Pilot In Deadly Crash Repeatedly Took Selfies Leading Up To The Fatal Accident
In an age of digital distractions, the lethal risks of driving — or just crossing the street — while looking at a cellphone have been well-documented. Now comes a new peril from mixing transportation and obsession with devices: a fatal airplane crash most likely caused by selfies, reported the New York Times.
Cover image via The Guardian
A 29-year-old pilot who died when he crashed his small aircraft near Denver, Colorado, in May 2014, was distracted because he was taking selfies in the cockpit, likely contributing to the fatal accident, US investigators concluded on Tuesday, 3 January
US government investigators found no sign that anything was wrong with the plane, which plunged into the ground, killing the pilot and his passenger shortly after midnight on 31 May 2014
The wreckage of a crashed Cessna 150 aircraft lies in a field near Watkins, Colorado on 31 May 2014. The pilot had been taking selfie pictures with a cellphone shortly beforehand.
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The pilot, Amritpal Singh, had used a GoPro camera to record few short flights he made with different passengers onboard his two-seat Cessna 150. While he did not record the fatal trip on 31 May, he did record a 6-minute jaunt shortly before it, NYT reports.
"Distractions from personal devices are in all modes of transportation, we're seeing that more and more. But the selfies in an airplane, that's something new for us," said a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board. It's the first time the safety board has blamed a plane crash on the pilot taking photos.
However, this isn't a stray case. In 2009, the pilots of a Northwest Airlines flight from San Diego to Minneapolis were so busy using their personal laptops to figure out their work schedules, notes NYT, that they overshot their destination by more than 161 km.
In 2014, the Federal Aviation Administration banned the use of personal electronic gadgets in plane cockpits, but some pilots have not given up the habit of posting on Instagram scenic photos they took 7 miles aloft. The ban does not apply to private pilots.
The ban does not apply to private pilots, who often use tablet computers, and even phones, running software for navigation, weather forecasts and flight planning, reported the New York Times.
An airplane is most vulnerable during the kind of low-altitude, low-speed maneuvering pilot Amritpal Singh was doing. After the "selfie accident", many pilots in the US said they would never take a selfie in that time, when absolute attention is needed.
Meanwhile, cockpit photography is increasingly popular among pilots. Quartz recently did an investigation into commercial airline pilots, who are prohibited from using their phones while flying, who became famous on Instagram for posting photos of the skies.
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One airline pilot featured in Quartz's story posted a photo of himself to Instagram with the caption, "About to land this plane but first, #lmtas," shorthand for "let me take a selfie"
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In its in-depth report, Quartz monitored hundreds of Instagram accounts over 6 months and posted a collection of photographs and videos taken by pilots in the cockpit midflight. Many of which captured during critical phases of flight, like takeoff and landing.
This is your captain being vain: Pilots for airlines large and small, flying planes of all sizes, seem to be violating the safety rules, taking photos with their phones as well as GoPro cameras mounted inside the cockpit.
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Pilots are prohibited from using most personal electronic devices, even at cruising altitude when the plane is on auto-pilot, to ensure they stay focused on flight duties, but this pilot appears to have everything under control.
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