Role Playing situations or scenarios from your experience?

[limchristopher]

HI there people,

I would like to know any real life situations that most of you encountered during your days working as a pilot? What actions will you take and how did you perform your duties ?

Cheers,
Chris

[Caracul]

I'm not a pilot, just a wannabe, but I think you may have to be more specific in your request, before you get any replies. Do you mean in the air or on the ground? Situations between crew, or passengers or of a technical nature? Just a thought.

[limchristopher]

Some of the scenario questions are like:

1)on Descent, your captain dops below the glide slope. AS F/o, you bring it to his attention. HE doesnt respond to you or take corrective action. What shuould u do?

2)YOu are FO.YOur captain shows up wth what seems to be the smell of liquor on his breath. What would you do? Why? Other options?

3)You are given several complex tasks to perform. How would you approach accomplishing all of them in a reasonable period of time?

4)Your FO. YOur captain is giving the FE (female) a very hard time. (apporaching sexual harrassment) What should you do?


5)YOu notice that your captain is not follwing the checklist. YOu bring it to his attention. He tells you he doesnt need to follow it-he knows it. What would you do? While in cruise, he starts reading a flight magazine. Should you say anything?


6)YOu are the captain. YOu observe a passenger giving a flight attendant a hard time. Woudl you intervene?Would you get involved?

7)Passengers were told they could only take bags on board. one passenger were a frequent flyer and refuses to comply witht he rule. HOw would you handle this situation?

8)Under what circumtances do you feel that FO would be justified in taking control of the aircraft away from the captain?

9) A passenger has a heart attack while the aircraft is in cruise. The nearest arge airport is an hour and a half away. The passenger happens to be our brother. YOu are the captain. What would you do??


I hope you all can help me to give some opinions.....as i would like to assess how well pilots work out their way to solving problems and handling difficult situations...

[FlyUK]

1)on Descent, your captain dops below the glide slope. AS F/o, you bring it to his attention. HE doesnt respond to you or take corrective action. What shuould u do?

- Tell him again, inform him you are not happy with the approach and is he ok to continue it.

2)YOu are FO.YOur captain shows up wth what seems to be the smell of liquor on his breath. What would you do? Why? Other options?

- Ask him if he is happy to fly, inform him he should think about going sick, if he says he wants to fly say your feeling ill. Flight doesn't opperate.

3)You are given several complex tasks to perform. How would you approach accomplishing all of them in a reasonable period of time?

-Prioritise, don't rush them, keep calm.

4)Your FO. YOur captain is giving the FE (female) a very hard time. (apporaching sexual harrassment) What should you do?

-Depends what he is giving her a hard time about. If you can, say you will go and sort it. Go into the galley and discuss with FE.

5)YOu notice that your captain is not follwing the checklist. YOu bring it to his attention. He tells you he doesnt need to follow it-he knows it. What would you do? While in cruise, he starts reading a flight magazine. Should you say anything?

-Say that you don't know it, and you would like him to read it out for your benifit.

-As long as he is doing all of the other tasks required then its ok.

6)YOu are the captain. YOu observe a passenger giving a flight attendant a hard time. Woudl you intervene?Would you get involved?

-YES, ask what the problem is, remember you are responsible for the whole aircraft, remind him of this.

7)Passengers were told they could only take bags on board. one passenger were a frequent flyer and refuses to comply witht he rule. HOw would you handle this situation?

-Inform him that it is the policy for all passengers to only bring on bags. This is a safety reason and must not be broken. You appologise if it is not to his liking but rules are rules and must be complied with.

8)Under what circumtances do you feel that FO would be justified in taking control of the aircraft away from the captain?

-Incapacitation. If the captain is ill, or looking ill, or is flying in a very unsafe way.

9) A passenger has a heart attack while the aircraft is in cruise. The nearest arge airport is an hour and a half away. The passenger happens to be our brother. YOu are the captain. What would you do??

- Divert to the nearest airport, ask if theres a doctor aboard. What else can you do?

Expedite :ok:

[scroggs]

Role playing, or 'what if' scenarios are an opportunity for you to get your brain into gear and apply your intelligence and imagination to the situations you are presented with. If you trot out a series of pat answers that you've learned from elsewhere, it is very obvious to the interview board, and really does you no favours.

Why don't you sit down and think carefully about those situations for yourself, and come up with a range of options for each one. Then think about the pros and cons of each option, and be prepared to justify why you have chosen the course of action you say you would take. If you can't explain why you would do something, then how can I (the interviewer) be persuaded that you've thought about it at all?

Scroggs

[Pilot Pete]

expedite

I would argue the merits of your answers to the following questions;
2)YOu are FO.YOur captain shows up wth what seems to be the smell of liquor on his breath. What would you do? Why? Other options? - Ask him if he is happy to fly, inform him he should think about going sick, if he says he wants to fly say your feeling ill. Flight doesn't opperate.


Well, I would suggest if you went home ill they would find another F/O and the flight would operate. In effect you have not dealt with the situation and just 'passed the buck'. What if they reject and he screws it up with the (new, inexperienced F/O) who replaced you and never noticed what you noticed?

