[HN Gopher] Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incide...
___________________________________________________________________
Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after
takeoff
Author : lsllc
Score : 198 points
Date : 2022-01-01 20:31 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (onemileatatime.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (onemileatatime.com)
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I cannot imagine how unbelievably loud and damaging having a 777
| fly _75 feet_ above my house would be.
| ghaff wrote:
| Planes taking off from Boston Logan can fly as low as 300 feet
| over the neighboring town of Winthrop--and average about 700.
| I've kayaked in the area and you basically have to stop talking
| every few minutes when a plane takes off. Arriving flights are
| even a bit lower (although not as loud).
| easton wrote:
| There was an episode of Cheers about this, where Carla buys a
| house extremely cheap and then believes it is haunted. After
| sleeping a night there, she finds out it's because it is
| close to where planes land at Logan Airport, which calms her
| nerves.
| ghaff wrote:
| Ha. Don't remember that.
|
| I was kayaking with a long ago girlfriend and we were in
| the parking lot for the Winthrop boar launch. And I do
| remember we got into some conversation with a local and HE
| TALKED VERY LOUDLY. Which was something we joked about for
| a time.
|
| You could actually land your boat at the end of Logan
| airport from there. But I assume if you were to do so,
| serious people with serious weaponry would pay you a visit
| very quickly.
| markdown wrote:
| I wonder if a contributing factor is that they have local noobs
| flying. I know quite a few very highly experienced pilots (15+yrs
| at Emirates) were sent home due to the pandemic.
|
| The only pilots in the middle east with absolute job security are
| the locals, and they get away with shit that would see any expat
| fired on the spot.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| At least this sounds like pure human error, failure to follow
| pre-flight checklists, and not a Boeing engineering/mechanical
| problem.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| But engineering/mechanical problems can be identified,
| analyzed, and eliminated (or mitigated). Human error still
| finds a way around our many attempts (training, checklists,
| standardized procedures, etc) to prevent it.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Indeed. You can design some mechanisms as failsafe, but there
| aren't any failsafe pilots.
| Daishiman wrote:
| Why are knots used in aviation over kph?
| cmurf wrote:
| From nautical roots, hence aeronautical. Quite a lot is
| borrowed by aviation from maritime.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Convention, smaller numbers, everyone that it matters to knows
| it
| pc86 wrote:
| I can't imagine "smaller numbers" plays any role at all.
| ghaff wrote:
| Historical reasons mostly. For the same reason that various
| units are used in all sorts of different industries. And guess
| what? If you changed you'd probably end up with some accidents
| in the transition as a result.
| realityking wrote:
| Both aviation and marine navigation generally use nautical
| miles for as it's a little easier to use for long distance
| travel (plus tradition and inertia). Measuring speed in knots
| make things like dead heading calculations a lot easier.
| nradov wrote:
| Using knots made navigation calculations easier with paper maps
| marked in degrees and minutes. A nautical mile is the same as a
| minute of latitude, and a knot is one nautical mile per hour.
| Now with electronic navigation systems kph would be just as
| easy, but aviators are all used to thinking in knots so
| changing would be difficult.
| supernewton wrote:
| A nautical mile is equal to (about) one minute of latitude,
| which probably made calculations easier back in the day, with
| the tradition carrying forward.
| jleahy wrote:
| History is surely one thing, but another key point is that
| these speeds are always KIAS (indicated air speed). This is a
| measurement that doesn't correspond to either true ground speed
| or true air speed (but is far more useful for flying than
| either of these).
|
| Certainly I would find kph/mph slightly confusing as you might
| expect it to correspond to some actual velocity, rather than
| something to do with air pressure.
|
| Maybe we should measure airspeed in mbar instead?
|
| (ofc navigation is a different matter, and there just history
| prevails)
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| Other commenters say it's historical are, well, mostly right,
| but there is a distinct advantage to knots: a knot is 1 NM per
| hour, and 1 NM was historically defined as one arc minute
| latitude. So if you are looking at a chart and doing
| calculations by hand or in your head, NM and kts are very
| convenient. It lets you mostly do chart -> distance -> time and
| fuel measurements/calculations in your head.
|
| Of course this is not perfectly accurate in several ways but
| given chart projections it's usually Close Enough.
|
| The speeds given in the article are a little ambiguous in the
| details, the number given in the text is probably KIAS (but
| maybe not?) and the numbers from FlightAware will be ground
| speed.
