Yesterday, while a Jetstar plane was about to land, its landing was abruptly aborted due to the pilot of the texting during the landing process. According to Ubergizmo, the landing was canceled 150 meters due to incident.
Between approximately 2000-2500 feet from the surface, the captain was notified of text messages on his phone by hearing his phone’s incoming text message tones. The copilot of the flight advised the captain not to concentrate on his phone during the descent; however, the copilots advice was ignored and the captain put his attention on the phone. The pilot told the copilot that he was going to turn his phone off, but continued to focus his attention on the phone rather than the landing procedures. With this in mind, the copilot noticed that at 1,000 feet, the landing gear had not been lowered and also noticed that neither pilot had been through the landing check list (which is different for each plane).
At 500 feet, with the plane being so close to the ground, along with the landing procedures not thoroughly checked and prepared, the landing in Singapore for the Australian airliner was aborted. Since this incident occured, Jetstar has put in place in-flight notifications for the pilots to turn their mobile devices to the off position.
The tweet below pretty much sums up the moral of the story:
I can’t text while driving, or use cell phone at all on plane, but JetStar pilots abort a landing while busy texting? http://t.co/njyMgrI0
