Lawmakers Seek Ban on Laptops in Airliner Cockpits

Shouldn’t something like this be common sense, not something that lawmakers should have to worry about? Then again, if you leave it up to the airlines to do voluntarily, we end up with situations like this one.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, chairman of the aviation subcommittee, said in an interview that his staff is working on a bill that he expects to introduce in about a week. He said he was surprised to learn after the Oct. 21 incident that the Federal Aviation Administration doesn't specifically prohibit pilots from using laptops, DVD players, MP3 players.

They should be permitted to use their electronic gadgetry except for a certain period of time before landing and after takeoff. We don't need our pilots falling asleep. And that's exactly what's gonna happen on a several hour long flight where the plane is flying itself 90% of the time, if they don't have something to keep them busy.

If people think pilots sitting there with nothing to do except watch the plane fly itself is BETTER for safety, they are dead wrong.

The incident in question was a fluke, not the norm.

I still believe they were either sleeping, doing something TOTALLY inappropriate , or playing WoW.

Another thing to add, Why isn't there a "Dead Man Switch" installed like on trains. Instead of the plane stopping (in the case of trains) if the pilot doesn't respond to the dead man switch, it warns air controllers.

Originally Posted by NKDietrich

They should be permitted to use their electronic gadgetry except for a certain period of time before landing and after takeoff. We don't need our pilots falling asleep. And that's exactly what's gonna happen on a several hour long flight where the plane is flying itself 90% of the time, if they don't have something to keep them busy.

If people think pilots sitting there with nothing to do except watch the plane fly itself is BETTER for safety, they are dead wrong.

The incident in question was a fluke, not the norm.

Oh you mean like NOT avoid turbulence and NOT be ready for any sudden inconvenience that a computer cannot solve. Yeah, right.

Originally Posted by Enduring_Warrior

Oh you mean like NOT avoid turbulence and NOT be ready for any sudden inconvenience that a computer cannot solve. Yeah, right.

And if they fall asleep, they are much less ready than if they are glancing at their laptop. That is exactly my point. Having nothing to keep their mind focused harms their concentration, and causes exactly the problems you describe. Banning pilots from doing anything except sitting there and staring at screens isn't going to help anything.

Another thing to add, Why isn't there a "Dead Man Switch" installed like on trains. Instead of the plane stopping (in the case of trains) if the pilot doesn't respond to the dead man switch, it warns air controllers.

It's called radio contact. If a pilot isn't asleep, they should be responding to any radio traffic directed at them. That's why this "laptop" story is bogus. They wouldn't have ignored radio calls while on a laptop. The only thing that would have caused them to miss radio calls is to fall asleep.

they forgot to add cell phones to that list. No texting while flying!

Originally Posted by Enduring_Warrior

Oh you mean like NOT avoid turbulence and NOT be ready for any sudden inconvenience that a computer cannot solve. Yeah, right.

You realize that the plane's radar already autopilots around turbulence if possible, and has nice flashing lights and buzzers in the case that it fails... right?

What do you possibly think a pilot can do avoid turbulence when the plane can't? Every piece of information that isn't coming in over the radio is available to the (very effective) autopilot.

Originally Posted by NKDietrich

It's called radio contact. If a pilot isn't asleep, they should be responding to any radio traffic directed at them. That's why this "laptop" story is bogus. They wouldn't have ignored radio calls while on a laptop. The only thing that would have caused them to miss radio calls is to fall asleep.

This. They were out of contact for 91 minutes, and it's not as if the tower didn't try contacting them during that time. Being on your laptop or playing a DS or something isn't going to keep you from responding to radio calls for an hour and a half.

Originally Posted by NKDietrich

They should be permitted to use their electronic gadgetry except for a certain period of time before landing and after takeoff.

I think this is what should be done.. Asking someone to stare at a bunch of dials for sometimes many hours at a time is going to put them to sleep or at the very least bore them to death. As long as the pilot is responsible enough to make sure the laptop is second on his priorities list.. I don't think it should be banned..

Headphones or loud music I can understand since that could keep them from hearing warning sounds or radio calls..