| thinkingkong wrote:
| When you translate maps with vast distances down to units, a
| nautical mile equals a minute of latitude. With long distances,
| you refer to lat/long over following a road.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| From my understanding there are two advantages:
|
| - So that when kph/mph is heard a pilot knows they're
| referencing ground speed, whereas knots is air speed.
|
| - Pilots use latitude/longitude, and a knot is "exactly equal
| to 1/60th of a degree of latitude. A 1/60th of a degree of
| latitude is known as a minute of latitude. Therefore, a knot is
| equal to one minute of distance. There are 90 degrees from the
| equator to the pole."
|
| But reality is that changing international standards is very
| hard, and nobody wants to have the battle when knots works
| "well enough." It likely started because existing nautical maps
| were used for over-ocean flight planning and stuck.
| mulmen wrote:
| Knots is used for ground speed as well I thought?
| adamm255 wrote:
| I've never heard Knots used on land. Sea and Air yes!
| V-eHGsd_ wrote:
| the ground speed of an aircraft is reported in kts.
| anamexis wrote:
| Knots are indeed used when taxiing at airports.
| mulmen wrote:
| Ground speed is speed over the ground. This includes when
| the aircraft is in the air. Airspeed is the speed of the
| plane through the air. There are _not_ the same thing.
| Both are reported in knots.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| Really depends on the context. Usually things that were
| designed for pilots to use will display ground speed in
| knots since it's likely the pilot will be comparing against
| calculations done in knots. Things that were designed for
| the general public usually show mph since most people don't
| have a good sense of how fast a knot is.
|
| Taxi speeds are always written in knots, so I suppose you
| could say it is "official" (in terms of aircraft handbooks,
| airfield directories, etc) to use knots for ground speed.
| Of course the situation of an aircraft's ground speed while
| on the ground is sort of an edge case.
|
| On the topic of odd units, the operating handbooks for jet
| aircraft often use mach number for limits, which has some
| of the same properties as KIAS as far as being density
| dependent but is a little more precisely defined.
| mulmen wrote:
| > So that when kph/mph is heard a pilot knows they're
| referencing ground speed, whereas knots is air speed.
|
| Who is using MPH/KPH in the course of flying a plane? Why
| would this ambiguity resolve to "that must be ground
| speed"? Why would there be ambiguity in a speed readout
| at all? Surely context and procedure should clarify this
| rather than units?
| leetcrew wrote:
| seems slightly odd to use an angular unit for airspeed; the
| linear equivalent would technically depend on altitude. I
| guess airplanes don't actually fly high enough for that to
| matter.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| It was only ever approximately accurate anyway, a NM is no
| longer an arc minute because that is inconsistent even
| along lines of latitude, so it had to be pinned to 1.852km.
|
| Aviation, broadly speaking, inherited all of its navigation
| techniques from the maritime world. In particular, prior to
| radio methods and to some extent today aviation navigation
| is based primarily on dead reckoning periodically corrected
| by observations, which is a technique that was pioneered in
| marine navigation. Since early pilots learned to navigate
| from seafarers, their units and conventions became strongly
| embedded in the field. It is, after all, still not unusual
| to refer to an aircraft as a ship, especially informally.
| [deleted]
| inglor_cz wrote:
| At the very beginning, aviation had to solve the very same
| problems that sailors used to encounter at sea (navigation,
| precise position), so they naturally used the same algorithms
| and equipment.
|
| That is how naval terminology entered the lexicon.
|
| By now, it is so deeply ingrained that switching the entire
| world (well, there are exceptions) to the metric standard would
| likely cause some preventable loss of life.
|
| At least the knot/mile system is fairly internally regular. We
| tolerate a much less regular one, with a lot of weird
| exceptions (the Gregorian calendar) out of inertia.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Because the Earth is a non-Euclidean surface, and knots make
| more sense for navigating a sphere.
| mulmen wrote:
| Maritime navigation techniques were adapted to aviation.
|
| For a similar reason airplanes have _captains_. A few decades
| ago they also had _navigators_. With a dedicated position in
| the cockpit.
|
| It's also customary to measure altitude in feet. Except in
| China (except Hong Kong), Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan,
| Uzbekistan and Mongolia. Russia is actually moving _to_ feet at
| some altitudes. Turkmenistan similarly uses feet or meters
| depending on altitude.
|
| The units themselves are irrelevant as long as everyone uses
| the same ones. Switching costs are significant both in terms of
| training and equipment.
| munchler wrote:
| Why is it even possible to enter a desired altitude of 0 feet
| into an automatic pilot? As a layman, it's hard for me to imagine
| why anyone flying a 777 would want to maintain an altitude of
| zero at full speed for more than a few seconds (if that).
