Two professional airline pilots fail to perform to the level of a student pilot on his/her first solo cross-country flight, and we have Congressmen introducing legislation to prohibit the use of laptops in the cockpit. The airline pilots violated a host of existing Federal Aviation Regulations and are unlikely to every be trusted with a plane load of passengers again. Laptops often carry flight related information and are not cause of the problem in this case.
We also have some misguided proposals to lift the protected status of cockpit voice recorders. On the surface this might seem OK, but I doubt if you’ll find many professional pilots who will endorse this proposal for a very good reason. Allowing unrestricted access to CVRs will inhibit communications between pilots. That will undo years of hard work to improve communications under the general heading of crew resource management (CRM). Decades ago, when the captain was god and first officers and flight attendants spoke only when spoken to, we experienced many accidents due to crew members not speaking up. Any proposal which would roll this effort back should be viewed with suspicion. If pilots think every word said in the cockpit will be available for second guessing by company and FAA officials, you’ll see a lot of hand signals and written notes being exchanged. Frankly, when a flock of birds appears in the path of the airplane, I’d really rather have a pilot yell “Birds!” than pass a note or try to make flapping gestures with his hands. The cockpit is not the place to play charades. Save the CVRs for their original purpose: to help unravel a mishap when the pilots are no longer able to tell their own story.
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