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Old 6th Oct 2005, 21:37
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Arrow Safety, incidents, etc

Thread as suggested by VC10 Rib22.

A thread allowing all cabin crew to give examples of scenarios where their lives are being put at risk and what they think could be done to address these issues? CC could even state at what airport such negligence occurs and what conversations took place with the handling agents. Surely this has got to be at the top of your agendas, way above pay, routes, uniforms, ugly pax, etc?

Obviously, individuals can't be named but I leave it up to the discretion of the moderators whether handling company names can. The thread should not be a headhunt, nor should it be about settling old scores - it should be about preventing fellow CC being injured or killed in the future. I think you owe that to the memory of all colleagues who are no longer with you due to falling from aircraft.

I am sure that CC are not all innocent and have caused accidents in the past, through conversation or actions, so I invite handling agents to also state where they believe the problem lies, giving examples where appropriate. To aid balance, they may also name the airlines involved but, again, no individuals, please.
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Old 12th Oct 2005, 14:15
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I hate when Nigel lies to me

Right....whenever I fly with this particular captain I don't feel comfortable. He's a pleasant enough chap, but has the ability to put off anybody (ground staff, dispatchers, fuellers, first officers, cabin crew etc). He is the kind of person who's always in a rush and wants to get back early, so stresses people to the limit, almost always obtaining the opposite result.

The other day something happened that really made me want to talk to somebody in the company about it (but I didn't).

We all boarded the aircraft just after 5am, for a quick and easy MRS there&back.
As we were doing our checks etc my colleague and I started smelling fuel at the back of the aircraft. It was very intense. It then spread all over the aircraft. I pass my checks over the PA as usual and inform the purser that there's a strong smell of fuel at the back which is unusual. Captain replies "Till we fly these machines on hydrogen, you'll always smell that!"

The puser then comes to the back, and having smelt what we did, calls the CPT to check himself.
Captain arrives elegantly chewing his gum and says he can't smell anything. He then calls the FO who, at the CPT's question "you don't smell anything, do you" replies "No I don't".
We then call the other cabin crew from the fwd galley who in fact can smell the same.

Pax boarding is delayed till the air clears. During all this time, no explanation from CPT.

Pax then board and as we start pushing back and while I was reading the demo, the smell increases again. It's really strong, so much that I feel a bit sick at this point. Passengers start questioning us. We cannot give a proper answer as we don't know what is going on ourselves. We try to calm them down, but with a full load of business pax who travel every day and know the aircraft almost better than us, lying isn't an option.

It's only after lots of pressure that the CPT says that this was the 1st flight of that particular a/c after being in the hangar and the paperwork showed that it had APU problems before etc etc etc and a load of rubbish.

Now at this point I thought:

1) Why joke about our concerns? why not being grateful for noticing and reporting what was going on?

2)Why not telling us immediately what was going on? Was he scared we would delay the flight even further so that he would miss his roast dinner?

3) why create so much upset for nothing....especially if he knew it wasn't something to worry about?

4) Where is the responsibility towards the passengers (and crew)??? When worried pax questioned us I was so angry I wanted to say "I don't know there's something wrong with the plane but the captain won't tell me"-of course I didn't, and just because I care about them.

I really hope I won't fly with this person for a long, long time. But I know that Sod's law always work. So I hope I can find a way to deal with this before then. Because if something happens next time, I'll propbably do something more about it.

Thanks for listening!!!

FBW
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Old 12th Oct 2005, 15:53
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FBW,
we have a form report called "REX" (Retour d'expérience") where you can you can report incidents that made you feel uncomfortable. I personally used it to report almost the same thing that occurred to me with a F/D crew. We reported something we thought was out of the ordinary, but we didn't get any feedback from them because it was caused by something they had forgot to do So instead of ending it by a "oops, nobody's perfect", they convinced us that not only they weren't, but they also weren't mature enough to admit they were humans, and got a REX on top of all that to prove it.

Another thing I'd do, is talk about it on joint (CC-Pilots) CRM-Human Factors courses. I'm sure something like that must exist in your company.
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Old 12th Oct 2005, 19:59
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Can I suggest that caution be exercised when posting in this thread. One of the Australian aviation magazines stopped publishing humourous "incidents" as CASA began using them as a means of investigating those involved.

