Originally Posted by
Chugalug2
Well it occurred to one person that we know of and, given the squillions of flight hours the design has been exposed to claimed by ShotOne, it's a pound to a penny that it's occurred to others as well.
Without wanting to reignite any previous discussions, I'd like to put up a thought for consideration:
The report describes how a visit to the flightdeck by a purser prompted the 'storage' of the camera. That to me indicates a distraction, and in such cases people's minds often revert to ingrained behaviour. If you've spent many hours on flightdecks where the controls are positioned front and centre, the area next to your seat has for many years been a safe area to quickly store whatever needs storing. The action of putting down the camera may well have been one of those automatic actions that your mind may not fully remember afterwards. Yes, as flight crew we should all be very aware of all the things that happen on our flight decks, but still, I'm sure all of us have examples like this in our experience where at least part of the decision was made by our built-in autopilot. It is very sad that it turned out the way it did, but I'm just saying that at the time, the action of that one person was not something that occurred to him as a good idea, but something that, for the automatic part of his brain, appeared as a logical and sensible thing to do. And the rational part of his brain that should have screamed was distracted by something else.
I agree too by the way: designating that area as a 'sterile area' with some sort of visual reminder would be a good idea. For many it may not appear to be necessary, but if we can prevent just one more accident like this, the lesson will have been useful.