Pilot's Selfies Could Have Caused Deadly Air Crash

alphadogg writes: A deadly air crash that killed a pilot and passenger in Colorado last year was likely due to a loss of spatial awareness brought on in part by taking of selfies while in flight, the National Transportation Safety Board has concluded. An examination of the aircraft revealed no apparent problems that would have caused the accident so, based on the previous patterns of behavior, the NTSB concluded that "it is likely that cell phone use during the accident flight distracted the pilot and contributed to the development of spatial disorientation and subsequent loss of control."

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Re:bad title

[AK Marc]

How did the selfie result in an accident? What can be done to prevent that *kind of* judgement lapse from causing an accident in the future? Blaming the pilot will not answer these questions.

The issue is that we aren't reading the NTSB report, but a 3rd (or worse) hand report of a report. I've seen someone else say that the passengers taking selfies, not the pilot, could have given night blindness sufficient to cause spacial disorientation. The pilot could have done nothing wrong, other than to not disallow the passenger's flash.