Poor Airmanship? Pilots reading non-relevent material in the cockpit during flight.

[PGA]

In my previous company there was an SOP stating that we weren't allowed to read any non flight-related items, sicne it was shorthaul and the aircraft wasn't equipped with autothrust it made sense.

I currently fly the 320, shorthaul, and I bring newspapers and books to work. I get very very bored on 3 hour + sectors, and even though it does distract you, personally feel it keeps me aroused.

Remember the curve? A lot of arousal decreases your performance, but so does under-arousol. It is well known that people can't stare at a videoscreen and keep paying attention for a prolonged period of time, which is in essence what we do.

Since everybody reacts differently to books / newspapers, and not every book is the same, I think you can't differentiate between what people read. As long as the job gets done, I think it's only a good thing to try and stay awake somehow. Personally I always scan the flightdeck every other minute to see if there are any changes / if we're approaching an FIR boundry etc etc and I don't think reading something is displaying bad airmanship, if you do it on approach it would be, but there is a time and a place.

All incidents and occurences I read about at work haven't been caused because people were reading, they have been caused due to mode confusion / loss of awareness / lack of understanding, the list is endless. When somebody can point me to an incident or accident where reading was cited as the main factor then please point this out to me.