| bener wrote:
| Just a guess, is that the target altitude? Meaning they set it
| to zero during landing approach?
| jacquesm wrote:
| If true that would get you a hell of a surprise when trying
| to land at Schiphol.
| kerneloftruth wrote:
| I'm guessing it's done on approach so that the autopilot won't
| keep the plane from landing -- which would beg the question of
| why the autopilot would even be on during takeoff or landing.
|
| As one would guess, it shouldn't have been on. Insight comes
| from a comment in TFA:
|
| "I'm a captain at a U.S. major airline with a lot of time in
| 777s. Something this doesn't mention is the that even if ground
| level was set into the mode control panel, the aircraft
| wouldn't have descended if it was being hand flown. That means
| that the flying pilot here selected the autopilot on
| immediately after takeoff. This is unusual at Western carriers
| as we like to hand fly. To me this indicates a lack of
| experience or confidence or both."
| young_unixer wrote:
| Lots of landings are done on autopilot.
| belter wrote:
| Read what is the current top comment in the article linked above,
| from a U.S. captain also flying 777's, for the list of checks the
| crew apparently missed.
|
| Biggest flag is flying pilot apparently selecting autopilot on
| immediately after takeoff. Emirates note to their crews,is even
| more bizarre. Like an hospital reminding Anesthesiologists to
| check if patients are fully knocked out before operations.
|
| Incident still under investigation but it looks bad.
| jacquesm wrote:
| More like a hospital telling anesthesiologists not to
| disconnect their lines because the next anesthesiologist might
| be an incompetent.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Exactly.
| cmurf wrote:
| https://avherald.com/h?article=4f24b2d7&opt=0
| mempko wrote:
| So there was some damage from that departure. Yikes.
| lisper wrote:
| Double yikes:
|
| "The aircraft performed the return flight EK-232 on schedule"
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| > suggesting [...]the previous flight crew had left the altitude
| setting at [...] 00000 feet
|
| Does the system really display as "00000"? That seems like an odd
| design choice, I'd have thought just a single "0" would be far
| more legible in this scenario, especially if it's on a 7-segment
| display.
|
| I don't think passengers would have noticed this as anything
| other than a regular takeoff, because ATC does request slow
| climbs (ie. slower rate of ascent) every now and then.
| pilot7378535 wrote:
| Speaking of bad UX choices, the FAA is constantly dropping one
| or two or more digits from numbers like altitudes, runway
| lengths, heading, timestamps, etc. For example, "the runway
| from 180deg is 5200 feet long" becomes "RWY18 52" which I
| suppose you get used to, but it's just begging for mixups.
| wjossey wrote:
| As a student pilot, this drives me nuts. The volume of
| abbreviations, especially in NOTAMS, METARs, etc, is a bit
| obscene.
|
| What's wonderful too is that the abbreviations are often
| based on non English words as well, so they aren't intuitive.
| As an example, instead of typing "mist" in a METAR it is "BR"
| based on the French word brume.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| And yet, on a general interest site you write in acronyms
| only pilots and aviation buffs will understand.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| AIUI it is a holdover from the days when such reports were
| sent by telegraph/teletype, and saving characters mattered.
| The abbreviations became standard convention and changing
| them now would be more disruptive than teaching new pilots
| how to decipher them.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> I don 't think passengers would have noticed this as
| anything other than a regular takeoff_
|
| It looks like the aircraft didn't leave the runway until the
| runway safety area at the end. That is something any passenger
| looking out the window could notice. A normal takeoff has the
| aircraft leaving the runway well before the end.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| > That is something any passenger looking out the window
| could notice.
|
| I don't think so, because the departure was at 3:10AM local
| time (23:10Z). It would have been too dark to perceive.
| [deleted]
| alkonaut wrote:
| Why did it take so long to correct? The computers must have been
| beeping and screaming about "overspeed" and all kinds of
| warnings.
|
| Sensory overload?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Some warnings are inhibited below a certain altitude or on the
| ground. I don't know if "overspeed" is one of them, though.
| shsbdncudx wrote:
| Turn it off and on again. Shouldn't these things have a standard
| baseline that they reset to? I would have thought you'd reset
| everything after a flight / first thing you do when you get in
| the pilot seat . The plane shouldn't have memory or the previous
| flight.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| The article made me wonder if weather could have been a factor
| (although this seems sort of far fetched anyway). NCEI's archive
| is, well, 503ing, but Iowa State has a METAR archive and it shows
| good VFR conditions for the whole day of the flight with only
| moderate winds at most.
| johnnymonster wrote:
| Watched a caribe engine explode a few days ago in Saint Marteen.
| Was a lot more crazy than this one! Didn't seem to make national
| news either.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I'm surprised commercial planes don't do full software reset
| before each flight, and especially before a new crew takes over.
| Checklists only get you so much.
