NTSB: Pilot’s texting contributed to copter crash
Texting by the pilot of a medical helicopter contributed to a crash that killed four people, federal accident investigators declared Tuesday, and they approved a safety alert cautioning all pilots against using cellphones or other distracting devices during critical operations.
It was the first fatal commercial aircraft accident investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board in which texting has been implicated. And it underscored the board’s worries that distractions from electronic devices are a growing factor in incidents across all modes of transportation — planes, trains, cars, trucks and even ships.
The five-member board unanimously agreed that the helicopter crash was caused by a distracted and tired pilot who skipped preflight safety checks, which would have revealed his helicopter was low on fuel, and then, after he discovered his situation, decided to proceed with the fatal last leg of the flight.
The case “juxtaposes old issues of pilot decision making with a 21st century twist: distractions from portable electronic devices,” said board Chairman Deborah Hersman.
The helicopter ran out of fuel, crashing into a farm field in clear weather early on the evening of Aug. 26, 2011, near Mosby, Mo., a little over a mile short of an airport. The pilot was killed, along with a patient being taken from one hospital to another, a flight nurse and a flight paramedic.
The pilot, James Freudenberg, 34, of Rapid City, S.D., sent 25 text messages and received 60 more during the course of his 12-hour shift, including 20 messages exchanged during the hour and 41 minutes before the crash, according to investigators and a timeline prepared for the board.
Most of the messaging was with an off-duty female co-worker with whom Freudenberg had a long history of “frequent, intensive communications,” and with whom he was planning to have dinner that night, said Bill Bramble, an NTSB expert on pilot psychology.
Three of the messages were sent, and five were received while the helicopter was in flight, although none in the final 11 minutes before it crashed, according to the NTSB timeline.
The board concluded Freudenberg was fatigued as well as distracted. He had slept only five hours the night before, and the accident occurred at the end of his 12-hour shift.
He was told when he came on duty that the helicopter was low on fuel. But later in the day he missed several opportunities to correct the fuel situation before he took off for a hospital in Bethany, Mo., the first leg of the trip. Among those missed opportunities were failing to conduct a pre-flight check and to look at the craft’s fuel gauge.
Although the pilot wasn’t texting at the time of the crash, it’s possible the messaging took his mind off his duties and caused him to skip safety steps he might have otherwise performed, said experts on human performance and cognitive distraction. People can’t concentrate on two things at once; they can only shift their attention rapidly back and forth, the experts said. But as they do that, the sharpness of their focus begins to erode.
“People just have a limited ability to pay attention,” said David Strayer, a professor of cognitive and neural science at the University of Utah. “It’s one of the characteristics of how we are wired.”
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