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Lost Northwest Pilots Were Trying Out New Software
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that two Northwest Airlines pilots who flew about 110 miles past their destination to the skies over Wisconsin as more than a dozen air-traffic controllers in three locations tried to get the plane's attention had taken out their personal laptops in the cockpit, a violation of airline policy, so the first officer could tutor the captain in a new scheduling system put in place by Delta Air Lines, which acquired Northwest last fall. 'Both said they lost track of time,' said an interim report from the National Transportation Safety Board countering theories in aviation circles that the two pilots might have fallen asleep or were arguing in the cockpit. 'Using laptops or engaging in activity unrelated to the pilots' command of the aircraft during flight,' said a statement from Delta Airlines, 'is strictly against the airline's flight deck policies and violations of that policy will result in termination.' Industry executives and analysts said the pilots' behavior was a striking lapse for such veteran airmen who have a total of 31,000 flying hours of experience between them. In the case of Flight 188, 'Neither pilot was aware of the airplane's position until a flight attendant called about five minutes before they were scheduled to land and asked what was their estimated time of arrival,' the interim report said."
At todays fear of terrorism levels, they are lucky its just job termination - if they had flown over some sensitive and/or military area they could have been shot down... or not?
But it is news to me, it can commandeer aircraft radios and navigational aids within vicinity and convert them into a giant Wi-Fi range extenders.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Yep. Thats my story and I'm sticking to it. I wasn't sleeping. I wasn't browsing the web. I was using the future of cockpit aviation.
Shouldn't they have picked up air traffic control yelling at them regardless? I'm guessing they had their headphones off (if such are even used), but I would think that there would be blinking lights at a minimum, and hopefully any voices would come through. If nothing else, they should be tuned into some kind of emergency frequency no matter what.
It seems to me something is either designed wrong, or the pilots were being much more inattentive than one would expect from even someone using a laptop.
Any pilots or other I am a somethings around?
They were raiding in WoW, I would imagine. ;-)
"Tutoring in the new scheduling software", my ass.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
will need to know how to use the new scheduling system now!
They were SO engrossed they neglected to respond to repeated attempts at contact for OVER AN HOUR? They weren't learning a new scheduling system.
They were on a WoW raid, more like.
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
Since most planes, to my knowledge, have auto pilot, and I'm assuming it was set, isn't there something with autopilot that would have also alerted the pilots to their location and time. I understand that pilots would have had time to discuss this stuff, but I almost believe that losing track of time is a big offense. What would have happened had they had fuel issues and now they were running out of fuel?
If I was on that flight I would likely be pissed off knowing that these two who hold the responsibility to get me to my destination weren't really doing their job properly. While this ended in a non-incident there should still be some sort of repercussion for those actions. These men chose to let themselves become distracted.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Obviously the pilots should have paid more attention, but I suspect the reason they were trying to squeeze in a little extra work is that they weren't going to get paid to learn the scheduling system on their own time.
Pilots go through years of expensive schooling and have to repay their student loans like everyone else. Their salaries start around $20,000 if they can get hired in a very competitive market.
Remember the hero pilot who landed the plane in the Hudson, saving Flight 1549 and 155 people's lives?
the last talk [Capt. Sullenberger] had with his wife, Lorrie, before the crash... was about money.
Like thousands of airline workers, his salary had been cut in half and he lost most of his pension. At 58, the 29-year veteran faced having to find work outside the industry and possibly having to sell his house.
Many pilots take second jobs. Some are on food stamps:
He took home $405 this week. My life was completely and totally in his hands for the past hour and he's paid less than the kid who delivers my pizza.
I told the guys that I have a whole section in my new movie about how pilots are treated (using pilots as only one example of how people's wages have been slashed and the middle class decimated). In the movie I interview a pilot for a major airline who made $17,000 last year. For four months he was eligible -- and received -- food stamps. Another pilot in the film has a second job as a dog walker.
"I have a second job!," the two pilots said in unison. One is a substitute teacher. The other works in a coffee shop.