6)YOu are the captain. YOu observe a passenger giving a flight attendant a hard time. Woudl you intervene?Would you get involved? -YES, ask what the problem is, remember you are responsible for the whole aircraft, remind him of this.

I think you will find that 'YES' in this situation is in-appropriate. Things have changed since 9/11 and what you have to remember is that your primary task is the safety of the 'whole aircraft and the persons on-board'. Endangering all the other passengers and crew by getting involved and being (potentially) physically assualted and possibly incapacitated does no-one any favours. You also have to consider the rather obvious potential diversionary tactic that the unscrupulous my be using to get just the reaction you mention........

8)Under what circumtances do you feel that FO would be justified in taking control of the aircraft away from the captain? -Incapacitation. If the captain is ill, or looking ill, or is flying in a very unsafe way.

Not sure if you intended to imply that incapacitation would be the only time to take control. I think it goes much broader than that, to the point where I would take control whenever the safe conduct of the flight was being compromised and the captain was not responding appropriately. This then takes you into the more intricate decision making like the captain busting DA. this is a great one and everyone says they would take control. Well how about this;

You (PNF) call "100 above.......decide(at 200'AGL)". He replies "continue..."

Are you going to take control there? I don't think so, you're going to say (more forcefully) something like "Negative, DECIDE!" Using good body language, perhaps turning your head towards him and leaning into his peripheral vision and pointing an open hand at him as you say it, forcefully. That tells him that he's not following a recognised SOP, you are NOT HAPPY as the safety of the flight is being compromised and hopefully the 'jolt' will make him see the error of his ways and get him to make the call to go-around.

What if he, cool as a cucumber, says "continue!" again? Now is the time that I would CONSIDER taking control. Why consider? Well, by the time I have challenged him about his first (non-standard) call of continue, we have probably sailed through 150'AGL. If we then broke out of cloud and were stable on the approach the better airmanship decision now MAY be to let him continue to land. This has happened before and I know captains (who were F/Os at the time) who have been in this situation. You must remember that the surprise to you of him saying 'continue' will take a few seconds for you to compute and realise the implications. by then he may have achieved his goal of getting below minima and seing the lights. I would certainly have something to say once the engines were shut down, like, "captain here's the ASR report form that we need" :rolleyes:

If we're still in the clag then I am going to take control. That then begs the obvious 'what if he doesn't want to give you control?' question............. I'll leave you to work out your options on that one............

PP

[FlyUK]

Pilot Pete, i agree with everything you have just said. I am going to add, if you hadn't already guessed that i am only an ATPL student at this point so have no online experiance with any of the above. Hence i have absolutely no grouds to argue. :O

Scroggs, agree with what you said aswell. I do always enjoy people aksing me these types of questions and hearing what others would do in the situation.

Expedite :ok:

[HEALY]

Pilot Pete makes a very good point and a scenario which I would imagine could create debate. Is it safer at a critical time in flight ie DA of an ILS to 'let them go' than have a situation of conflict and confusion at such a time. There would be only so much you could do as PNF before you would have to accept that the PF has lost the plot and it could actually be safer letting him contimue and suffer the consequences later. These consequences hopefully only relate to paper work.

[Pilot Pete]

Is it safer at a critical time in flight ie DA of an ILS to 'let them go' than have a situation of conflict and confusion at such a time.

Again, not sure if it's the written word and the difficulty associated with getting the implied meaning, but I read the above comment as avoiding conflict and 'letting him go', which is certainly NOT an option. In the scenario I mentioned there was no 'letting him go', and the conflict is already there; he's bust DA, without visual reference. You can't just 'let that go', you have to deal with it. The point I was making was that you have to challenge him again, with a bit of urgency and in a fairly forceful manner at that point as time is so short. If he continues on his (inappropriate) course of action then you MUST do something about it. My point was that 'that' something may be to let him continue (in the example I gave, you had become visual, perhaps passing 100'AGL) as that may be the safer course of action, on another occassion it may be taking control. It's a judgement call that experience and confidence will help you to make. Sometimes you can't avoid the conflict............

PP

[timzsta]

On the 'smell liqour on the Captain's breath' situation I might be tempted to get a second opinion. I would perhaps leave the flightdeck on the premis of using the toilet and have a quiet word with the senior cabin crew member. I would ask said cabin crew member to come onto the flightdeck to see if he / she could also smell liqour. If the cabin crew member confirms my suspicion some sort of joint approach perhaps. Much easier if two or three of you are not prepared to fly with him.....

But if the cabin crew member is not of the same opinion as me then I would probably have to go down the route suggested already of asking the captain if he has been drinking etc. At the very least I would make sure I was very on the ball and monitoring what the Captain is doing very very closely. If the Captain showed signs of being under the influence as we prepare for departure / run the checklists etc then I would have to serious consider whether I would wish to get airborne with him.

One of my moto's is : better to get into trouble for something you have done rather then something you haven't. I think that applies quite nicely to this scenario.