Does anyone seriously believe the pilots second story (remember the first was a lie) about being engrossed on their laptops looking at their work schedules for an hour and twenty minutes ? Both pilots, each on a laptop, and looking at their work schedule that long ?

Just a heads up to anyone who has no clue about how airliners and pilots work

READ THIS

Pilots are required to carry with them several extremely heavy, thick, difficult to peruse flight manuals on every single flight. It is bulky, inconvenient, and they are slow to use to say the least.

From what I understand from a couple of pilots I spoke to when selling computers about a year ago told me that the new 'in' thing is that all those manuals are now digitized, and approved for use on laptops and netbooks. This meant a pilot no longer had to carry around a ton of manuals, and had an easier time of finding what he needed thanks to search functions.

There are going to be some pissed off pilots who are unhappy with having to shelve their laptops and start bringing a hundred pounds of flight manuals again.

Any way you slice it, these pilots flight careers are over. Even if the FCC were to reinstate their licenses, no airline would want to hire them. I imagine their brother pilots are plenty pissed at them due to all the political fallout, new laws and regulations that will occur because of this one incident.

I'm willing to bet their names will somehow become a slang term for major screwups. Just like Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd's name entered into the language.

And their stories are bullshit. They fell asleep. I used to work as a RR freight trainman, and no matter all the company rules, local and state laws and FRA regulations, crew members still fell asleep. The FAA is going to have to allow napping on flights.

How about we hold people responsible for their actions, instead of banning every damned thing on the planet for a change.

So that means pilots won't be allowed to text while flying anymore? Bummer.

Originally Posted by NKDietrich

They should be permitted to use their electronic gadgetry except for a certain period of time before landing and after takeoff. We don't need our pilots falling asleep. And that's exactly what's gonna happen on a several hour long flight where the plane is flying itself 90% of the time, if they don't have something to keep them busy.

If people think pilots sitting there with nothing to do except watch the plane fly itself is BETTER for safety, they are dead wrong.

The incident in question was a fluke, not the norm.

Umm there's a reason there's at least two of them in the cockpit (and international flights usually 3 with a flight engineer), they're supposed to rotate sleeping. This was just a plain case of inexcusable incompetence that the two pilots are lying through their teeth to avoid responsibility. The last thing I want are gadgets that will distract a pilot's attention away from what they should be paying attention to, flying.

Originally Posted by NKDietrich

They should be permitted to use their electronic gadgetry except for a certain period of time before landing and after takeoff. We don't need our pilots falling asleep. And that's exactly what's gonna happen on a several hour long flight where the plane is flying itself 90% of the time, if they don't have something to keep them busy.

If people think pilots sitting there with nothing to do except watch the plane fly itself is BETTER for safety, they are dead wrong.

The incident in question was a fluke, not the norm.

Wow, I entered this thread ready to post the same thing (Yours is nicely worded btw ) and first post I read, BANG! Money shot.

All the lawmakers are doing (Which is SOP for them, Democrat or Republican) is responding to knee jerk comments from the Public.

If they are going to push legislation to ban use of electronic gadgets by Pilot's during a flight, then they need to ban the same for every single job field out there.

That means no using ANYTHING that isn't work related while on the clock. For me that would mean sitting here in my chair, my hand hovering over the phone with ONLY my work inbox on my screen, waiting for a customer to contact me.

Or I could use common sense, and be doing my job when I need to be. Which means when I get customer contact, I do my job. Pretty simple.

I have not read all the information on this story, but couldn't the pilots have simply had their headphones off? I know it's not like the movies where the audio is through speakers in the cockpit, they have headphones right? If they both had them off....asleep or not, they wouldn't hear squat!

Originally Posted by beowulf7

So that means pilots won't be allowed to text while flying anymore? Bummer.

I'm quite sure there's already a federal law forbidding use of cell phones (text or voice) while flying.

Without a doubt they were asleep...and had they thought the whole thing out, they would have just come clean about it in the first place, claimed fatigue, accuse the airline of overworking them, and in our society today they would have been semi-sympathetic "victims" instead of the "idiots who fell asleep and claimed they were checking out the new scheduling program on their laptops."

It is ridiculous that some lawmakers are knee jerking on this and trying to ban something that was only a fabrication by a couple of idiots who royally screwed up.