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| I'm surprised they don't do a full reset then set every
| checklist variable to an invalid state, in which the aircraft
| will not permit starting until all have been set by the flight
| crew.
| wpearse wrote:
| The checklists bring the aircraft back to a known state.
|
| One 777 pilot commented to say that this issue should have been
| caught by at least two checklists, implying that neither
| checklists had been followed.
|
| Tangentially: if my 2006 Mercedes is reset (battery
| disconnected) it needs to idle for 20 minutes to re-learn the
| idle pattern. The vehicle then needs to be driven around for a
| bit to re-learn driving patterns. I wonder if there are similar
| settings on a 777 that would need to be preserved between
| 'resets'.
| nomel wrote:
| > The checklists bring the aircraft back to a known state.
|
| No, it doesn't, clearly. It provides a procedure that _can_
| be followed to put it to a known state, but its existence
| does not put it into a known state, with certainty. A reset
| puts it into a known state, with certainty. That known reset
| state probable wouldn 't be useful, but can be set to be
| least-damaging, where a checklist can then be used to then
| put it into a "good" state.
|
| I automate equipment and robots for manufacturing, for a
| living. For our work, a reset, followed by initialization
| (which can be buggy, just as humans following a checklist),
| is how we begin each session. The reset state does things
| like engages all brakes, enables all safety checks, sets
| speed and force limits very low, etc, so if an initialization
| is missed, there's at least some intent/thought in the
| remaining settings. It also surprises me that there's not a
| reset, since it's so trivial. My assumption is that many
| planes don't allow it to be trivial, since levers and whatnot
| are involved.
| ketanmaheshwari wrote:
| So if the altitude was set to zero, why did the aircraft even
| took off at all (I am thankful it did though)?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Pilot (piston engine, with only around 20 hours of light jet
| dual). As a pax on this flight, I might not have noticed much
| unless I was looking out the window.
|
| This seems like a fault of the crew (obviously), but probably
| more on the PNF (pilot not flying) than the PF (pilot flying).
| Article says 4 pilots were on board, but fails to mention that 2
| of them (relief pilots) were likely not in the cockpit on the
| departure.
|
| It's hard for me to imagine that a qualified crew would fly such
| a non-standard departure with "we were following the flight
| director" as an excuse. There's nothing above you to hit on
| departure; get away from terrain! Fly the calculated airspeeds.
| Where was the Vr callout?! That rotation to a pitch angle is what
| takes you off the runway, not the FD command bars.
|
| Once they made the mistake and corrected it, I don't have much
| concern with the continuation. 262 knots indicated isn't that big
| of a deal that I'd worry about shedding parts from departure
| flaps and leading edge devices or stressing the gear (they likely
| pulled the gear up well before breaking 250 KIAS anyway). I'd be
| more concerned with the safety of an overweight landing than
| continuing. (A 777 can dump fuel, but the crew that just moments
| ago couldn't fly an entirely routine departure isn't the crew
| that I want to be calling an audible and figuring out how to
| safely dump fuel at night and return for a max weight landing.
| How would they program the FD for that?! ;) )
|
| My prediction is that almost every pax had no idea how close to
| dying they came until they read about it later.
|
| I catch heat every time I mention that air crew training and
| certification standards are not uniform across the globe and that
| I am reluctant to fly on many foreign-flag carriers. (However,
| Emirates and most EU-flag carriers are ones that I would not
| hesitate to fly on.)
| jdavis703 wrote:
| > My prediction is that almost every pax had no idea how close
| to dying they came until they read about it later.
|
| This is why you should keep the window shade open during taxi,
| takeoff and landing (a handful of airlines require this, but
| IME it's the minority). In the event of a crash or other
| incident you also want to know what's outside the plane. Maybe
| there is burning debris on your side, so you want to exit from
| the other?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| dataflow wrote:
| > I catch heat every time I mention that air crew training and
| certification standards are not uniform across the globe and
| that I am reluctant to fly on many foreign-flag carriers.
| (However, Emirates and most EU-flag carriers are ones that I
| would not hesitate to fly on.)
|
| Has anyone made some sort of a rough list of which carriers one
| can feel safe on?