There was an incredibly detailed account of the Brazilian midair collision in September 2006 that identified pilots trying to figure out the flight control systems on their new Legacy 600 as one of the distractions that led to the collision. Some of the controls were on a glass panel display, and there was also a laptop that distracted them. Apparently, as they were clicking around on stuff, they shut off their transponder.
http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2009/01/air_crash200901
Even more concerning, was the author's argument that the accuracy of GPS guided autopilot systems also contributed. Historically, even if two planes ended up at the same flight level, headed towards each other, the inherent sloppiness in the autopilot systems would actually increase the chance of a miss. Now, with autopilots capable of keeping planes within very close tolerances of their ideal flightpath, the same two planes accidentally occupying the same flight level may have a much higher chance of colliding.
There is really no excuse for both pilots completely losing situational awareness like this. They're both toast, and deserve to be.
As for the scheduling system they were going over - actually, that is probably the 'news for nerds' part. The old airline schedules were built in two units - 'pairings' and 'lines of time'. A pairing is a group of flights, typically from 1 to 6 days long, that begun and ended in a pilot domicile. The word 'pairing' was to indicate that an entire crew was 'paired' together that whole time. A line of time (or simply a line) was a month-long group of those pairings. There is a long list of legal requrements (min rest, max flight time, union contractual obligations, aircraft mx requirements, etc.) that these schedules had to meet.
Ultimately, from the pilot's point of view, these lines were published each month for the next month. Bidding was very straightforward. If you were the number 1 senior pilot in that base (technically, domicile, aircraft and status (capt. or F/O), you picked your line, and that was that. If you were #2, you picked your schedule, and got it.... unless the number 1 guy already got it, in which case you got your second choice. If you were number #300.... well, picking 300 schedules in the order you want them was a time consuming task, but the outcome was perfectly transparent. The line awards were public, so you could verify that the schedules you didn't get really did go to senior people. You can debate whether such a system is 'fair', but at least it is clear how it works, both globally and month to month.
Then, with the advent of more powerful computers, a system called 'PBS' was born - Preferential Bidding System. These systems, instead of having hard, published lines you bid from, instead only published the pairings. You expressed your 'Preferences' through a computer language. A computer program then ran, taking everybodys preferences, seniority, system constraints, etc. into account and generated schedules.
In theory, PBS sounds great. A pilot's preferences generally don't change that much month to month, so you could file your bid away and let it run automatically each month with little or no tweaking.
In practice, it's usually been highly disruptive and caused great angst for a year or two after being implemented, for many reasons:
1) The language used to express your preferences is generally designed for the programmers, not the users.
2) The results can be, to put it mildly, unexpected. When you have pre-published schedules, you have a pretty good idea ahead of time what to expect.
3) There are no month-to-month conflicts that generate additional days off, resulting in more work per pilot, a reason the airlines like them and pilots don't, on average.
4) Non-computer savvy older pilots (Captians) have a harder time getting it than younger pilots (F/O's), on average. It takes a vastly important piece of your life (when are you working? Where are you going? 28 hours in HNL or 32 hours in XNA?), and makes it tied to your comfort with learning, essentially, a primitive computer language.
I cringe when I see this, because I've done this - taught Captians while flying about PBS. So have many other F/O's. You just prioritize it where it belongs - below aviating, navigating and communicating. These guys made everyone else look bad.
I am surprised that anyone is able to keep their job. Where an honest mistake where no one was harmed causes someone to loose their career. I would feel more comfortable riding in a plain from a pilot who has a relatively good record and made a mistake and got severely corrected As they know the severity of their mistake, and are extra careful not to make an other one. Vs. a Pilot who has a good records but has gone too comfortable with their job, and will be likely to make their first mistake.
It reminds me when I first started working. I was cleaning out my old backup files. so I meant to do a rm -f *~ but me being green and not so careful I did an rm -f * ~
I Hit Ctrl-C after I realized it was taking way to long. However, I cleared out about 2 weeks of work. Plus my personal documents. Needless to say I learned to backup more freaklently and the value of a good source control system.
But If I were to get fired after that mistake and forced to switch careers then I wouldn't be able to apply my new learned methods.
That is why I cringe whenever there is a big mistake and people go well I hope that guy gets fired. Because the guy who did the mistake and especially if he was honest about it, would probably be so much more careful the nest time around. Who I would be more worried about is the guy who fired him. As part of the mistake is on him too. For not making sure they are safe guard in place.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
They were actually having a flamewar on LKML about what the best scheduler for the Linux kernel is.
