Okay, let's get the ritual over. I am not a pilot (Booo!) I'm an Engineer (Hurrah!) I'm not an aeroplane engineer (Boooo!) but I am an engineer on very high tech equipment ( Hur ..... oh, all right then.)
This thread is very interesting from the SLF/Flight Deck Groupie (retired
) point of view, mainly because of the responses from
pilots. Which seem to be largely; '
Does it?' And then a sharp intake of breath followed by; 'Ooo, I wouldn't touch it - the checklist won't let you.'
Reading a forum like this is fascinating stuff, but its a bit like reading Welsh or Hindi - every now and then there's a phrase in English that helps you understand a bit of what is going on. All the rest is in TLA - Three Letter Acronym, but really, I shouldn't be surprised. I expect if you heard me and my mates talking shop, you'd get confused by the TLAs as well.
I take it that QRHs are the
procedures, chiseled into tablets of stone, that guide you through the admittedly fantastically complicated machine that is a modern airliner. To follow them is divine, you say, but then you say; 'but keep thinking - use common sense'. To which I say Ahmen.
I was startled at the number of pilots on this thread who were clearly a bit surprised when 18Wheeler mentioned it takes about 20 seconds to shut the engine down after pulling the fire handle. Right there is good enough reason to at least push it back sometime, in the simulator, without it being part of an evolution, surely?
Is it not 'thinking and common sense' to know that,
and know what happens if you push the thing back without discharging the extinguishers? Quite honestly, I don't think my engineering curiosity could be contained, if the procedure did not
expressly forbid me from pushing the fire handle back again - assuming I didn't do it to put out a fire.
Okay, I've bared my soul and await the terrible flames.
Roger.