If you want to know how to fly a large aircraft safely and stay outa trouble you can do no better than ask and listen to 411A.
You may not like his manor of delivery but possibly that is his technique to ensure you remember what he says.
We should be thankful he has takes the time in his retirement to caution and warn and pass on his considerable lineflying experiance to us, and this information is FREE.
IMHO...Possibly a better call than "Airspeed active" is the Boeing call of "80kts" and the response of "Cross checked"
What these calls require to be observed is often forgotten or unkown. Indeed they have not always been taught and are assumed by instructors faced with the quick conversion course time limitations as "Common knowledge."
Some of the things the "80 kts" call ment to me were.... My left and right airspeed indicators agree and importantly the standby emergency airspeed indicator also agrees.
Thanks to Mr Boeing this scan was a nice all in line near horizontal scan.
The "Positive climb" call... It is observed that the Ivi and the pressure altimeter and the standby emergency altimeter and the radio altimeter of the pilot required to make this call All show a positive climb.
When the other pilot also observes ALL the above indications on his instruments he answers "Confirmed"
Then the request "Gear up" is made and it is activated in a controlled slow and unrushed manner.
I feel it is very important for pilots to include the standby instruments in their instrument flying scan on takeoff and after rotate and during initial climb and also at other critical times.
Sadly since the Comet days there have been fatal accidents due the handling pilot being seduced to follow a single failing pitch attitude indicator when there was also two other easily checkable sources of this information in front of him.
A situation where a simple two outa three check could have kept them alive.
This cross scan could have alerted him that something was very wrong early enough for him to fly power airspeed altimeter safely enough and not lose control until the rouge instrument was identified and selected out of the system.
This Handling pilot safety scanning is needed especially if the non handling pilot is also failing on this particular night for whatever reason to also scan correctly as a safety back up.
Especially important with a two man crew or on a three man crew where the flight engineer is not fully intergrated in the flight instrument scanning and flight progress.
Interestingly the flight engineer of a 747 which crashed climbing off RW27 Bombay over the ocean one black night was recorded asking the Captain to "Fly by this" as attitude control was lost.
Fly by this.... was believed to have ment... The standby emergency attitude instrument. I do not remember any Fo input on the CVR tape.
I believe this 747 entered the water with a rate of descent of 10,000 feet per minute plus with a bank angle of over 110 degreees.
Also a 747 out of Stanstead was afflicted with an ADI problem. Crew monitoring back here up also failed to prevent a crash.
So for 2003 boys as handling pilot,please do not forget to scan yours and scan the standby, and if they disagree scan his.....
Fly safe... scanscanscan
