Originally Posted by
Ken Borough
Does this failure amount to negligence? And does the FO still have a job at SQ?
Wasn’t the FO or other flight crew’s fault at all.
Pitot covers are meant to stay on until several minutes before pushback, whereas the flight crew walk around usually happens 20-30 minutes before ETD. The SOPs dictated pitot covers would have been on during the flight crew’s walk around.
The mitigation the flight crew had in this case was a warning placard placed on the centre pedestal by the engineer which was only to be removed once they had removed the covers, except in this case they removed the placard
without taking the covers off or conducting a final walk around before pushback.
The pilots were following SOP and trusted the engineering to comply with their SOPs.
I know some pilots have a habit of opening the windows, leaning out and physically checking to see the pitot tubes are uncovered in a situation like this, however probably impossible to see from the flight deck of an A350.