Whilst safety issues should be reported, they should be reported using the appropriate channels. Posting identifiable information in this kind of forum (where there is no accountability of those who post) could be an issue for those named.

Remember, mud sticks whether it was fairly thrown at you or not.

(Anyways, that's my 2 cents!).
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Old 17th Oct 2005, 17:04
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For those FD chaps that maybe browsing this who still go to work with the attitude we CC are all flying mattresses and thats about the extent of our usefullness (thankfully very rare these days), You may like to read something positive..............

One very icey and snowy morning just before departure the In charge went to the captain and repectfully mentioned that "the wing doesnt look right" The captain, a very crew friendly chap said he would take a look and thanked the in charge for bringing it to his attention and not to feel that she was not qualified to have done so.

On his inspection he found that side of the AC had not been de iced, a potential catastrophe averted.

So fly boys in the dark ages (I stress the band of few) have a little think and ask yourself if you have ever dismissed as nonsense a crew members concern.
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Old 31st Oct 2005, 12:29
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FBW,

Sounds like you should have flight reported it and sent it to your head office with your flight paperwork. In our company it would have gone to Flight Ops. It was a definite safety issue!!!!!
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Old 17th Nov 2005, 22:36
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As one of those front seat people find that disturbing (Although I am military not civvy driver) We have a few of them probably more percentage than you lot due to the good old rank thing. We tend to find taking them aside one night on a stopover some where and telling him/her that they are a grade A nob and if they dont't wake up and smell the coffee they will get A. A kicking or B. A report to the CRM (think thats the multi crew people for you)peeps and any comeback on this little chat will be met with you me in front of boss. Some tend to think that as a Capt they are the dogs bollocks so company will fall on their side. Seen that theory go west about four times now, so stick to your guns be suprised how companies can actually see through arrogance.
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Old 9th Jan 2006, 08:54
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Re: Safety, incidents, etc

This is why we have CRM training! Lets just hope that some people remember that we are a team, not just the tea and coffee chuckers down the back!
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Old 11th Jan 2006, 19:31
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Re: Safety, incidents, etc

Hi, apologies if this is the wrong place for this question but was just reading Flight and saw two separate incidents reported where doors were ripped off (large) aircraft by the boarding bridge....during the pushback.
Can anyone shed any light on how this could happen? Reputable airlines at major airports too.
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Old 13th Feb 2006, 12:59
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As a ground trainer that resides at LHR but travels around the patch I do have one observetion to make that effects all CC. Here at BA it is forbidden to have any Cabin doors open without the jetty or steps being in place. I observe time and again the situation with doors open with nothing in place only the tape. This will not stop you falling out and seriously injuring yourself and has been fatal. If this practice exists in your airline stop doing it and get your procedures changed.
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Old 13th Feb 2006, 13:58
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Flybywire....Hope your well chick!
Anyways, I would really push you to either report this incident in person with your ACCM or submit a chirp report. Im sure this chap is nice enough as a person but that kind of complacency (if it was that) or lack of consideration for you guys buy not explaining the situation is very dangerous. If you have a general concern this guy should not be allowed to make you feel inferior for bringing it up!
Only last week as I was standing in the Club World cabin on a 777 during boarding I kept observing a really loud grinding noise which I knew was not normal. I went to the flight deck, told the lovely lady captain about it and she personally came down and waited a few minutes in the area to observe the sound. It transpired to be nothing but an A/C pack which was subsequently reset. But all the same she thanked me for telling her and reminded me that I should always voice a concern no matter how minute it may be...this is the kind of person we should be using as an example to the rest of our flight deck colleagues although I still think ours our the best out there!
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Old 28th Mar 2006, 16:52
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Originally Posted by HZ123
As a ground trainer that resides at LHR but travels around the patch I do have one observetion to make that effects all CC. Here at BA it is forbidden to have any Cabin doors open without the jetty or steps being in place. I observe time and again the situation with doors open with nothing in place only the tape. This will not stop you falling out and seriously injuring yourself and has been fatal. If this practice exists in your airline stop doing it and get your procedures changed.
This 'no doors open' policy is one of my real bug bears... The number of times we've been sweating in the cabin as the APU's broken *again* and we can't open the doors because of the 'wrap you in cotton wool' hysteria that pervades the airline at times.

