Originally Posted by
EXDAC
My speculation, and it is only speculation, is that turbulence was encountered while a seat swap was in progress and one of those involved in the swap put out a hand to steady themselves and pushed the throttles full forward. Speculation is based on lots of time in flight test where many seats swaps were observed. Who wouldn't have wanted to give the newbie a bit of stick time?
Originally Posted by
Lonewolf_50
While I am not privy to Atlas' SOP, I'd be surprised if they did not dictate that such a crew swap would need to be done at altitude (FL whatever) before descent into the terminal area. We'll see.
A seat swap with a jumpseat rider from another carrier?
Even on a freighter that doesn't seem likely to me. At least not in 2019.
It was the case at some places that unauth
orized seat swaps 'to give the engineer a leg' were common on ferry and freight flights as recently as the 1980's. I've also heard of giving a fed a leg without authorization.
For example, the seat swap with the flight engineer had happened in the crash of United 2885, a DC-8 freighter that went down at DTW in 1983:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United...es_Flight_2885
In 1988 a Pan Am captain was fired for allegedly letting a flight attendant fly a 747 full of pax but he filed a union grievance and got his job back:
On September 25, 1988, Gay was employed by Pan Am as the captain of Pan Am Flight No. 81, a Boeing 747 passenger aircraft enroute from New York to Los Angeles. During the course of the flight, First Officer Dennis Brooks temporarily vacated the co-pilot's seat and Flight Attendant Naomi Kaneda sat in his place. It was reported that Ms. Kaneda put her hands on the control yoke, but it never was clearly established that she actually manipulated the controls of the aircraft. The testimony of certain witnesses before the National Transportation Safety Board did indicate that Ms. Kaneda actually hand-flew the aircraft and that the aircraft deviated from its assigned altitude at that time.
An investigation of the incident was conducted by the Regional Chief Pilot of Pan Am, and he concluded that Gay was guilty of misconduct in the incident. The Chief Pilot found that Gay had allowed an unqualified person to manipulate the controls of the aircraft, in violation of Pan Am's Flight Operations Manual and Federal Aviation Regulations. As a consequence of these findings, Gay was discharged by Pan Am on December 31, 1988. Gay then filed a grievance over his discharge as provided in the collective bargaining agreement entered into between Pan Am and its pilots. The grievance proceeded to arbitration before the System Board of Adjustment, the body designated to conduct arbitrations under the collective bargaining agreement. The Board found that Gay was deprived of a full and fair investigation of the charges lodged against him and ordered him reinstated with full back pay and seniority rights. The Board made no finding on whether Gay allowed a flight attendant to fly the aircraft.
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal.../60/83/565776/
I haven't heard of these seat swap shenanigans for years though. Sometimes a current and qualified (and sober) deadheading pilot from the same company might offer to take a turn in the seat for a while as a courtesy to the operating crew but even that was explicitly forbidden in the manual about a decade ago where I worked.