Archie wrote:
Sterile cockpit principle is a great tool to manage distractions
On two occasions I have felt really distracted by a passenger. On one occasion that I was taken by surprise by a sudden heading change initiated by the autopilot, and on the other I suddenly discovered that the CHTs were too high. On both occasions the distraction was another pilot on board, in one of the two occasions it was an instructor.
When you start on the SID, as a pilot you should not engage in conversations not pertaining to the conduct of the aircradt or other distractions.
Aviathor wrote:
On both occasions the distraction was another pilot on board, in one of the two occasions it was an instructor.
Agreed. I think you could go as far as saying it’s a cardinal sin to distract the Pilot Flying, if you are, as a pilot, the passenger. It shows an absolute lack of understanding of human factors and as such disrespect for the Pilot Flying.
Unless of course it’s part of an instructional scenario!!!
Actually what do those buttons do? I reckon they’ll make the pilot not hear anything said by pax – but will the pilot still hear the co-pilot? Will pax still hear COM i.e. ATC? Can the co-pilot talk to ATC?
You can choose. You can isolate just the girls in the back seat 
, or you can isolate everybody. At all times you can talk to ATC.
Pfffiieew! Imagine the luxury of having girls in the back at all! Myself (or rather, my humble craft) restricted to 10 kgs of luggage back there…
I always brief the pax. before take off about the aircraft and the flight, emergency procedures etc. I tell them what to expect, what to expect and what I expect from them. One of the things that I say is that I request silence during take off and landing, unless they see another aircraft heading towards us or that in their opinion might be a threat to our safety. Usually it works.
I learnt another lesson the other day, about distractions due to passenger interaction…
Did a day trip with a trainee ATCO. He was smart and knew lots about “the system” so it was valuable for him.
First mistake: talking through an RNP approach while flying it. On the handover approach → tower I forgot to switch to tower, so no landing clearance… Tower blind called me a few times, then called approach (a remote unit, not on the airfield) to pass me the landing clearance, so I landed and switched to tower afterwards. Felt like a complete numpty… Never done that before in 22 years. I would have probably gone around, but still…
Second mistake: departing, forgot to retract gear. Hmmm, climb is a bit slow today… Another complete numpty moment. I have done that before, probably a few times, and always after pretty extreme stress like (2004) departing from LSPV, having spent an hour faxing the Customs PN to Zurich with a laptop, winfax, nokia 6210i, with the phone barely getting a signal, then repeating to file the FP, after calling LIPV and getting no reply, a replan to avoid LIPV (and the rest of Italy) and going LSPV → LGKR, then discovering LSPV has avgas after all (Jepp docs said NO) but nobody able to start the dodgy pump, then having to climb out in a tight orbit all the way, potentially, to FL120 (CAS all around, Zurich refusing any entry), discovering ~FL100 the gear was still down
Since bad things go in threes, I wondered what the 3rd will be, but it didn’t happen Well, I almost forgot to go to Flap 2 for landing…
My two CAS busts in recent years were wholly due to talking to a passenger, too, and because they were just less than 2 years apart, I got sent for the Gasco punishment course
I think talking to somebody drains off a certain amount of brainpower. Also maybe if you have been flying a long time, you do a lot of stuff “automatically” and this process is vulnerable to distractions. And one has to fly regularly; I normally fly every week but the above flight was after 2 weeks.
Peter wrote:
I think talking to somebody drains off a certain amount of brainpower. Also maybe if you have been flying a long time, you do a lot of stuff “automatically” and this process is vulnerable to distractions.
I think that the second part is probably the bigger influence. Stuff you do every time happens as part of a process or flow. If you actually have to explain it to someone else then you are using a different part of your brain, and the flow isn’t habit. As a result you make mistakes. It’s just how our minds work.
Last weekend I few a new type. It’s a much more basic type than the Arrow that I’m used to.
When I started to do my downwind checks it came as a bit of a jolt, that the first four items were no longer relevant as the aircraft wasn’t fitted with these systems. It had me quickly question myself and then I struggled to remember the rest of the downwind checks. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t remember the next check. I had to start all over again at the start of the downwind checks, and only then could I move on to the fifth item.
Thinking about something more than usual, breaks the normal flow. Explaining what you’re doing to a passenger can easily cause to you over think and question what you are doing and break that flow.
Peter wrote:
I learnt another lesson the other day, about distractions due to passenger interaction
For a while, I made my children believe that the Cirrus CAPS handle was a seat ejector in case they talked to me during take-off and landing.
It doesn’t work anymore. The trick, I mean.
Haha Better not tell your ex wife 
The problem is that for a lot of stuff one has to use “memory items” e.g. the gear retract is deffo a memory item. Most non-emergency airborne tasks are memory items.
The last non memory item pre-flight is checking that you got the takeoff clearance (which is crucial, although almost nobody actually writes it down, and that is a big gotcha, especially at an airport which is sometimes A/G or AFIS and at other times ATC, and it is very vulnerable to a distraction at the moment of lining-up).
The first non memory item post-flight is the post landing check (flaps up, etc). But then you have loads of time. And apart from driving around the airport with full flaps and looking silly, there is no danger.
Distraction with memory items is probably the hardest.
This is also applicable.
