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."

Comments

Natural Selection in action

[Anonymous Coward]

The good of the many outweigh the vanity of the few....

Seriously, last thing our species need is more self-aborbed behavior.

Effing sad

[Anonymous Coward]

Flying is cool in part because of the apartness and eliteness of obtaining your cert and people seeing you in the left seat at the controls, master and commander of a magical craft. There is massive ego in humble bragging flight time amongst your selfies if you are into a photo based social media.
But holy shit, camera flashing your eyes during a night flight is terrifying, it is far worse than any idiot on the ground lasing you, WTF!
Real aviation is following the checklist and rules; flying, navigating, and communicating safely, not effing around to impress your pals except in maneuvers approved for your aircraft and certification.

Re:Effing sad

[gl4ss]

if it was night time, he could have just taken the photos after landing and nobody would have known any different.

Re:Effing sad

[JaredOfEuropa]

Texting while flying, a new low (pun definitely intended)

Picture

[Anonymous Coward]

So, where is picture for Darwin awards ceremony?

Re:Picture

[houghi]

So, where is picture for Darwin awards ceremony?
http://myselfiestick.org/871

Re:Picture

[SeaFox]

Unfortunately, cell phones are not as durable as flight recorders.

Re:Picture

[Neil Boekend]

That's why the cloud sync should be instantaneous.

Priorities

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

As a pilot, I was always taught that my priorities were "aviate, navigate, communicate." As a CFI, I tried to always impart the same lesson.

Taking self-portraits somehow never made the list.

Re:Priorities

[hcs_$reboot]

Nevertheless,

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."

sounds like the NTSB was out of [relevant] options.

Re:Priorities

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

In this case the cellphones received specific attention because a video recording of the pilot and passenger using them survived the crash; but isn't some flavor of "The plane seems to have been fine except for the effects of hitting the ground really fast, the pilot must have fucked up" the standard verdict if inspection of the wreckage, and any cockpit chatter, suggest no mechanical issues and there is no notable weather in the area?

Re:Priorities

[FatLittleMonkey]

there is no way taking a picture could by itself be the cause of spatial disorientation.

At night.

With a flash.

(FTFA)

Re:Priorities

[bobbied]

I can see you don't fly much... Spatial disorientation can be caused by just turning your head to look out the side window and if you are not specifically trained to recognize it and fly the gauges instead of what your inner ears are telling you, spatial disorientation will kill you. It's called a "death spiral" for a reason and VFR pilots who wonder into IFR conditions often unknowingly kill themselves when they don't recognize the problem and fly the gauges.

I can tell you that it is REALLY HARD to tell yourself that what you feel may not be what's actually happening and when the gauges and the inner ear are in conflict it's pretty difficult to do what the gauges tell you unless you have practiced it. VFR pilots don't practice this that much because it takes "flying under the hood" which requires a safety pilot to be riding along and you have to do stuff to induce the disorientation feeling purposely. Most VFR only pilots don't take the time to do such training.

Now if you are blinded and cannot see the gauges.... You have serious problems and your best bet is to throttle up a bit and go hands off holding your head straight for about 30 seconds. Hopefully you have a well trimmed aircraft and won't crash before the fluid in your ears stops moving and you can fly again.

Innocent victims

[myid]

Unfortunately the passenger died, besides the pilot. Also the families of both people are now grieving. It's horrible to lose a loved one. I send my best wishes to the families of these two people.

He should have known better!

[geogob]

The reading of the GoPro video description is bluffing. how in the word did someone with such a behaviour and attitude made its way on a pilot seat, worse on an instructor seat.

Something is definitely wrong here. And with his experience he should have known better. From the report (emphasis is mine):

The pilot, age 29, held a commercial pilot certificate with ratings for single engine land, multi-engine land and instrument airplane. The pilot also held a ground instructor certificate. The pilot was issued an unrestricted first class medical certificate on August 29, 2013.

A review of the pilot's logbooks revealed that he had accumulated about 726 total flight hours, 38 hours in the last 30 days and 4.5 hours in the 24 hours preceding the accident flight. He had 27.1 hours in night conditions and 0.5 hours in simulated IMC in the last 60 days. He accumulated a total of 99 hours in simulated IMC and 14.7 hours in actual IMC.

That is not a huge experience, but definitely enough to know better. Using a mobile phone in flight is one thing. But using it in a critical flight phase? To take selfies?

This guy was an accident waiting to happen. I feel sad for his passenger.

Re:He should have known better!

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Something is definitely wrong here. And with his experience he should have known better.

Well . . . this shows something very insightful about "certifications" in general. They can guarantee that someone should know better . . . but a certification cannot guarantee that someone will not do something stupid.

I see a lot of folks recently who put "Certified ScrumMaster" in their email footers. What that really guarantees . . . is debatable.

Re:He should have known better!

[AK Marc]

Most motorcyclists crash 6-months to 2 years from their first ride (for ones that ride regularly). Their confidence goes up faster than their skill. That applies to almost any task. That's why Dunning-Krueger exists. He knew better and did it anyway. It's called "human factors".

Evidence for the assertion ?

[Anonymous Coward]

He took selfies before.
He crashed.
Therefore: taking selfies caused the crash ?

Or is there more evidence ?

Re:Evidence for the assertion ?

[CrimsonAvenger]

What's worse is that's not the evidence.

The evidence seems to be that his PASSENGERS took selfies before. Then he crashed. Therefore he took a selfie.

More likely, the /. headline was garbled, and what was really asserted is that his passengers were taking selfies, and he was disoriented by the flashes from the selfies taken by someone else.

Re:Evidence for the assertion ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pictures taken with a flash of the pilot just after the takeoff at low level at night just before he lost control of an otherwise mechanically sound plane isn't exactly a thin correlation. While I may not be an expert (it's been a whole month since I flew a Cessna 150), it doesn't take an expert to know that a flash in your eyes in the dark can ruin your night vision, and that low altitude in a critical phase of flight is probably a dangerous time to be flying blind. And even though it doesn't take an expert to realize this, they used many experts anyway, as the NTSB is fairly good at accident investigation, far more experienced than the random internet commenter claiming "correlation isn't causation!"

The video taken from the inside of the cockpit during the incident probably helped them come to this conclusion, too.

First sighting of the selfie gremlin?

[KaLeVR1]

I've begun to hear many TV talking heads dumping on "the selfie" lately. Anything that gets over-hyped will reach burnout. But come on guys, really? A selfie brought down the plane? Should be only a matter of hours before some politician jumps onto a soap box and calls for anti-selfie legislation. Maybe they can vilify selfies like they did vaccinations.

Remember Sarah Palin's sad story about the little girl who "came down" with autism after getting some vaccines? Well that's nothing. Take a selfie on a plane...and you'll die in an inferno of brimstone as new-fangled selfie-demons destroy your plane! This is nothing but the typical hype/anti-hype cycle but taken to a new level due to 24-hour news media. This may have influenced investigators.

Having spent time behind the wheel of a Cesna myself, I can't imagine this. This is a plane you can fly literally hands-off. It will fly straight and level. Even if you take your hands off in the middle of a turn the plane will continue that direction for a short time while starting a slow drift. A selfie couldn't cause the plane to go down unless he was fumbling with the phone to film the critical point of a risky maneuver in which case the maneuver would be the catalyst. Do we know that he was fumbling with the phone?

Re:First sighting of the selfie gremlin?

[FatLittleMonkey]

A selfie brought down the plane?

Flash photography in the cockpit at night at low altitude during touch-and-go's.

This was not a smart pilot.

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.