Some questions for the professionals
Hello,
Wonder if I might trouble you for answers to a few questions arising from my own imagination and curiosity. I'm a low-hours PPL so please forgive me! All the questions are in the context of a 'bucket and spade' commercial 737 or similar operation.
At airports where the ground staff may not speak English very well (or even at all) how do you convey how much fuel you would like loaded (and the correct units) without misunderstanding?
Do airline pilots have the equivalent of 'FREDA' checks performed every 10/15 minutes? I realise they won't be 'aligning DI to the compass', but hopefully you understand what I mean. Perhaps some checks to cross reference fuel state/position/etc.
Say, for some reason, the navigation display/magenta line suddenly disappeared, would the flight crew have the necessary resources (ie charts and so on) in the cockpit to continue navigating 'manually' to the destination? It may be the case that it's not possible for this to happen because of redundancy, backup systems etc, I don't know - I've only ever flown Pipers and Robins :-)
Imagine in the descent, coming down through the clouds the handling pilot becomes unresponsive, maybe drowsy and is therefore said to be incapacitated. How does the other pilot A) realise this if the cockpit is sterile and there isn't a conversation happening and B) what happens next? Does he still say out loud 'I have control' and just carry on flying? I realise not all situations are the same, I'm just curious to know how it *might* be handled. Much respect for the guy (or girl) who then has to carry on and land the thing on their own, the workload must increase massively. Is this something you practice in the sim?
How many 'memory' checklists are there for flying something like a 737? I imagine there must be a lot.. and you have to be able to recite them all without hesitation?
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read and maybe answer any of those. Hopefully they make sense. Like I say I've never been P1 in anything bigger than a PA28 but I have nothing but respect and admiration for those that fly for the airlines.
Last edited by rich_g85; 23rd February 2012 at 23:48.
Reason: Added some spacing!