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I'm probably going to get downvoted for this, but focus on
| large, legacy airlines based in countries that have a long
| safety record (not just in terms of crashes, but also just
| general approach to safety).
| inglor_cz wrote:
| This is the list of airlines banned from flying into the EU
| on safety grounds.
|
| https://transport.ec.europa.eu/transport-themes/eu-air-
| safet...
| Pasorrijer wrote:
| My personal list is Tier 1 US, Canadian, British and German
| carriers as well as Qantas. Probably throw Air France and KLM
| in too. In Africa, Ethiopian would be the only airline I
| would fly if I had to fly an African airline.
|
| I probably would have had a middle eastern airline on the
| list before I did a project with them last year. After that,
| I learned a lot that made me stick to the list above.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Maximum Flap (Placard) Speeds for 777-300 Flaps KIAS
|
| 1 255
|
| 5 235
|
| 15 215
|
| 20 200
|
| 25 190
|
| 30 180
|
| 262 is way high for 30 degrees with slats.
| HeavenFox wrote:
| You don't take off with 30 degrees of flaps though,
| fortunately.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Correct. This was likely a flaps 15deg (or maybe 20deg)
| departure (being a heavy departure).
| speedgoose wrote:
| 75 feets is 22.8 meters.
|
| 234 knots is 433km/h.
| pc86 wrote:
| Which is irrelevant, given this is about aviation where feet
| and knots are standardized in all but a few former Soviet block
| countries.
| punarinta wrote:
| I'm flying an ultralight in Europe and my IAS is in km/h. And
| to be frank, probably all UL and PPL aircraft I've seen
| nearby use km/h, not knots. Not sure why it is so, but it's
| definitely easier for my brain. :)
| chki wrote:
| As somebody who doesn't regularly interact with aviation I
| don't have an intuitive understanding of knots and feet so to
| me it is helpful to have these translated to units that I
| "understand".
| ycIsGarbage wrote:
| Still, helpful for the large majority of people who are not
| pilots.
| onphonenow wrote:
| The memo from Emirates about not setting altitude in system to
| airport altitude is so weird. I really hope that's not the actual
| message Emirates is putting out there.
|
| It doesn't matter was in system. You run your checklists and
| configure for your own flight / your own departure etc. Memo
| should be to training / recruitment - where did you find these
| pilots to fly a 777?
|
| So they obviously didn't pre-flight the flight. And they don't
| seem to have used their takeoff checklist either? That should get
| them through flap retract and 2,000 feet or so.
|
| Takeoff checklist might have rotate at 160 or so. Then you get to
| positive climb and V2. You then clean up the plane (flaps / gear
| etc), maybe hit 2,000 feet / 210kts?
|
| This is all checklist stuff. I've no idea what's Emirates has as
| checklists, but this is like 101 entry level flying stuff. What
| was pilot monitoring doing during all this?
|
| They still on ground at 215 kts? 262 kts at 175 feet?!
| rectang wrote:
| From a top comment on the article by "Mark D":
|
| > _I'm a captain at a U.S. major airline with a lot of time in
| 777s. [...] Also, this is something that SHOULD have been
| caught by at least two separate checklists, which they
| obviously didn't do._
| nradov wrote:
| The incident description seems incomplete. With the high
| takeoff speed and slow climb rate, is it possible that the main
| error was an incorrect flaps setting?
| sokoloff wrote:
| 777 has a takeoff configuration warning system, so unlikely.
| Far more likely is the pilots simply failed to command
| sufficient pitch up (higher pitch gives a lower airspeed and
| higher climb rate [at least in the airspeed and pitch regime
| we're talking about here]).
|
| Takeoff configuration warning can be silenced, but is an
| abort before the 80 knot callout.
| csunbird wrote:
| Disclaimer: My experience in piloting is just a couple of
| hours flying planes in kerbal space program.
|
| Wouldn't that much speed cause the plane to ascent
| naturally, even with zero pitch, just by the body lift?
| (Although, it is quite possible that real life planes have
| negative body lift, I have no idea)
| LordFast wrote:
| Fellow kerbal space program attendee here:
|
| I believe that while smaller planes will naturally pitch
| up as speed increases, jumbo jets are much more lumpant
| even with the correct flaps. That's the terrifying thing
| in my understanding: the plane basically had no manual
| pitch due to incorrect config values, and were barely
| gliding off the ground from minimal natural lift.
| Meanwhile the two potatoes at the helm were fiddling with
| the config values instead of pulling on the yoke.