It just begs the question, how did we survive before? If you're really that stupid to fall out of a door, maybe you're too dumb to be let out of the house alone... Some of the things I see my colleagues doing leave me speechless, all people need to do is stop and THINK and half the stupid accidents won't happen.
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Old 21st Apr 2006, 15:01
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Was once on a positioning flight with a well known carrier not long after they had started trading. The AC was an early model 737 with the usual oil leak on the side of the cowling. Shortly after take off the ground engineer I was travelling with said " you used to fly these things, do they normally leak as badly as that?" I looked out of the window and saw the normal oil leak was now a river. We both hit the call buttons at the same time and up came a young lady who asked what we wanted. We pointed out the problem and asked her to let the chap in the front left seat know. Her response "There is nothing wrong with the plane, and if there was the captain would know about it."

Production of ID cards showing that we were aircrew and ground engineer gave her the opportunity to tell us that we may be who we said but we obviously didn't know about the workings of that plane. Eventually my colleague shouted for the number one and when she arrived told her that if she didn't get straight up to the front and tell the boss he would. Bless her she looked out of the window and went straight to the cockpit.

In the meantime the original young lady accused us of making a fuss and trying to upset the other pax. When asked if she had heard of Kegworth she said "who?"

One minute later an announcement from the front we were returning to departure point, one engine shut down etc.

After landing the captain invited us to look at the aircraft with him and the engineers. There was bugger all oil left in the number 2 engine. the oil pressure and temp warnings had come on just after the number one had entered the cockpit.

Bless the number one. she knew the picture was wrong and went straight to the front. The other young lady learned a valuable lesson:- THE FLIGHT DECK DON'T KNOW EVERYTHING. And sometimes the pax just aren't just an embuggeration, occasionally they know aircraft better than the person doing the safety brief.

I hope pilots are allowed to post on this thread. We are all together up in the air and one F up could get us all at once.
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Old 22nd Apr 2006, 15:41
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Verticalhold that was one amazing incident - possible accident! Thank god nowadays almost all airlines (at least in europe) have quite good CRM courses where Kegworth is analized in details.

I had something similar happening about a year ago but we were on the ground thank god.
As we boarded this jet (an asian airline) I noticed some engineering work was still taking place. I was sitting on a window seat on the right-hand side and could watch some engineers working on engine n4.

That delayed our departure and the captain was clearly feeling the frustration that we were all sharing, and kept reassuring us that we would be on our way as soon as possible.

When we finally started pushing back the crew gave us a safety demo and we started taxiing slowly. It was at that point that I looked outside again and noticed that the engine hadn't been closed properly!!! I don't operate on that specific aircraft but I know planes well enough to realise it didn't look quite right!!!
My story is a happy one as I attracted the attention of a crew member and, in the nicest way possible, I pointed out to him what I saw.
Less than two minutes later we were taxiing back to stand, engineers called back and engine closed properly.

I never underestimate what my passengers say to me re. what they notice on my aircraft. It takes no time to have a look myself and in some cases I felt necessary asking one of the flight crew to come out and give me their opinion.

That problem of the oil leak on the 737-200 though is something I have seen - though not as bad as verticalhold's example - so many times. I remember the first time I saw it I was a young girl and I thought that was the norm!!!

Last thing : Pilots are more than welcome to write on the cc forum and they have always been!

FBW
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Old 22nd Apr 2006, 17:08
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verticalhold,
it seems almost impossible that such things can still happen, with all the effort the companies are putting into CRM! Well, obviously, as they say, some people are just impermeable to it
Your story is very similar to a textbook one for CRM studies, the Dryden accident and if you read this text you'll understand why.

