Originally Posted by
RAT 5
FAR 121.542 / FAR 135.100--Flight Crew Member Duties
(a) No certificate holder shall require, nor may any flight crew member perform any duties during a critical phase of flight except those duties required for the safe operation of the aircraft. Duties such as company required calls made for non-safety related purposes as ordering galley supplies and confirming passenger connections, announcements made to passengers promoting the air carrier or pointing out sights of interest and filling out company payroll and related records are not required for the safe operation of the aircraft.
(b) No flight crew member may engage in, nor may any pilot in command permit, any activity during a critical phase of flight which could distract any flight crew member from the performance of his or her duties or which could interfere in any way with the proper conduct of those duties. Activities such as eating meals, engaging in non-essential conversations within the cockpit and non-essential communications between the cabin and cockpit crews, and reading publications not related to the proper conduct of the flight are not required for the safe operation of the aircraft.
(c) For the purposes of this section, critical phase of flight involves all ground operations involving taxi, takeoff and landing, and all other flight operations conducted below 10,000 feet, except cruise flight.
Sounds all very common sense. I often fly with a major EU national carrier and am astonished at their PA procedures. They always make trip news PA's in the climb, before CRZ, and always seem to make an arrival PA just AFTER TOD. The other day we even had the captain make a 'sorry for the delay in takeoff' PA while lined up on the active RWY waiting for takeoff clearance. There was a slight delay, 1 min, for a B747 being towed across the rwy. Talk of non-essential at a critical time. It would also seem the company policy is not very well defined or stringent, but the arrival PA always being after TOD suggest an SOP. All this and the fact the cockpit PA's are in 2 sometimes 3 languages = even longer distraction.
Sure. What's wrong with making a PA in the climb? We make ours in the climb above 10,000' once transferred to Centre and cleared to final cruise level. The work is pretty much done then, and our PA is the signal for the cabin crew to call us for drinks, food, etc. Likewise with just after TOD. Once the descent is initiated there's not a lot to do. We would normally do ours prior to TOD but sometimes you get busy in which case we'd wait for a quiet period after TOD but before 10,000.