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| Yes, but not fast enough to be safe in this situation.
|
| *also someone not particularly experienced, just a bit of
| messing about in DCS. Correct me if I'm wrong!
| selectodude wrote:
| They probably were given a command to stay at 4000 above
| ground (AGL) level after takeoff. The plane was to level
| off until further instructions from ATC. Since the plane
| was set to sea level on takeoff, the plane tried to level
| off at 4000 ft above sea level which...is not good. The
| plane was pitched down to descend.
| csunbird wrote:
| Oh no. So, the computer was actually trying to keep the
| plane pitched down to avoid ascending naturally and keep
| the altitude stable. This is really, really bad.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Isn't there some sort of reset settings button when you start a
| new flight? Like is there any setting set by the previous crew
| that should be left as is by the new crew?
| lmilcin wrote:
| Nope. The crew is responsible for verifying anything and
| everything important for the flight safety.
|
| A button like that would be pretty dangerous. Just imagine
| somebody pressed this in an emergency...
|
| In general flying a plane is already complex. You need to be
| able to understand what is going to happen to the plane when
| you press a button. Something that resets a lot of other
| settings would have extremely complex consequences.
| [deleted]
| jefftk wrote:
| _> I really hope that 's not the actual message Emirates is
| putting out there._
|
| It is; there's a picture of it on
| https://www.godsavethepoints.com/emirates-flight-231-takeoff...
| EMM_386 wrote:
| It's unbelievable that the pilot's didn't realize they were
| doing 215 knots while still _ON THE GROUND_ and only decided to
| pull back on the yoke once they were nearing the end of the
| runway. They should have at least seen the end of the runway
| coming up and wondered why they weren 't airborne yet. The ends
| are colored in amber and red as it gets closer to the end, it
| should be pretty obvious something is wrong. Pull back and get
| airborne, you're far past the point you are going to be able to
| stop.
|
| Where's the basic pilotage here?
|
| I'm a US CPEL holder and there are numerous basic airmanship
| systems in place to prevent this. For one, you note your
| acceleration rate and how far down the runway you are. Then you
| have V1, V2 speeds where you rotate.
|
| How you get to this level of incompetence flying a 777 is far
| beyond my understanding.
| omegant wrote:
| It goes way beyond checklist stuff.
|
| Imagine having an intermediate system in your Tesla, one
| between fully manual and the autopilot. This system uses the
| navigation capabilities of the autopilot to draw in the big
| screen some squares that guide you to your destination without
| the need to look outside. Something you may find in a
| videogame. This system is helpfull and easy to use, and allows
| you to pay attention to more important matters.
|
| Well, now imagine getting so used to this system that you
| forget how to drive without the squares telling you what to do
| every single moment. So used that if the squares guide you to
| drive straight to a wall at 100mph you do it without
| hesitation.
|
| This is what supposedly happened in this case. The flight
| director is there to help you, but you are supposed to know how
| to fly without it.
|
| When you rotate an airliner the initial pitch is around 15
| degrees nose up, that way your rate of climb and the optimal
| climb speed is maintained.
|
| They kept the nose almost horizontal, against any natural
| instinct for a pilot. They almost overrun the runway without
| rotating, and they barely rotated just enough to be able to
| keep the flight director centered in their screen.
|
| It seems that the speed went beyond the structural limit of the
| tyres (around 200 kts) and if they didn't retract the flaps,
| beyond their structural limit too. And then they proceeded to
| fly almost scratching the obstacles in their path.
|
| Why does something like this happpens? Because in an airline
| like Emirates actual piloting skills are actively punished!.
| You are not allowed to fly the plane manually, nor disconect
| automatic systems if they are available.
|
| They expect robot like precission applying procedures, modern
| airliners log dozens of instruments and have automatic reports
| when procedure limitation are exceeding (is a big brother like
| work environment). This may seem a good philosophy, but it
| actually creates an situation where pilots loose necessary
| skills, and when computers or procedures fail, as they often do
| in airplanes, pilots are not able to react properly anymore.
|
| I'm sure Emirates will punish the pilots and will set new
| procedures over the current ones, to try to avoid this kind of
| situations in the future. They will solve nothing, they will
| only make it worse. Is a culture of fear and punishment. This
| also happens in other middle east airlines like Qatar. Airlines
| in Asia are making this mistake too.
|
| In contrast airlines in the US and Europe (except Ryanair and
| some other British carriers) give pilots much more freedom
| regarding manual flight, which helps them to keep their skills
| honed.
|
| Hope this gives a different perspective on the problem. The
| wrong altitude selection is the minor of the problems in this
| case IMHO.
