly on autopilot and even autoland. We've seen crashes as a result of a rusty crew that almost exclusively flew on autopilot, and when it failed, the humans forgot how to fly by hand. In the good old days, it was stewardesses behind a closed door, now it's a laptop...there's no proper excuse for an overshoot in any case, but even that is irrelevant other than endangering fuel reserves - there should be zero tolerance for failure to answer repeated hails, particularly in the paranoid post 9/11 life we call American....with all the unemployed people out there, such behavior should be punished to mob-satisfaction by having them fired for not heeding the radio calls - that idiot-factor has absolutely zero to do with looking at a laptop screen, which the sensationalist media (and you) have latched onto - porn or pilot-schedules are irrelevant to working the radio.



at 10/26/2009 6:43:16 PM, Steve Leibson said:
A very confused comment, Andy T. You say you don't know what all the fuss is about and then spell out exactly what it's all about. It's about inattention to the job at hand, distraction attributable to accessible technology. I'm sorry you misinterpreted my reference to WiFi in the sky as something salacious. I assumed the pilot and first officer might be accessing a cloud-based crew-scheduling site if Wifi in the sky was involved. I don't think there's much of anything sensationalist in my blog post. I'm merely pointing out the similarity between the attraction of texting to drivers and this situation with pilots. Looks really similar and technology-driven to me. Technology gives us the ability to be somewhere else, easily. One year ago, a train engineer in LA drove his Metrolink commuter train into a freight locomotive, killing 25 people and injuring 135 more. He was texting. His body was at his post but his brain had been sucked into his mobile phone. No different to me than having a laptop in a pilot seat.



at 10/26/2009 8:26:27 PM, Andy T said:
LOL. Cars don't have autopilots or have ATC to separate traffic and to act as a second set of eyes to ensure an orderly, safe, and PROVEN transportation infrastructure is maintained. These pilots' failure was in radio response, nothing more, yet you armchair amateurs all are focusing on the use of a laptop or two - BIG DEAL. While flying, we always are looking at maps, studying approach plates so we know them almost by rote as we descending into foreboding conditions to find a runway, we're checking weather, planning alternate routes real time as mother nature and ATC throw curve balls at us (yes, using a laptop and its DVD database). This is a life/death game with no "pause" mouse click. YOu adapt to the conditions or you die and that means studying things realtime inflight. Comparing this SKILLED activity to a minimum wage, zero skills, no GED, throttle jockey on a commuter train, or to some left lane driving chimp who believes driving is a right, not an earned privilege, a driver who barely knows the rules of the road, let alone demonstrate knowledge and skill, is a laughable comparison. Get a pilot's license and you'll see what I am talking about and you'll know what you are talking about. An internet in the sky would actually SAVE lives as pilots would be much better informed about weather and other flight conditions. These guys didn't respond to the radio calls - THAT is a bad thing and is breaking the rules, and in post 9/11 has serious consequences. Looking at a laptop, map, or approach plate, even for 15 minutes, while in flight is not.



at 10/26/2009 9:26:10 PM, Steve Leibson said:
Andy T: The plane was out of radio contact for 78 minutes, not the 15 minutes you cite, during which it flew from Denver to Minneaoplis. ATC traffic serparation doesn't do much for you if you're ignoring it for more than an hour. The pilots were apparently not doing anything related to flying the plane during that time. They were scheduling themselves on future flights. And finally, there is indeed Internet in the sky and I've used it on American Airlines flights. It works really well. I'm all for pilots using it to fly the plane better. Sorry, I can't figure out what's got you so worked up. There's clearly a pilot issue here and it's not just being out of radio contact. Both pilots lost their sense of where the plane was and they overflew their destination by 150 miles. Their inattention was driven by the availability of a high-tech distraction. All of their extra training, certification, and experience did not prevent them from being distracted for more than an hour. They were mentally sucked into the vortex. It needn't have been high tech, but it was.



at 10/27/2009 1:17:40 AM, Andy T said:
A PC is an etch-a-sketch in complexity and distraction compared to working the cockpit computers AND a PC has become an essential supplementary tool in the cockpit for safe and informed flight. Your calls for its ban and disconnection are naive and misplaced as is your analogy of cellphones in cars. The issue here is being out of radio contact and ONLY THAT. As far as maintaining flight separation, ATC was still doing its duty, even with one silent aircraft in the system and in fact would have cleared airspace had the craft come in silent into an airport, whether the destination or an alternate. The fact that it was on flight plan for most of the route indicated radio failure to those on the ground and there was no panic - or a standard precaution is to send up an escort in such cases ONLY if it deviates off plan, or overshoots its destination as happened in the Payne Stewart tragedy. The 15 minutes I used as an example, which you twisted into an item of irrelevant mislead, is the time flown AFTER the airport and was used as an example of how long you could easily study something in the cockpit while on autopilot and has nothing to do with the radio silence period. Your use of the internet on a plane has nothing to do with how a PC is used in the cockpit and I went nonlinear at your comparison of its use in the cockpit with texting in a car, which is just plane (sic) naive. What we have here is a failure to communicate.....nothing more.



at 10/27/2009 6:48:29 AM, Corey S said:
These guys were asleep. But if they ever want to disprove this they will need to submit their laptops for inspection. Even if not connected to a WI-FI point, there will be a record of disk reads, file opening, closing, saving, and etc. In the end however it really does not matter why this happened. Basic airmanship protocol, and company/federal regulations were not merely broken, they were smashed. I sincerely hope that their careers are salvageable. They are highly experienced airmen and our industry does need to lose pilots of this ilk.



at 10/27/2009 7:21:04 AM, Steve Leibson said:
Andy T: I did not call for a ban of laptops in the cockpit. You'll find no such words in my original post. If you saw them there, I'm afraid your own inference put them there and you are therefore 100% correct when you say there's a communications failure here. The only knee jerking around here seems to be yours. Here's the statement issued by Delta Airlines yesterday that sums things up: "Using laptops or engaging in activity unrelated to the pilots' command of the aircraft during flight is strictly against the airline's flight deck policies and violations of that policy will result in termination."



at 10/27/2009 7:35:40 AM, Dianne said:
As a flight attendant for 40 years, I am not please with Andy's comments about the "stewardesses" behind closed doors. That comment was NOT warranted in this conversation or any whatsoever. The crews have plenty of time to do their "bids" for next month on the ground, period. I can't imagine them so engrossed in their schedules that they would misses their transmissions from the ground. UNREAL.



at 10/27/2009 3:36:06 PM, Andy T said:
It's impressive that flight attendants read EDN, especially its obscure blogs - I guessing a former engineer turned into a waitress in the sky? But yes, you are absolutely right - the fresh and beautiful young things of the sixties gracing our aisles have turned into old hags thanks to unions, so little chance of hanky-panky in the front office - the eye candy is now with the Asian Airlines, where age discrimination is a part of doing business.



at 10/27/2009 4:06:28 PM, jenet said:
wow, that makes me realize i shouldnt put onn make-up while driving 2 work.



at 10/28/2009 11:11:29 AM, pilot 123456 said:
ok ok ok ok ok.........

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