BAW492 diversion at Gibraltar
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: by the seaside
Age: 71
Posts: 936
LD?
I went from BEA monitored approach with the "decide...change hands" to the BOAC monitored approach with the PM continuing to monitor the aircraft (experimental cross transfer after BA was formed ) and then onto the Swiss monitored approach which was a cross between the two.
The most foolish part of the lot was changing who was operating the throttles.
Recently at a guild knees up one of my first managers admitted that with hindsight they had got it wrong (we bent eight aircraft in my six years).
I learnt that passenger comfort and allaying their fears was not only part of the job but deferentiated between professionals and cowboys; this included not doing emergency descents with reverse, explaining (truthfully) to the punters what was going on, not planting the aircraft on the aiming point and not letting the automatics do silly things scaring the #### out of everyone.
I took these skills into light aircraft and glider instructing were you can see the fear in the punters first hand rather hiding behind a locked door.
In SR we were expected to greet then thank the pax when disembarking. .try it sometime as it teaches you humility.
There are still some that show that courtesy to pax.
Without doubt many aviators would not have left the autopilot doing unpleasant gyrations..there are times in your career that you will realise that company procedures do not cater for every contingency and you have to act on your own initiative.
It appears that the crew excepted 40 degrees of bank..how far would it have gone before they intervened and what could have been the consequences?
The most foolish part of the lot was changing who was operating the throttles.
Recently at a guild knees up one of my first managers admitted that with hindsight they had got it wrong (we bent eight aircraft in my six years).
I learnt that passenger comfort and allaying their fears was not only part of the job but deferentiated between professionals and cowboys; this included not doing emergency descents with reverse, explaining (truthfully) to the punters what was going on, not planting the aircraft on the aiming point and not letting the automatics do silly things scaring the #### out of everyone.
I took these skills into light aircraft and glider instructing were you can see the fear in the punters first hand rather hiding behind a locked door.
In SR we were expected to greet then thank the pax when disembarking. .try it sometime as it teaches you humility.
There are still some that show that courtesy to pax.
Without doubt many aviators would not have left the autopilot doing unpleasant gyrations..there are times in your career that you will realise that company procedures do not cater for every contingency and you have to act on your own initiative.
It appears that the crew excepted 40 degrees of bank..how far would it have gone before they intervened and what could have been the consequences?
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Marlow (mostly)
Posts: 251
Originally Posted by blind pew
Originated in BEA where some of the bomber boys could not cope with the Trident especially on approach way behind the drag curve and was the reason their monitored approach was developed. It was also the reason that Hamble was taken over by the corporations in 1960 when there were thousands of ex military pilots available.
“Bomber boys on the Trident” – for peer-reviewed information on "Pilot-monitored approach” see https://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Monitored_Approach and for more detail www.picma.info .
Re “It was also the reason that Hamble was taken over by the corporations in 1960 when there were thousands of ex military pilots available.” Complete and utter b***s.
See papers at for example Royal Aeronautical Society 2017 seminar https://www.aerosociety.com/news/pro...of-the-sandys/ Duncan Sandys as Minister of Defence in 1957 set out a government policy which replaced most RAF piloted aircraft operations with missiles. It abolished Fighter Command and manned interceptors, cancelled Blue Streak and its replacement Skybolt, rendering the V-force bombers obsolete by 1965, cancelled most aircraft projects and merged the remaining manufacturers. See also https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/.../0/steps/12809 . National Service and RAF short service pilot commissions were abolished, so the supply of ready trained ex military pilots would dry up at just the time that the Air Corporations wanted more to expand. Consequently, as stated in paragraph 1 of the introduction to the initial Hamble prospectus in 1960:
“FOR MANY YEARS the output of pilots from the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force provided the great majority of pilot recruits for Civil Aviation. With the reduction in the size of the Armed Services there were strong indications that this situation could not prevail for very much longer. The Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation and the Ministry of Education in conjunction with B.O.A.C. and B.E.A., decided that arrangements must be made to train, as pilots, young men who had recently left school and who wished to make Civil Aviation their career.”
Some aspects of Sandys’ policies were later reversed, but in 1962 as an ATC cadet when I passed the RAF's initial pilot selection process to get a Flying Scholarship, I was told that if I was successful and joined up, it would be on a 28 year commission and it was unlikely I would be actively flying after 1970. On that basis Hamble seemed like the better option for a pilot career!
Back to the real subject of the thread?
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Wherever it is this month
Posts: 1,443
Having only ever flown single-pilot I'm not at all informed on the rationale for specifying some approaches as 'captains only' for airline ops, or indeed on the timing of transfer of control. However having flown many approaches to Rwy 09 at Gib it does strike me as odd that such a stipulation would be applied to the landing but not the turn to finals, which as we've seen here is just as tricky and prone to upset in certain conditions. The transition from instrument to visual flight happens before the turn so the argument for a 'late' handover of control seems not to apply?
Last edited by Easy Street; 17th Mar 2019 at 14:58.
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: The Winchester
Posts: 5,914
Originally Posted by Easy Street
Having only ever flown single-pilot I'm not at all informed on the rationale for specifying some approaches as 'captains only' for airline ops, or indeed on the timing of transfer of control. However having flown many approaches to Rwy 09 at Gib it does strike me as odd that such a stipulation would be applied to the landing but not the turn to finals, which as we've seen here is just as tricky and prone to upset in certain conditions. The transition from instrument to visual flight happens before the turn so the argument for a 'late' handover of control seems not to apply?
Without opening the perennial debate about BA SOPs I'll just open the perennial debate on the same by pointing out that BA's current SOPs are that the "landing pilot" should not take control above 1000 ft AAL...
I shall now resume lurking....
Join Date: Mar 2019
Location: Norwich
Posts: 4
All I can say it was a horrible experience. We were told at Heathrow we may get diverted to Malaga but the pilot decided to give it a go. Then after the go around there was talk of her trying to land again if the weather changed in the next 20 minutes. Think we all just wanted to divert to malaga instead of maybe having to go through that again lol 😢🤢
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Surrey, UK ;
Age: 67
Posts: 1,008
Air Accidents Investigation Branch: current field investigations - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Nothing listed in the current investigations.
Nothing listed in the current investigations.