|
| I am an Airline captain with 22 years of experience (737, MD88,
| A320, A330 and A340) and more than 14k flight hours.
|
| Edit, some typos and making a couple of sentences more clear.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Good point about the tire v-max, that wasn't mentioned
| elsewhere as far as I've read on this.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Some good lessons there for automated driving; or any skills
| that once acquired, are lost when taken for granted and not
| actively cultivated.
| vt240 wrote:
| Testimony given during the Asiana NTSB Sunshine hearing is
| probably a good place to start, for anyone who wants more
| detail on your comment here.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| I would like to know what the Ryanair pilots are ordered to
| do by their higher ups. Been on a few of them in Europe and
| they all hit the runway pretty hard coming back down.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I think GP is saying that Ryanair demands that pilots use
| the automation to the fullest extent, and disallows "hand
| flying" (with an exeption, one presumes, for when the
| automatic systems fail, and a hope that the pilots remember
| how to hand fly).
| LordFast wrote:
| Seriously. Did these pilots think they were playing Microsoft
| Flight Simulator or something?!
| topspin wrote:
| > I really hope that's not the actual message Emirates is
| putting out there.
|
| Why imagine there is hope of that? Is there some question as to
| the credibility of the reporting here? If this memo claim were
| fake I imagine Emirates would deny the report and initiate some
| lawsuits. The story linked here is based on the reporting[1] of
| one Gilbert Ott of godsavethepoints.com over five days ago
| which includes a image of the 'memo' Emirates issued, so
| someone has actually put their name on this story, including
| the report about the memo.
|
| Blatant dysfunction should not be discounted through false
| hopes. This airline is clearly operated by incompetents, both
| in the cockpit and among its management. Someone will doubtless
| feel compelled to cite some safety record or another; this
| carries no weight if you cannot eliminate the contribution of
| aircraft designers. And you can't.
|
| [1] https://www.godsavethepoints.com/emirates-
| flight-231-takeoff...
| jacquesm wrote:
| You'd hope a regulator would turn their wandering eye to this
| airline, both from a hiring, operations and management
| perspective. There are errors on all of those.
| topspin wrote:
| Emirates is a Flag Carrier for UAE, apparently owned by
| Dubai's government via 'Investment Corporation of Dubai.'
| There is, therefore, no meaningful distinction between it
| and its regulator, so don't hold your breath on that hope
| either. The FAA will demur; bet the rent money on that.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Airplane manufacturers and regulators being too close is
| not good, see the MAX MCAS issue, airlines should be
| completely firewalled from regulators for very obvious
| reasons.
|
| That's pretty bad. Here in NL was have a similar
| situation where the state is shareholder of KLM/AF
| leading to all kinds of bizarre decisions in recent
| times. But at least I'd hope that some people at the
| regulator would resign rather than avoid doing their jobs
| when safety is on the line.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> It doesn 't matter was in system. You run your checklists
| and configure for your own flight / your own departure etc._
|
| I am not a pilot, but that's exactly what I thought when I read
| the memo too. They should be putting responsibility for the
| next flight on the next flight's crew, not the prior flight's
| crew. Train each crew to assume the plane they're prepping for
| their next flight is FUBAR in every way, checklist everything,
| fix it as necessary, and go from there. Don't rely on the prior
| crew for anything.
| amelius wrote:
| Perhaps this game should be part of the UX of cockpit
| controls: find the error, or lose your permits.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Hehe. Gamification for the win... I really don't want to
| think about the red team version of that.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, assuming that the previous crew left you a 'perfect and
| ready to fly plane' is one hell of an assumption to make.
| With tiny little pieces to collect if it ends up being wrong.
|
| Emirates has a pretty good rep but this doesn't help.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Setting autopilot immediately on takeoff is very tempting because
| it massively reduces workload vs hand flying during a critical
| flight stage (high workload). So there's a strong temptation to
| do this. But if you miss a few checklist items and don't fully
| understand the systems, this is the result. The numbers seem to
| indicate they didn't immediately recover the situation either I.e
| immediately switch to hand flying and adjust throttle. At 1000 ft
| they're still 80 knots too fast.
|
| I also wonder about the decision to continue on after
| overspeeding the flaps. Takeoff flaps with full load on the
| 777-300ER is 15 degrees. Max airspeed with that setting is 215.
| They hit 260 at 175ft.
| jacquesm wrote:
| All hail engineering safety margins I guess. Hope they check
| out that plane, especially anything related to flap mounting
| and actuating as well as the flaps themselves. That's a lot of
| force.
