“Recognize that conversation is a powerful distracter.” As I quoted those words from the NASA study of crew error accidents in January’s article, a flood of accident case studies flowed through my head. Some I had discussed earlier in that same article — the Teterboro controller who was engaged in a discussion on the phone and delayed communicating a new frequency to a pilot for two minutes, the two Northwest Airlines pilots who became so engrossed in their conversation about airline scheduling policy following Northwest’s acquisition by Delta that they lost all track of the time and their location and did not hear calls from ATC.
In my July 2010 article, I wrote about how the tired, inexperienced Colgan Air crew that crashed near Buffalo had an hour and a half conversation as they inched toward the runway for takeoff from Newark, New Jersey. It appears this extended period of relaxed conversation combined with their lack of sleep may have affected their professionalism later in the flight when they again lapsed into non-pertinent conversation on final approach and neglected the simple task of adding power after leveling off at a low power setting with the gear extended.