The CVP on this aircraft only records the last 30 minutes of conversation. So what they have is roughly from just before final approach to parking at the gate.
Shouldn't they have picked up air traffic control yelling at them regardless?
Would have to assume they took off the headphones so they could hear each other as they discussed the computer app. I don't think there's a speaker in the cockpit from the tower.
Two questions come to mind:
1) what sort of urgency was placed on learning this new system? Were they being rushed? Did anyone suggest they hurry up and get each other up to speed on the app ("as soon as possible"/"whenever you get a chance"?) and they simply didn't have any personal time left to do it? (things like this tend to get pushed to be done on personal, rather than paid, time)
2) 110 miles in a jet? really? big detour? How long does it take a jet to travel 110 miles? This extended the flight what, a whole 15 minutes counting backtrack time? For a jet that's like a bus driver missing an exit and having to drive another 4 miles to the next cloverleaf and do a 180. Though it probably had a few more exaggerated side-effects, like passengers missing connecting flights (which happens too much anyway even when planes are on time) plus the cost of a few hundred pounds of fuel. But still, seems like its being overblown.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
The difference between that and the mistake of a pilot is a potential several hundred lives.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Do you know what happens to a captain (or any pilot, for that matter) when they are terminated? They start at the bottom of any airline that hires them. Yes, seniority is only on a per-airline basis. The only thing that matters in seniority is how long you've been at THAT airline.
so the first officer could tutor the captain in a new scheduling system put in place by Delta Air Lines
If this is really the case (which is still to be confirmed), then they were at least working for their company, making the best use of what they (incorrectly) thought was "available" time.
Keep this in mind, all of you reading slashdot at work !
You mean like unknown to the pilot emergencies that might be communicated to him by a traffic controller, such as change your altitude, you are on a collision course with x-other plane?
A pilot ignoring traffic controllers for over an hour is NOT a non-event.
A stewardess ran out of patience.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Slight flaw in your reasoning: what about all the other people on the road, a fair proportion of whom are bloody idiots who aren't even competent to operate a skateboard?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Funny, then, that the method of travel which you insist is the safest actually results in the most deaths per mile traveled... I am not saying anything about you *personally* but this kind of poor risk judgment is what leads to all kinds of bad decisions. From what type of travel to choose, to what kind of medical treatment to choose, we humans are absolutely TERRIBLE at properly weighing risk. Say what you will about the fallibility of statistics, we all stand to gain if people put a little more stock in sound science as opposed to emotion-driven decision making.
I'm sorry but that's just crap. New pilots, sure, they make less, but on *AVERAGE* the pay is around $70k. http://www.avjobs.com/salaries-wages-pay/pilot-pay.asp
Yeah, GP is full of BS. No stats, just single anecdotal sob stories. From a list of overpaid jobs:
9) Major airline pilots
While American and United pilots recently took pay cuts, senior captains earn as much as $250,000 a year at Delta, and their counterparts at other major airlines still earn about $150,000 to $215,000 - several times pilot pay at regional carriers - for a job that technology has made almost fully automated.
By comparison, senior pilots make up to 40 percent less at low-fare carriers like Jet Blue and Southwest, though some enjoy favorable perks like stock options. That helps explain why their employers are profitable while several of the majors are still teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
The pilot's unions are the most powerful in the industry. They demand premium pay as if still in the glory days of long-gone Pan Am and TWA, rather than the cutthroat, deregulated market of under-$200 coast-to-coast roundtrips. In what amounts to a per-passenger commission, the larger the plane, the more they earn - even though it takes little more skill to pilot a jumbo jet. It's as much the airplane mechanics who hold our fate in their hands.
The mechanics are the ones that really get the short end of the stick. But they don't have expensive schooling.
You don't know what the hell you're talking about. Autopilots don't just "do everything", they don't make decisions or navigate themselves. The pilots input the desired course, the pilots monitor and arm/disarm the autopilot, the pilots make all of the decisions. Autopilots are not do-all AIs; they're more like a glorified cruise control.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
that on this site we have so many people who believe Michael Moore?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I am an ex-IT engineer turned airline pilot (currently flying Airbus A320) so will bite and explain some items...
