Narrative:

This is a potential safety hazard notification; not an actual deviation or incident. We were descending into an intermediate stop on the last day of a busy and weather delayed four day trip. Three leg day. We received a SELCAL message so my first officer proceeded to check the ACARS and found a message that was to me (the captain) notifying me that I had been extended for another round trip. I had plans that evening to go to a meeting; which is why I swapped the trip initially; so I got mad and my mind was immediately not with flying the airplane anymore. I was thinking about how to get out of this extension so I could make my meeting and I was mad that the company has people on furlough and they are trying to extend line holders. My first officer did a great job prompting me and getting my head back into the cockpit; had it been anyone less sharp; we would have had a speed bust passing through 10;000 ft; we would have missed putting the airplane into heading mode when it was needed; and countless other small mistakes. The FAA has been seemingly focused on texting; cellphones; computers; etc in the cockpit. Someone needs to focus on the dangers of scheduling extensions and ACARS communications of a non essential nature (or a nature that would cause the mind do be away from concentrating on flying the airplane) while the airplane is in any sort of operation. These events could have occurred because of a huge distraction by scheduling sending an extension ACARS message to my aircraft during the critical decent phase of flight. However; any phase of flight would be dangerous for an extension because it causes you to start thinking about other things rather than the task at hand. When you are expecting to go home after a long time away and have plans when getting off; messages like this throw all situational awareness out of the window and focus all of the brains thinking power on anger and how do I get out of this so I can get home to do what I am supposed to do. This needs to stop. The FAA thinks texting is dangerous and extraneous conversation is dangerous. This is more dangerous. The reason it is more dangerous in most cases is because it makes you mad and focuses your attention on something other than flying the airplane. A normal cellphone call or text message does not make you mad and focus your attention outside of the airplane nearly as much as this does. Stop scheduling extensions over ACARS and/or when the airplane is in any type of operation. It is a total distraction and is not necessary.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: An Air Carrier Captain became upset after receiving an in flight ACARS from scheduling that extended his work day. Because of the emotional distraction caused by this type of ACARS; he suggests that limits be put on the types of non essential communications crews can be exposed to inflight.

Narrative: This is a potential safety hazard notification; not an actual deviation or incident. We were descending into an intermediate stop on the last day of a busy and weather delayed four day trip. Three leg day. We received a SELCAL message so my First Officer proceeded to check the ACARS and found a message that was to me (the Captain) notifying me that I had been extended for another round trip. I had plans that evening to go to a meeting; which is why I swapped the trip initially; so I got mad and my mind was immediately not with flying the airplane anymore. I was thinking about how to get out of this extension so I could make my meeting and I was mad that the company has people on furlough and they are trying to extend line holders. My First Officer did a great job prompting me and getting my head back into the cockpit; had it been anyone less sharp; we would have had a speed bust passing through 10;000 ft; we would have missed putting the airplane into heading mode when it was needed; and countless other small mistakes. The FAA has been seemingly focused on TEXTING; CELLPHONES; COMPUTERS; etc in the cockpit. Someone needs to focus on the DANGERS of scheduling extensions and ACARS communications of a non essential nature (or a nature that would cause the mind do be away from concentrating on flying the airplane) while the airplane is in any sort of operation. These events could have occurred because of a huge distraction by scheduling sending an extension ACARS message to my aircraft during the critical decent phase of flight. However; any phase of flight would be dangerous for an extension because it causes you to start thinking about other things rather than the task at hand. When you are expecting to go home after a long time away and have plans when getting off; messages like this throw all situational awareness out of the window and focus all of the brains thinking power on anger and how do I get out of this so I can get home to do what I am supposed to do. This needs to stop. The FAA thinks texting is dangerous and extraneous conversation is dangerous. This is more dangerous. The reason it is more dangerous in most cases is because it makes you mad and focuses your attention on something other than flying the airplane. A normal cellphone call or text message does not make you mad and focus your attention outside of the airplane nearly as much as this does. STOP scheduling extensions over ACARS and/or when the airplane is in any type of operation. It is a total distraction and is not necessary.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.