Changing seats
 

From personal observations in aircraft and simulator training (particularly with two Captains changing seats) the cognitive load associated with being in the "other seat" is underrated.
Fly Safe
PJ88

Because of a shortage of co-pilots the company scheduled captains to fly the other seat, being helicopter things are rather different to fixed wing when it came to accessibility of certain items, personally my choice was to remain as PM when assigned the seat.

All the terms refer to different parts of the job.

PIC vs CoPilot is who is legally responsible for the aircraft PIC is the one who must ensure the legality of operations. CoPilots are any other pilot on board assigned to operate the flight, but not finally responsible for it.

Captain vs FO/SO and so on are payrole and company specific titles usually with a list of responsibilities associated with compliance and company directives. You can have two Captains on a flight but only one will be assigned PIC, the other as CoPilot.

PF/PM/LP/RP are operational duties. Procedures will be specific to operating said position in flight. Usually a combination of manufacturer and operators procedures to ensure compliance and safety of flight. Anyone appropriately trained can perform each duty, PIC does not have to occupy the LP position, however that is the norm.

Add possible fatigue to that and you could have a very dangerous situation. Yes, the Pilot on the day bears ultimate responsibility but those who put her/him in those circumstances bear a huge amount of responsibility too.

(Many years ago, flying with a new captain on the fourth sector of the day just after midday on a Friday, being the 20th sector of that week, made me decide that after 1,000hr of line training, I had done enough. All had gone well on that flight, but I was seeing the 'danger signs'. The resulting reduction in pay was well worth it!)

I have only known one airline that restricted the percentage of a trainer's flying that could be training (that airline no longer exists). That is something that needs to be looked at very, very seriously.

Two Excellent Video Analysis , Summing Up Everything we Know so far .

Thanks for those videaos YouX4 , good resume of the possibilities, . Very sad to see on the first video, that when the PF realized lost power they were in fact on short final for the old airport and could probably have made it had they reacted faster.

Another “unbelievable” accident occurred to PIA8303 at Karachi in May 2021 when an Airbus 320 was operated in such a way that the aircraft system designers simply hadn’t contemplated would be possible.


That thought reminded me of the Airbus320 landing in the Hudson & the time taken to react having lowered the nose to protect the speed; then think about options was in the region of 30 seconds.
When the NTSB carried out simulator flights (knowing that the loss of thrust was about to happen) it took I think 17 attempts to successfully dead stick the ac back to the departure airfield.

The presence of mind required to go for an unplanned ‘plan B’ for YETI 691 & instantaneously go for the old airfield would require exceptional situational awareness. So unless this extremely remote scenario had been discussed between the crew, I think it would have been a non starter.
A good spot though and worthy of some discussion.

It reminds me of Neil Williams who suffered a structural failure shortly after take off, and prevented disaster by inverting the ac immediately. He later said that he had already thought about it the day before, and what action he would take.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing…

I've just been catching up on this, having not viewed it since the perplexing days immediately following the event. It hasn't taken long to discover what appears to have happened. But why, oh why did it happen? With this level of experience, mistaking the condition leverS with the flap lever in the first instance is almost unbelievable, but then not picking up on it when the flap lever was subsequently moved to the correct position strongly suggests incapacitation to me. Something that wasn't immediately obvious to either participant but was to prove fatal to all concerned. Events like this are a timely reminder to any of us operating these machines to check and double check what is happening around us. Assume nothing as we all know what assumptions are...

Absolutely. "why did not they do this instead of .." is always easy sitting in chair with all the hinsight and without the startle effect.
But that is what we do here in this forum no? That said, I have still difficulties accepting the 'simple " mixing up levers. explanation though. Hopefully the CVR/FDR will indicate if there was something more tto it.

PIA 8303 was in the "unbelievable" part of the spectrum of human performance, however the aircraft system designers were not involved in the event, and bear no obligation to the "quality" of crewing that existed on that day. There was sufficient and well tried systems to get the pilot person occupying a seat; pilot; for the use of, but the failure in the heads of the occupants at 0A and 0B was well outside any expected human performance that didn't include drugs or alcohol. The guys are high through their own processes, put the gear down high, and then when approaching a semblance of a profile retract the gear, then ignore every warning in the front room where pilots are supposed to be in attendance, and do a touch and go on the engine accessory gearboxes, tearing out the oil lines to both engines. Rather than complete the slide to a stop, they conduct a G/A, and everyone on board and some on the ground conclude their story on the planet somewhat earlier than anticipated. That would have been a shock for a 5 hr solo student, this was a trained and apparently "licensed" bunch of individuals that were given papers permitting them to be in the front office of an RPT jet.

