“You can think about your brain’s attention span like a spotlight that can go wide and diffused, or tight and focused,” said David Strayer, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Utah. Our attention span is guided by our intentions. We choose, in most situations, whether to focus the spotlight or let it be relaxed. But when we allow automated systems, such as computers or autopilots, to pay attention for us, our brains dim that spotlight and allow it to swing wherever it wants. This is, in part, an effort by our brains to conserve energy. The ability to relax in this manner gives us huge advantages: It helps us subconsciously control stress levels and makes it easier to brainstorm, it means we don’t have to constantly monitor our environment, and it helps us get ready for big cognitive tasks. Our brains automatically seek out opportunities to disconnect and unwind.
“But then, bam!, some kind of emergency happens—or you get an unexpected email, or someone asks you an important question in a meeting—and suddenly the spotlight in your head has to ramp up all of a sudden and, at first, it doesn’t know where to shine,” said Strayer. “So the brain’s instinct is to force it as bright as possible on the most obvious stimuli, whatever’s right in front of you, even if that’s not the best choice. That’s when cognitive tunneling happens.”
Cognitive tunneling can cause people to become overly focused on whatever is directly in front of their eyes or become preoccupied with immediate tasks. It’s what keeps someone glued to their smartphone as the kids wail or pedestrians swerve around them on the sidewalk. It’s what causes drivers to slam on their brakes when they see a red light ahead. We can learn techniques to get better at toggling between relaxation and concentration, but they require practice and a desire to remain engaged. However, once in a cognitive tunnel, we lose our ability to direct our focus. Instead, we latch on to the easiest and most obvious stimulus, often at the cost of common sense.
As the pitot tubes iced over and the alarms blared, Bonin entered a cognitive tunnel. His attention had been relaxed for the past four hours. Now, amid flashing lights and ringing bells, his attention searched for a focal point. The most obvious one was the video monitor right in front of his eyes.
The cockpit of an Airbus A330 is a minimalist masterpiece, an environment designed to be distraction free, with just a few screens alongside a modest number of gauges and controls. One of the most prominent screens, directly in each pilot’s line of sight, is the primary flight display. There is a broad line running across the horizontal center of a screen that indicates the division between sky and land. Floating atop this line is the small icon of an aircraft. If a plane rolls to either side while flying, the icon goes off-kilter and pilots know their wings are no longer parallel to the ground.
PRIMARY FLIGHT DISPLAY
When Bonin heard the alarm and looked at his instrument panel, he saw the primary flight display. The icon of the plane on that screen had rolled slightly to the right. Normally, this would not have been a concern. Planes roll in small increments throughout a trip and are easily righted. But now, with the autopilot disengaged and the sudden pressure to focus, the spotlight inside Bonin’s head shined on that off-kilter icon. Bonin, data records indicate, became focused on getting the wings of that icon level with the middle of his screen. And then, perhaps because he was fixated on correcting the roll, he failed to notice that he was still pulling back on the control stick, lifting the plane’s nose.
As Bonin pulled back on his stick, the front of the aircraft rose higher. Then, another instance of cognitive tunneling occurred—this time, inside the head of Bonin’s copilot. The man in the left-hand seat was named David Robert, and he was officially the “monitoring pilot.” His job was to keep watch over Bonin and intervene if the “flying pilot” became overwhelmed. In a worst-case scenario, Robert could take control of the craft. But now, with alarms sounding, Robert did what’s most natural in such a situation: He became focused on the most obvious stimuli. There was a screen next to him spewing text as the plane’s computer provided updates and instructions. Robert turned his eyes away from Bonin and began staring at the scrolling type, reading the messages aloud. “Stabilize,” Robert said. “Go back down.”
Focused on the screen as he was, Robert didn’t see that Bonin was pulling back on his stick and didn’t register that the flying pilot was raising the craft higher even as he agreed they needed to descend. There is no evidence that Robert looked at his gauges. Instead, he frantically scrolled through a series of messages automatically generated by the plane’s computer. Even if those prompts had been helpful, nothing indicates that Bonin, locked on the airplane icon in front of him, heard anything his colleague said.
The plane rose through thirty-five thousand feet, drawing dangerously close to its maximum height. The nose of the airplane was now pitched at twelve degrees.
The copilot finally looked away from his screen. “We’re climbing, according to this,” he told Bonin, referring to the instrument panel. “Go back down!” he shouted.
“Okay,” Bonin replied.
Bonin pushed his stick forward, forcing the plane’s nose to dip slightly. As a result, the force of gravity against the pilots lessened by a third, giving them a brief sense of weightlessness. “Gently!” his colleague snapped. Then Bonin, perhaps overwhelmed by the combination of the alarms, the weightlessness, and his copilot’s chastisement, jerked his hand backward, arresting the descent of the plane’s nose. The craft remained at a six-degree upward pitch. Another loud warning chime came from the cockpit’s speakers, and a few seconds later the aircraft began to shake, what’s known as buffeting, the result of rough air moving across the wings in the early stages of a serious aerodynamic stall.
“We’re in, ahhh, yeah, we’re in a climb, I think?” Bonin said.
For the next ten seconds, neither man spoke. The plane rose above its maximum recommended altitude of 37,500 feet. To stay aloft, Flight 447 had to descend. If Bonin would simply lower the nose, all would be fine.
Then, as the pilots focused on their screens, the ice crystals clogging the pitot tubes cleared and the plane’s computer began receiving accurate airspeed information once again. From this moment onward, all the craft’s sensors functioned correctly throughout the flight. The computer began spitting out instructions, telling the pilots how to overcome the stall. Their instrument panels were showing them everything they needed to know to right the plane, but they had no idea where to look. Even as helpful information arrived, Bonin and Robert had no clue as to where to focus.
The stall warning blared again. A piercing, high-pitched noise called the “cricket,” designed to be impossible for pilots to ignore, began to sound.
“Damn it!” the copilot yelled. He had already paged the captain. “Where is he?…Above all, try to touch the lateral controls as little as possible,” he told Bonin.
“Okay,” Bonin replied. “I’m in TO/GA, right?”
It is at this moment, investigators later concluded, that the lives of all 228 people on board Flight 447 were condemned. “TO/GA” is an acronym for “takeoff, go around,” a setting that aviators use to abort a landing, or “go around” the runway. TO/GA pushes a plane’s thrust to maximum while the pilot raises the nose. There is a sequence of moves associated with TO/GA that all aviators practice, hundreds of times, in preparation for a certain kind of emergency. At low altitudes, TO/GA makes a lot of sense. The air is thick near the earth’s surface, and so increasing thrust and raising the nose makes a plane go faster and higher, allowing a pilot to abort a landing safely.