Duke990

How many times have you seen your coworker texting during pushback, taxi, or flight? It's not worth it guys. Keep your head in the game.

Texting While Flying Linked to Commercial Crash in First - Bloomberg

USMCFLYR

Sounds like from the article that he knew he had minimum fuel when he took and then ended up running out of gas. I'll be curious to see how they tie in the texting during the previous flight, and the mishap flight, to the running out of gas part; other than to show a lack of regard to the company's rules against using cell phones during flights.

wrxpilot

Agreed. I've seen it, it's completely unacceptable IMO.

UnderOveur

Just a guess here...

His texting was a(n additional) distraction from how serious his fuel state was, contributing to over-all complacency?

I can't speak to the accuracy of his helicopter's fuel gauge...I only know that in the dinky stuff I fly the only accurate reading you can truly rely on is "0" (zero), which is why a visual inspection of fuel quantity is required prior to every flight, regardless of what the needles say.

Fwiw.

USMCFLYR

Possibility.
It seems that might be very hard to prove though.
When I did safety investigations, we had to be able to say (before calling something causal) that in the absence of the specific event the mishap would not have happened.
I could see a scenario where the pilot was distracted by texting and did not adequately montior fueling for example and the wrong amount was put in (or the wrong kind of fuel) and the distraction was causal.
I could see another scenario where the pilot was distracted by personal electronic device useage and flew right past low fuel warnings and ran himself out of gas.
BUT - as could be the case with even texting while driving - just because he had texted during the flight didn't necessarily result in his running out of gas. It could have just been another violation of company policy and not have any direct correlation to fuel mismanagement.

rickair7777

Texting while flying is a bad idea and I don't let my FO's do it, if for no other reason than it leaves a digital paper trail that will be blown totally out of proportion.

But I don't think the guy ran out of gas because he was texting, I think he was just lacking in all-around professionalism, or just got very complacent. He knew he was short on gas, and left anyway.

But if we're going to have a federal law for texting while flying, how about we get one for texting while driving too? If you get pulled over for anything they could pull your last 30 days of cell phone records, match all your texts to when you were known to be driving, and revoke your drivers license.

block30

I'm concerned as to how far will this go? No cell phones while at the gate? No cell phones while you are waiting twenty minutes on some remote pad for your flow time? We're allowed to call maintenance while we trouble shoot a problem after push back?

I'm not saying I need to text or call my friends, family, or wife. However, the ability to call dispatch, look at the radar mosaic, etc is very useful!

Sata 4000 RP

This is going too far IMO. If they were to do this, why not pull everyone who gets pulled over for something credit card statements for the last 30 days and figure out how many times they had drinks while out to dinner so they could hang em with a DUI or two?

USMCFLYR

Ridiculous.
I might have been sitting in the grocery store parking lot asking my parents what they wanted me to pick up for Thanksgiving dinner.

Lab Rat

Are you telling us that your airline's SOP's allow you to text while flying and it is only at the captain's discretion as to whether to allow it or not??