It is slightly more disturbing than the US Bangla bingle at Katmandu, where, at a stretch, one could argue that the ND display was not as user friendly as it could be, perhaps a "PLEASE LAND HERE" message should be flashed on the map with an "INSERT THIS WAY" series of arrows suggesting which way is which for the cartographically challenged.

" the aircraft system designers were not involved in the event"

There was enough information and sensor inputs and enough computational power to avoid the type of accident. UAVs can land themselves - perhaps there needs to be a pilot cut-out switch controlled by the airplane computer.

The brainpower failure in PIA 8303 was from one pilot believing a go-around was the right move and cleaning up and the other one feeling like he could stick the landing. Seems like the computer should have been the tie-breaker.

Having the landing gear in the down position would have avoided a lot of unpleasantries. There was nothing in the design of the aircraft that would have led the occupant pulling flying pay to not know that once the gear has been dropped and raised again in flight, it might be good for noise abatement at least and utility of the plane to dangle the Dunlops once more. Thereafter, they drove a perfectly serviceable at planet earth amidst the noise of repetitive and multiple warnings. After the grind n' go, both engines were dutifully obliging in drooling mobil jet 2 over downtown, and then it got quiet, until it wasn't.

I crawl over broken glass to defend defensible positions of HMI, P-I-T-L stuff, but sometimes, just sometimes, it is just head shakin' makin'.

Aviation should not require an A grade performance at all times, however, it should avoid having F-troop in the office; the walk on freight would probably appreciate airlines and regulators avoiding the latter.
:rolleyes:

I agree - rubber hitting the runway would have been a better choice. HAL had all the info required to know to inhibit pilot#2 from pulling them up.

I think it can be both. If the plane overrides the pilot that goes to investigation and potentially removes another problem source from the pointy end before they can go any farther.

According to the AIB report he was as the selector was his alone as I understand it.

I just read about this incident - truly shocking.
Surprisingly though, not everyone on board was killed; there were 2 survivors from among the passengers.

I just wonder … about operating the wrong lever in the first place …

If you look at the interesting video of Magnar in detail … his explanation goes in slow deliberate steps … this gives the pilot time to feel the shape of the knobs, which is a possible muscle memory trigger …

both CL’s as a pair and the single flap lever … both require a liftup/pull action, but a bit different,… again Magnar here shows relatively slow deliberate actions adding possible muscle memory triggers…

question that i now have (for ATR pilots) … how different would it feel… (while looking out of the window) … but now, going in a rush, doing a ‘single’ fast and rough lift up/pull movement of each of the levers … between CL and flap operation?
in other words does a fast movement substantially reduce the difference in feel, and thereby reduce possible triggers ?

if so, in that case, would there be a difference being in the left seat or the right seat…?
if so, in that case, would there be a difference in the pilot being right or left handed…?

Would say that the main difference in terms of 'feel', between the Condition Levers and the Flap Lever, is that the Flap Lever is far more 'lighter' to operate than the CLs. There is more 'friction' associated with the movement of the CLs. It is therefore necessary to apply a bit more force to move the CLs than what is necessary to move the Flap Lever. The Flap Lever is very light to move.

What I thought initially when the word came out that the Propellers had feathered, was that the Pilot Flying was the pilot on the Right Seat, and maybe there had been a mistake between the Condition Levers, and the Power Levers. Being maybe a bit high, in terms of profile, or in terms of speed, and in an attempt of reducing the power of the engines to correct, instead reaching for the CLs, which are closer to the Right Seat, than the Power Levers, and inadvertently feathering the propellers.
We know now that this was not the case.

In the cabin video, are the cabin lights off? Or are they always off during a day flight? I cannot determine if they are on or off from the video stream as I'm not very familiar with the aircraft. Also on the before landing checklist there are items that would have been a clue (Ex. lights) to point to an AC "wild" generator shutdown. Or is that just a flick switch without indicator?

Although not related to this accident it's noteworthy that the ATR engines are labelled 1 & 2. The original B737-200s had this labelling but later Boeing types changed to L & R, a potential source of confusion due to multiple meanings of the word 'right'. As in:

Looks like we'll have to shut it down.
Agreed - make sure we shut down the right engine.

Did Boeing managers initiate the change of labelling or was it customer airlines? And for what reason?

(PAX). From my position of layperson ignorance, I find it a bit odd that the 'pilot monitoring' gets to move controls. Is the 'pilot flying' meant to monitor the ' pilot monitoring' for these actions ? In this case, from what I can see, the initial pf didn't do much in the way of monitoring either after control was handed over to the previous pm.
Is the task of landing so onerous that the pf can't manipulate flaps and gear under the watchful gaze of the pm ? Genuinely puzzled .