1. there are loudspeakers in the cockpit, usually the volume is at mid-level, but you choose the volume you want
2. it takes about 10m to fly 80 miles, so 110miles of course would mean they were engaged in the discussion for some 25m (10m from Top of Descent plus the 110m after destination)
3. You normally keep an ear out for someone calling you in the radio, but sometimes you just might miss it. I concede that 30m without listening to air traffic control is too much...
4. Their timing was all wrong... Near top of descent turning on their laptops?? Come on...... It's one of the only 2 situations were you really must have full attention, Takeoff until Top of Climb and from Top of Descent to Landing....
5. There is an automatic system called TCAS (Traffic Collision and Avoiding System) that would warn them if there was any chance of colliding with another aircraft. This system is mandatory (at least in Europe) and is why those 2 aircraft over Brazil collided some years ago.
6. In what regards to fuel, you take fuel to fly to destination + fuel to fly from destination to alternate landing + 30m holding at alternate + whatever your airline policy sees fit + whatever captain decision sees fit. They probably landed short on fuel to fly to destination, but there are procedures in place for this.
7. Normally there are allways 2 radion frequencies in use, the area you are in and the emergency frequency. Also, some airplanes have HF frequencies and can be called over HF. This will sound a buzzer in the cockpit and is quite loud.I doubt ATC called them over HF....
8. Autopilot was obviously on, but it doesn't beep when reaching Top of Descent...
9. Firing them is a bit excessive, but some sort of disciplinary action should be taken. Do not forget that training a pilot costs above 100kUSD, so it is not immediate to find a replacement. Also it is easy to just appoint blame, but keep in mind that aviation is not like your regular day job. There is no excuse for what happened here but the mentality of "you erred, you're fired" will cause problems in the future.....
B
Jesus Christ, I hate those christians!!
What you need to get is that to make Senior Captain, you need seniority. Not skill, experience, recommendations, or flight time. 100% seniority. And if you ever are laid off and change airlines, you start over at the bottom of the paygrade. So yes, some old guys make a shit-ton of money, but it's next to impossible to break into the industry, military or not, because everyone else (cargo pilots, regional airline pilots, corporate pilots) are paid very little considering the debt, demands of the schedule, and impossibility of finding a second job if you ever fail a checkride.
"It'll come up any minute now..."
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I am surprised that anyone is able to keep their job. Where an honest mistake where no one was harmed causes someone to loose their career. I would feel more comfortable riding in a plain from a pilot who has a relatively good record and made a mistake and got severely corrected As they know the severity of their mistake, and are extra careful not to make an other one. Vs. a Pilot who has a good records but has gone too comfortable with their job, and will be likely to make their first mistake.
It reminds me when I first started working. I was cleaning out my old backup files. so I meant to do a rm -f *~ but me being green and not so careful I did an rm -f * ~
I Hit Ctrl-C after I realized it was taking way to long. However, I cleared out about 2 weeks of work. Plus my personal documents. Needless to say I learned to backup more freaklently and the value of a good source control system. But If I were to get fired after that mistake and forced to switch careers then I wouldn't be able to apply my new learned methods.
That is why I cringe whenever there is a big mistake and people go well I hope that guy gets fired. Because the guy who did the mistake and especially if he was honest about it, would probably be so much more careful the nest time around. Who I would be more worried about is the guy who fired him. As part of the mistake is on him too. For not making sure they are safe guard in place.
I have had the same kind of experience at work. Except I *WAS* fired for it. Kind of sucks when you are designing a $20000 dollar circuit board in your first month and you put the PGA socket lands in backwards. Needless to say, I didn't make that mistake again. It also made it kinda hard to get a new job...
---
Here
The first time I encountered that damned ribbon menu it took me a long time to get anything done, too.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
In my eyes, this is a good time to start discussing taking the human factor out of flying?
Sure, and just have planes crash when the computer can't handle a situation - eg flight 1549.
Fully automated flying is a _BAD IDEA_ for passenger jets. Yes an autopilot helps with the tedium of long distance level flight. However you need the pilots there for the emergency scenario. And AFAIK, pilots still take off and land manually.
