B737 Undifferentiated or Other Model
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 176; Flight Crew Total 17000; Flight Crew Type 3125
Distraction; Confusion; Situational Awareness; Time Pressure; Workload
No Specific Anomaly Occurred All Types
General None Reported / Taken
Human Factors; Company Policy
The new pre departure / taxi procedures are a giant step back to the bad old days of unsafe taxi outs and we now actually have been given an unsafe taxi scheme after years of steadily safer practices. The goal was to have two sets of eyes out of the cockpit to prevent incursions. The checklist has now been muddied up amazingly so and is nowhere near either intuitive or safe. It seems silly to rebrief an entire departure and list every single value while the captain simply utters 'set' every so often; indicating neither comprehension nor agreement. To bring seasoned first officers to an almost constant 'heads down' condition in the cockpit while maneuvering the aircraft in tight quarters is of questionable value at best. To do the same with new hire first officers is simply dangerous. Between repeated programming changes to the FMC and shuffling through an AMAZING amount of paperwork in the cockpit; this procedure practically screams that it will be WHEN an aircraft takes off wrongly configured or blunders across an active runway; not IF. I hope that we learn our lesson quickly and simply scrap this ill conceived notion of seeking 'efficiency' to the detriment of safety.
A B737 Captain reported that a new pre-departure/taxi procedure resulting in the First Officer being distracted and 'heads down' during taxi.