§ 121.542 Flight crewmember duties.
(a) No certificate holder shall require, nor may any flight crewmember perform, any duties during a critical phase of flight except those duties required for the safe operation of the aircraft. Duties such as company required calls made for such nonsafety related purposes as ordering galley supplies and confirming passenger connections, announcements made to passengers promoting the air carrier or pointing out sights of interest, and filling out company payroll and related records are not required for the safe operation of the aircraft.
(b) No flight crewmember may engage in, nor may any pilot in command permit, any activity during a critical phase of flight which could distract any flight crewmember from the performance of his or her duties or which could interfere in any way with the proper conduct of those duties. Activities such as eating meals, engaging in nonessential conversations within the cockpit and nonessential communications between the cabin and cockpit crews, and reading publications not related to the proper conduct of the flight are not required for the safe operation of the aircraft.
(c) For the purposes of this section, critical phases of flight includes all ground operations involving taxi, takeoff and landing, and all other flight operations conducted below 10,000 feet, except cruise flight.
Note: Taxi is defined as "movement of an airplane under its own power on the surface of an airport."
Our GOM (I work with YIP) gos one step further and defines critical phases of flight as
1. All ground ops
2. During the first 1000 ft of a climb
3. flight ops below 10000ft except cruise
4. Last 1000ft of a descent
Most GOMs have something similar in them. I do not know what Comair's GOM says nor have I even read the CVR so I can not attest to what they were trained to do and if they broke the "sterile cockpit rule." Its pretty obvious that my company uses a more conservative approach by defining the critical phase of flight on the ground as "all ground ops" instead of just when the aircraft is moving under its own power. Conservative is usually a good thing when it comes to flying.
Either way from the sounds of things it was a very small contributing factor. I am still searching for the cause of the "pilot error." Just like the NTSB spokesperson said, its frustrating not be be able to point at one event here.
What's your source for this? I'm just curious, because my copy of the FAR's never mentions anything about a "start checklist" under 121.542.
The only operations on the surface defined as sterile cockpit by 121.542 is movement of the aircraft under it's own power. I'm confused about how the aircraft can be moving under it's own power if a "start checklist" is being performed.
As someone wrote earlier, if you read the transcript, there was about a sentence each after the taxi began that violated sterile cockpit as defined by 121.542. To give this amount of conversation the amount of attention it has gotten does great disservice to those affected most by the accident...the passengers, crew members, and families, because it does distracts attention from more important factors in the accident.