The French have tried to build sophisticated computer software to automate as much as the flying as possible in their Airbus planes, and these systems work well most of the time. However when they fail, they usually fail catastrophically. Would you like to die just because the computer encountered a problem it wasn't smart enough to work through? I always want a guy up there who's able to hit the "OFF" switch, and take over. Even if it doesn't work, at least it's an extra back up system and was worth a shot.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
9. Firing them is a bit excessive, but some sort of disciplinary action should be taken.
The article says they ignored air traffic control for 90 minutes. I am not a pilot, but it seems that would fall under the category of egregious disregard for their responsibilities.
What are the possible safety consequences of ignoring ATC and other radio communication for that long? Does the ATC pass any safety related information to the cockpit crew?
Perhaps they should not be fired, but I would certainly not expect them to fly a commercial passenger flight again.
HAH! "for a job that technology has made almost fully automated... the larger the plane, the more they earn - even though it takes little more skill to pilot a jumbo jet."
$200K for the decades of training and experience to know what to do when one of the world's more complicated machines breaks, a mile in the air, with 200 souls on board. "Overpaid"? What a jackass.
Oh, sky waitress! I need another drink...
That is also true, but let me explain something about aviation,
The system in place today relies on pilots/atc controllers reporting everything that happens that could cause an incident or accident (look up the definitions on google). A lot of the procedures in place today exist because there is the perception that you can report errors/distractions/whatever and that report will be used in order to improve the system so that that particular distraction/error/whatever will not occur again, and not that the report will be used to penalize you.
If you start penalizing and firing people for erring (and believe me, pilots do err, but a most of the times the redundancies of the systems in place prevent that error from becoming an incident/accident, and by redundancies I also mean the other pilot, not just automatic systems) then those reports will not occur and you will loose a very valuable way of knowing what happens in a flight.
These voluntary reports are what make aviation so safe these days...
B
Jesus Christ, I hate those christians!!
Nearly everything that ATC says is safety related. There is no chit-chat. ATC gives heading and altitude assignments. You need to go where they tell you to go because you are not the only plane in the sky.
Also, ATC will vector you around severe weather. One reason why these pilots were not paying attention is likely because there was no severe weather near their flight path. They would not be expecting any vectors for weather. They would only be expecting vectors for the descent and approach.
It's never a good idea to tune out ATC, either electronically or mentally, a pilot needs to be aware of what's going on in the area. If there is traffic above, below or crossing it's a really good idea to get visual contact.
There are many possible safety consequences of ignoring ATC. When ATC doesn't know what you're doing, they can't ensure separation. They get pretty upset about that since separating traffic is what they do all day. ATC has procedures for getting everyone out of the way of a plane that is not responding. Those procedures are very disruptive to the normal flow of air traffic.
Before 9/11, an equipment failure or a brain fart was more forgivable. Now the response for ignoring ATC is pretty strong. Ignoring ATC, at any time, is a career limiting action.
Wot a load of pish. Yeah, it's a job that's fully automated - until the shit goes down and the automation suddenly cannot cope with 'out-of-the-envelope' conditions. You think a machine could have landed Sully's jet safely following a bird strike?
I'm a Network Engineer and a private pilot working toward ATP and I hear what you're saying with all 9 of your points. The pilots honestly expect us to believe that they took out their laptops and were so distracted by what they were doing that they lost track of time. No, sir. I don't buy it. This simply does not happen. Pilots are some of the most methodical and anal retentive people on the face of the planet. Taking time away from the duty of flying the aircraft (especially a large airliner with over 100 people onboard) simply doesn't happen unless the pilots are incapacitated. Yes, computers do much of the mundane work but the pilots are responsible for always triple-checking the aircraft's computers with respect to navigation, fuel state, engine performance, and a host of other factors that keep them busy. Even if one of the pilots took out his laptop for some reason (Showing off Windows 7?) the other pilot never would have done the same. As for missing the radio calls, you know as well as I do that not long after the flight is airborne, the non-PIC has trained their hearing to pick out his/her flight number from the ATC traffic like it was their mother's name. No sir, they were asleep. We all know the problems commercial pilots face. Long hours, little pay, waking up at 3:30am to open Starbucks and then jumping into the cockpit of an RJ at 9am. Pilot fatigue is reaching a critical stage and I believe this is just the beginning of events like this. Granted, both pilots falling asleep is going to be rare, but having at least one pilot taking a power nap in the cockpit is fairly common.