|
| edit: omegant points out that the tires have been over-speed:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29763515
| ricardobeat wrote:
| I'm curious. This post leaves out the second part of the memo,
| seen in the original article [1]:
|
| > THE AFDS WILL ENGAGE IN "ALT" WHEN THE FIRST FLIGHT DIRECTOR
| SWITCH IS TURNED ON, IF THE MCP SELECTED ALTITUDE IS WITHIN 20
| FEET OF THE DISPLAYED BARO ALTITUDE
|
| There are two FD switches that need to be activated [2] if the
| altitude would've been set to 4000ft, so maybe this caught the
| "pilots" off guard?
|
| Note this is wild speculation as I'm not a pilot.
|
| [1] https://www.godsavethepoints.com/emirates-
| flight-231-takeoff...
|
| [2]
| http://hibdz.skydiving.co.uk/757/767_tech/automatic_flight/i...
| blinkingled wrote:
| TL;DR - Don't screw with the defaults (MCP) after landing,
| especially when it's unnecessary and when the next takeoff crew
| likely will not remember to set it to proper value before
| takeoff.
|
| I wonder if this is not a detectable condition for the flight
| software - maybe in some cases you want the MCP to be set to low?
| Otherwise autopilot could either auto correct it or issue a
| warning?
| ohazi wrote:
| This was 100% pilot error. You don't ever "follow the flight
| director" to determine when to rotate, you use the airspeed
| indicator.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > the next takeoff crew likely will not remember to set it to
| proper value before takeoff.
|
| If the takeoff depends on it, the next takeoff crew had better
| remember to set it. What's more, there better be at least one
| checklist that _requires_ them to set it. And they had _better_
| follow the checklists.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Standard takeoff procedures would have them rotating at a
| calculated airspeed and pitching for a climb target before
| transitioning to follow the FD. This crew's issues went way
| past a pre-select mistake.
| trhway wrote:
| >Emirates is telling pilots not to set the altitude to zero on
| approach, for fear of the next crew not changing that.
|
| that sounds like a typical result of Six Sigma/5 Whys/<whatever
| spawn of the PM/MBA methodology hell they are practicing there>.
| If one thinks a bit (note: not a part of any such methodology)
| there is a reason why previous - ie. landing - crew sets the
| target altitude to that of that target airport... I wonder
| whether there is a narrow specialization - ie. the managers doing
| safety analysis of take offs are different from that of landings
| :)
| zeristor wrote:
| So does someone monitor each and every flight for anomalies like
| this?
|
| Or is there some software that takes in the data from each flight
| and spots differences like this, there could be several more
| instances in the global data if this is a manual process.
|
| Could be an interesting little project, although I guess the data
| isn't publicly available.
| croisillon wrote:
| (2021)
| zaphirplane wrote:
| I am assuming pilots have had less flight hours over the last
| couple of years due to Covid
|
| Are pilots making it up in simulators or are they rusty (no
| offence)
| rsync wrote:
| "The thing that stands out here the most is the complete lack of
| control that the crew had over the plane. _The crew was managing
| the computers rather than flying the aircraft_. "
|
| Perhaps they are "Children of the Magenta":
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESJH1NLMLs
|
| ... and I cannot recommend this video enough.
|
| I am not a pilot and I have no interest in flying nor any
| particular interest in aviation, generally ... and I find this
| talk to be _fascinating_.
|
| EDIT: you can jump to 3:35 where he gives a specific example of a
| situation where pilots need to choose between automation
| dependency and dropping down a level of automation. He's a really
| good speaker and you can tell the audience is very engaged.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Wow, that is a great video thank you for sharing!
|
| Still watching it but wanted to comment.
|
| So taking this away from aviation,the reactions and issues he
| shares are exactly my concerns with self driving cars.
| bambax wrote:
| Great video, thanks.
|
| I find it weird that we learn so little about aviation when the
| industry has so much to teach us. _The checklist manifesto_ was
| a great attempt to try to implement checklists in the hospital
| and other places, but from CRM to workload management there is
| so much to benefit from what the airline industry has
| pioneered.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| More discussion (ostensibly by pilots) here:
| https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/644395-ek-231-20-decembe...
| jacquesm wrote:
| So instead of telling the _next_ crew to configure the system
| properly they are instructing the _previous_ crew not to set it
| wrong? I really can 't follow that. Of course it should be
| checked, every time.
| lvs wrote:
| I think there's currently a pilot shortage, and that leads to
| scary thoughts...
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