http://www.usatoday.com/travel/fligh...5-pilots_N.htm

Since most Flyertalk activists are airline consumers, I'm interested to see where people come down on this. Is there any room for judgment by the flight crew? Yeh, I know that plane passed up its destination. Yeh, I know that conversation was part of the reason for the Colgan crash.

But I'm still wondering how "sterile" a cockpit can really be. I work in a situation where our actions can sometimes be critical. But so far I've never seen any evidence that the mistakes we do make are caused by the conversation that goes on. In fact, I'd say failure to communicate in a clear and timely way is more often the real cause.

Professionalism is a good word for the defect that causes malperformance. That is, self-management to snap into the work role at any instant. What that means to me is that part of your brain is always situation-aware, and the professional can shove distractions aside at a split second. To me, this is nearly the opposite of sterile cockpit. People who must attempt to focus on the prime task incessantly are people I'd hesitate to entrust with something important. They have no inner control or flexible response. They aren't even equivalent to robots.

I do want professionalism. But I am not at all convinced that a sterile cockpit is going to patch over the severe deficiences involved in some of these incidents. The Colgan captain made a disastrously wrong response to a stall situation. Why the lack of cockpit sterility is blamed for that escapes my comprehension.

My problem is that I have overseen a lot of people that are working night shifts monitoring boring equipment. To me, that isn't much different from an aircrew flying across an ocean. When I oversee these people I encourage them to watch TV or do something like that.

Now, I'm able to do that because I always design systems to notify the teams of a problem and I would prefer that they be awake to receive that notification and I see that as more likely if they are watching a movie.

Could that be extended to the cockpit? I would think so, but experience has shown us otherwise.

First of all, there was no "stall situation" before the response. The NTSB report is very clear that it was the response to the stickshaker that causes the stall: there was no stall before the captain's input.

However, I don't believe the lack of cockpit sterility was blamed for the inappropriate response to the stickshaker. I believe (and agree!) that the lack of cockpit sterility was blamed for the lack of care given to airspeed that caused the stickshaker in the first place.

The issue seems to be with behavior while below 10,000 feet, not during cruise. The time below 10,000 feet is short enough, and I presume busy enough, that I don't think it is a huge imposition to require strict procedures, nor do I think there is a big boredom risk. Maybe it should be 8,000 feet, or 12,000 feet, but I think the general idea is decent.

If FAA imposed these strict procedures during cruise, then I would be worried about boredom/inattention during long flights. But that doesn't seem to be the issue.

That brings up a related topic. Was the plane on autopilot. I think autopilot is what encourages departures from "sterile cockpit" but you can't really take it away because so many things are kept finely tuned by the flight computer. Again, just exactly like my IT environment. Yet somehow, despite a LOT of talk unrelated to work, we do notice all kinds of errors in time. So I'm really baffled why chat in the cockpit is so bad a thing. I envision people keeping a pretty good eye on the instruments while making jokes or talking family or whatever. Now, we don't have ANYTHING like a stickshaker. That really qualifies as a 2 by 4 to the side of the head. But surely the airspeed, if its that serious, must be easy to check on a pretty regular basis. Yeh, I know the flight computer is supposed to keep it right, but it's a computer!!!. Haven't they heard "to err is human, to really screw t hings up takes a computer"? Everything is a computer where I work, so I guess we have a more realistic view of the perfection that can be expected of computers.

Yes, until it was disconnected when the stickshaker activated.

It's more than that. There are numerous reasons why almost all airline procedure is to use the autopilot as much as possible.

Of course it is. And indeed, the display was indicating that it was getting close to a "warning low" airspeed, but the crew either didn't notice or didn't react.

Not in the mode it was in on that aircraft. See the NTSB report for more details.

Why is it unreasonable to expect professionals to pay strict attention to their duties at critical times? You are talking about the first and last 15 minutes of a flight - what could be so important that you can't put it aside until cruise or you are parked at the gate?

The Comair crash in LEX is another incident where sterile cockpit rules were violated (among other factors) resulting in 47 deaths.

Maybe a joke is inappropriate, but years ago I was telling people we SHOULD have signals we're unable to ignore. I imagined it as small electric shocks when certain commands were typed in. A mild irritationlike that would have been welcome by people who were about to make a costly and embarrasing mistake. The reprimands they got were far more painful. I wonder if the captain's seat could be wired to zap him with a milivolt, just a tickle, when airspeed was 5 or 10 percent above the danger level. Or that the autopilot shutdown had a klaxon like General Quarters on a warship.

Just sort of fantasizing.

And then an appropriate response should be the ONLY way to silence the warning noise!