CRM in cockpit chats during cruise!

[Non Zero]

Nowadays ...lots of talking during cruise ... and the future will be wifi cockpit with toys like ipad (or similar devices) ...
... what's will happened in the cockpit when you can chat with your family (relatives) via skype or similar social networks?

[+TSRA]

Hopefully the day will never come where "skyping" from the cockpit is permitted by either operators or regulators.

Of course the technology is there to do it but as we've seen countless times with just laptops and PDF Files, the situational awareness of the crew can go out the window and you end up over Atlanta or Minneapolis at cruise altitude when you should be landing.

As Flight Crew we must be disciplined enough to resist the temptation to divert our attention away from the task at hand - which I agree is easier said than done when sitting at altitude on autopilot for hours on hand when nothing changes but distance to go and fuel on board.

There are still numerous jobs out in the real world where employees are not permitted to bring their cellphone or other devices into the working environment. In some cases this is to improve production of the employee; in other cases it is to ensure there are no distractions. Surgeons are the prime example and while I am certainly not comparing pilots to surgeons, the attention to detail and risk management is strikingly similar between the two professions.

I would like to see the risk assessment that an operator used to determine that the risk was acceptable for flight crew to divulge in talking with family or playing games on a tablet at altitude. I would hazard a guess to say that that same operator would also be lax in other areas, such as adherence to SOP or AFM Limitations.

[Bob Lenahan]

Interesting response. I have no opinion concernng the original question- never thought about it. But, played many a game of chess at cruise. Never saw a problem.
Bob.

[IGh]

"... played many a game ... at cruise. Never saw a problem."

There are several previous threads discussing the pilot's burden, professional standards, & pilot ethics -- earlier threads captured over 100+ responses, eg:

http://www.pprune.org/safety-crm-qa-emergency-response-planning/424174-poor-airmanship-pilots-reading-non-relevent-material-cockpit-during-flight.html

[Bob Lenahan]

???
What? Do you spend several hours reviewing the same wx repeatedly? Like it really changes much. You know what the wx is and what it may do. How many times do you have to figure landing weight? Or do you spend your time studying the AIM when you should know it in the first place. NZ askd a question, TSRA responded to it, and I to his. You don't have to play chess, some peopledon't know how. Chinese checkers?
???
Bob.

[Piltdown Man]

There are several previous threads discussing the pilot's burden, professional standards, & pilot ethics -- earlier threads captured over 100+ responses

...and some of them were readable and contained a lot of common sense. But there were some posts, especially those which were badly formatted, which appeared to be written by people who would have trouble walking and breathing at the same time. Unfortunately, there are a few pilots who are too serious all of the time. Given normal operations, a fully serviceable aircraft and appropriate weather I can see nothing wrong with looking at some pictures, reading or even playing a game. The reason it is a good idea (in professional aviation terms) is that it keeps your arousal level a little higher than it otherwise would be and therefore more able to deal with any unforeseen eventualities. I also fully appreciate that for a minority of pilots it takes all of their mental ability to keep their aircraft airborne, even with an autopilot engaged. But on the whole, I think most pilots have enough spare capacity in the cruise to do something else, even to learn a new game.

Regarding Risk Assessments: I think you'll find that the 'cruise' phase of flight is the one that generates the least amount of ASRs, MORs and incidents and by a significant margin (at least one order of magnitude, maybe two).

PM

[Non Zero]

As Flight Crew we must be disciplined enough to resist the temptation to divert our attention away from the task at hand

... but pilots are allowed to sleep ... :O