Distraction. Maybe We Should Learn To Work With Them?

The NTSB has a lot that they would like to address in the name of safety and it is not all aviation related.  However there are two aspects of their 2013 "most wanted" list that are very applicable to aviation.  One of them is the identification and communication of hazardous weather in general aviation.  The other is distractions in all form of transportation--including aviation.  In the issue of the distraction it sites an accident in which a medical helicopter crashed in Missouri on Aug 26th, 2011.  The crash occurred because the helicopter ran out of fuel and "The pilot, James Freudenbert, 34, of Rapid City, S.D.,exchanged 20 text messages, over a span of less than two hours preceding thehelicopter crash, documents made public by NTSB show."

While I do feel that distractions in the cockpit is an issue that needs to be addressed, I think this again is victim of slight overhype. It seems we like to pick and choose what distractions are acceptable and with at ones are not. Aviation is a field littered with distraction. While flying the plane you need to constantly be checking your location, possibly communicating with others, looking for other traffic--all things that could distract you from holding your altitude and heading. We do, however, learn to adapt those distractions and incorporate them. I feel the accident sited is just a poor example.  The text messages were sent prior to the actual flight. Presumably during the pre-flight checklist and it is being argued that because of the text messaging is why the pilot did not check the fuel. The NTSB says "personal electronic devices", or "PEDs" was the cause of this distraction.  For this case in particular, that may have been the case. But if the pilot had needed to use the restroom quickly during his pre-flight and when he returned he had mentally skipped over that step in the checklist? Would we ban using restroom facilities prior to a flight? What if he was going through the pre-flight checklist the pilot's supervisor had called out to him to ask him a question? Would we then have to make an effort to ban speaking when performing a pre-flight checklist?

Distractions of any kind can be bad and I feel that PEDs are being used as the primary scape goat. My mother was I a debilitating car accident that made it so she was never able to walk again. The accident was cause because she flicked the ash off her cigarette (back when actual cigarette trays were in the car) and looked down the speedometer. Should smoking while driving and checking your speed be outlawed? Instead of taking an effort to ban all kind of distraction we should be training people to adapt to them and work around them--just like we do in all other aspects of aviation distraction.  No one ever says that unfolding a sectional chart could be a distraction, instead we say to in operate that distractions into your flying.  Haven't we lerned yet that elimination doesn’t seem to increase safety, but adaptation does?

From a career standpoint I'm not entirely sure that a new job positions could be created in eliminating distractions in and of themselves. I suppose a software could be developed to lock out personal texting when activated by the pilot during pre flight so that he would not miss anything during the preflight. But that would still require the pilot to activate the program.  You could have someone inspect the pilot as he inspected the plane to be sure he wasn't distracted, but again, existing personal could always already do that and would that inspector also tell at the pilot's supervisor if he called out to him?

There is room, however, for education.  I think PEDs have the potential to do more good than harm.  Perhaps instead of using paper checklists have an electronic checklist as an app that a pilot can use on their PED.  When activated it could potentially lock out personal text messages, but, more importantly the pilot would have to tap the item checked after it was checked--maybe changing the color of a checklist from red to blue? This way if a distraction--any distraction--occurred and the pilot was momentarily taken away from a checklist, when he would look back at the app he could say "oh, the fuel is still red.  I haven't checked that yet.  I should check that."  Job opportunities could be put toward creating such a software and then possible seminars to ensure the proper teaching of caption and application to the app. Distractions are going to occur all the time.  Rather than eliminate them, I feel we should work around them.