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Avoiding Deadly Distractions

Gemini Sparkle

Key Takeaways:

  • The article illustrates dangerous instances of pilots being distracted by texting during critical flight phases, such as taxiing, leading to safety compromises and public backlash.
  • Distractions from personal electronic devices (PEDs) have led to fatal accidents, including an EMS helicopter crash where the pilot's texting prevented him from recognizing a critical low fuel situation.
  • Pilots are urged to treat all phases with the engine running, especially taxiing, as safety-critical, requiring full cognitive attention and prohibiting non-essential PED use to prevent distractions.
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A pilot recently posted a video on YouTube and suggested his fellow aviators have a look. He was showing off his new GoPro camera setup in a Cessna 172. As the video starts, the first thing the viewer sees is the pilot taxiing toward the departure runway while simultaneously texting on his smartphone. The airplane veers off the yellow line for a few seconds before the pilot realizes and swerves back to the center.

He took an online beating for that move, and it wasn’t long before he pulled the video down and deleted his original posts asking pilots to check it out. Apparently this guy thought there was nothing wrong or unsafe about texting on a phone while operating an aircraft, otherwise he never would have uploaded the video in the first place.

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