The HF buzzer you refer to is presumably Selcal, which assumes they were tuned to company frequency on one radio. I thought the A320 generated a MCDU message to check flight plan when the aircraft deviated from its route, though IIRC the message and attention getting light are purely visual, and under the circumstances gentle visual reminders weren't going to do much.
They didn't do their job, instead preferring to do what flight crew do 90% of their time - discuss rotas and pay and try and work out if they could squeeze another allowance. Firing them isn't excessive at all. You mentioned TCAS - how quickly do you think these two could have reacted to a TCAS RA, when they have already ignored radio traffic, the MCDU warning prompt and had no positional awareness at all.
In a broader context, perhaps this is a sign of a deeper malaise. Airbus aircraft (with Boeing not far behind) are increasingly automated, with the flight crew purely monitoring for much of their time. Monitoring is boring, and maybe that's the real reason this happened.
I am an ex-IT engineer turned airline pilot (currently flying Airbus A320)
Dude, did you learn nothing from this story? Don't post to slashdot when you're flying!It'll get you in trouble! ;-)
You can't take the sky from me...
Mod parent up, please.
this is a great point to drive home: that the pilots had lost SA and positive control of the aircraft. had an emergency situation presented itself they would have been behind the aircraft, and that is not a good place to be. SA (situational awareness) is one of the key factors in aviation that differentiates the "that was a close one" moments and the "NTSB re-assembles my aircraft" moments.....
I totally agree...I think it's terrible that many airline pilots are only making low/mid 5 digits a year. Seriously. The training isn't cheap or short and the hours aren't humane.
I see that real estate agents are on the list; I have one in my family, and while it doesn't require a great deal of training, any agent that is making a lot is going to be on call and working literally any time they are awake or can be awakened by the incessant ringing of their cell phone. Rich douchebags may call on a Saturday morning and want a viewing/purchase arranged NOW NOW NOW, and then they will keep bothering you with stupid shit after they have bought/rented the property, and you may have to act as the ref. between renter and landlord. Also the whole field seems to be thoroughly BS-ified with non-compete agreements, union-like organizations, etc, and of course since it attracts those who worship the little green god, there are many backstabbing lowlifes working in the field. It's not a job I'm jealous of in any way. I always say, money can't buy time.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Let's see how you see this after 10 Years of commercial flying. My Brother is captain on an A320 for many years now. The problem is boredom. Most of those pilots are over-achiever until they have the job they want. And from then on, they have too much time while doing their jobs. Most of them start doing their office work in the cockpit, play games, watch movies, etc.
I don't want to say that the "computer thing" wasn't a silly excuse for something else, but think about it, most of them are so bored by their job that they start doing stupid things after some years (especially when they also have a lot of routine on the routes they fly every day).
Cheers,
-S
I agree with your points about the problems with automation - I avoid driving much with cruise control for the same reason - having to micro-manage my speed helps keep me alert. Sure, I could pay more attention to other things without having to do it, but in reality I'd pay less attention.
I'm not sure that firing pilots who fall asleep is going to help either.
I liked something I saw for airport security screeners - who face similar problems (they screen thousands of packages and 99.99999% of the time there is nothing to see). It was an x-ray machine that would add in images of contraband for the operator to spot - if an operator didn't hit a button when one was spotted then it would alert a supervisor. It gave the operator something to actually do, and thus it kept them alert.
Maybe the plane needs to trigger a random simulated failure (caution light or whatever) that requires a button to be hit to clear the condition (FMS would avoid triggering it at critical moments, and the operator would have plenty of time to deal with other stuff first). Or, maybe the cockpit should have officially-sanctioned ways to do things like check email/etc which will do things like pop up occasional messages to do a visual scan and which will blank the screen the instant an alert of some kind occurs. Or, maybe there is some task the crew could perform that is more mentally stimulating than staring out the window at blue sky.
The human brain is a machine - a complex one, but a machine nonetheless. It has certain limitations. In particular, it gets bored if you don't give it something to do. This is biology, and simply telling pilots not to be bored doesn't fix the problem. Likewise, the human brain requires sleep, and if people are overworked they won't get enough of that.
He was modded down because hes exploiting the threading system for Karma whoring. If he was working on a PGA socket and a pair of F-16s flew around him while he was making his mistake, perhaps his reply would make more sense.
-The world would be a better place if everyone had a hoverboard