I had a similar experience some years ago while I was on duty, when a Cabin Chief accused me and another collegue of not "trusting" our pilots since they hadn't come to check what was the problem we had reported, and hadn't communicated anything about it, as they should have. We said that unless we spoke to the F/D to make sure they were correctly aware of the problem (she had reported what we had said to them) we would fill a CRM report about the incident. At that point she went back to the F/D, and a very embarrassed F/O explained to us that as soon as the problem was reported he realised he had forgot a procedure (excuse me for being vague, but for security reason don't want to post too much information about it) and corrected the problem, but failed to communicate it to us because he didn't want to admit to a mistake. So in his view we should have happily taken off without being sure that everything was fine.
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Old 22nd Apr 2006, 17:35
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Originally Posted by flyblue
I had a similar experience some years ago while I was on duty, when a Cabin Chief accused me and another collegue of not "trusting" our pilots since they hadn't come to check what was the problem we had reported, and hadn't communicated anything about it, as they should have. We said that unless we spoke to the F/D to make sure they were correctly aware of the problem (she had reported what we had said to them) we would fill a CRM report about the incident. At that point she went back to the F/D, and a very embarrassed F/O explained to us that as soon as the problem was reported he realised he had forgot a procedure (excuse me for being vague, but for security reason don't want to post too much information about it) and corrected the problem, but failed to communicate it to us because he didn't want to admit to a mistake. So in his view we should have happily taken off without being sure that everything was fine.
You know flyblue a couple of months ago myself and a colleague had to challenge our flight crew once we landed as we definitely felt something unusual and worrying on our approach. Like you I don't really feel like giving details, but the Captain didn't want to explain and left the F/O (it was his sector) to explain "in his own words" what had happened. At first he came up with something that didn't convince us - we fly numerous sectors everyday on that aircraft and we know what feels normal and what doesn't! Then, after a long discussion, he admitted he had made a mistake and apologised. Apology or not, (we are all human beings after all) why not tell the truth straight away? As crew we have the right to know what is going on!! I am experienced enough and have never panicked even in difficult circumstances, so like the vast majority of cabin crew if I am concerned or if I notice something strange it must mean something!!!

You were very brave to confront your SCCM. I don't know if in our company we have CRM reports, I will have to make some enquieries. It's rare to have such problems like this I have to say, but CRM is no joke as previous accident investigations have revealed, and "that" time might be "the" time something goes completely wrong!!

FBW
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Old 23rd Apr 2006, 17:27
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flybywire,

actually they are not specifical CRM reports, but general reports (anonymous of signed) where one can underline the part that seemed worth reporting, in this case bad communication (ergo bad CRM).

Just to be clear here, the problem was not to demand an explanation to the F/D, but that as part of the crew we must be aware of what's going on to recognise a possibly dangerous situation, or one requiring our attention. In the case of the Dryden accident, the CC didn't report the pax's remark about ice on the wings (that might have saved many lives) because she had been rebuffed for doing so by another Captain in the past. So if we are told that "it was nothing" when patently it was something, we risk to file a wrong information in our experience baggage. And, last but not least, trying to safeguard someone's "pride" by trying to conceal the truth, along with a wrong order of priorities, might give the wrong impression that a wrong manoeuvre is a "mistake" while the Human Factors teach us there's no "mistake" but a series of events leading to a wrong manoeuvre.
Luckily it's been a big leap forward since that way of thinking.
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Old 20th May 2006, 17:14
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WHAT DO U DO...

I would like to know how it's possible to educate aviation crew on CRM knowing too well that cultural differences may affect the understanding and behaviour during questioning....

How would a F/O question the CAPT- his superior, when his culture advacates the following of heirachy.

You can put some people in a room for hours, days and weeks highlighting the importance of CRM and the free ability to question for reassurance...yet it may never sink in.

I question this because i see it in my work place, yet feel extremely helpless when i am being yelled at for questioning something i am unsure off.
This not only puts the fear in me based on their inability to question each other in that cockpit, but my concerns stems from any future mishaps.

I've questioned an FO as to why an incident happened that shouldn't have, and his response to me was ''don't worry, just do what the CAPT wants to keep him happy''....

Hell when i think of those words, it makes my skin crawl.

Last edited by mystiqueFLYER; 21st May 2006 at 08:07.
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Old 20th May 2006, 23:02
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Mystic

Many countries have steep authority gradients and one can sympathise with your plight.

I suspect it is the fault of the CRM team in not ensuring that its teachings are not adhered to...I presume that your company acknowledges variences between cultures with regard to authority gradients. There was an excellent article in one of the flight safety magazines or Flight a couple of years ago wherin this was discussed...should I find it I shall e-mail it to you.

All cultures vary and if the requirements of RM are not being met then I suggest you raise it at your next Flight Safety meeting. At my last company we had many cultures and the potential for problems was huge. As soon as a problem of this nature arose the FS team discussed it with the individuals concerned and the situation regulated at the following FS meeting. It seemed to work OK.

At the one company I worked for we had one captain whose checks were such that any similarity between the checklist and what he did was purely coincidental...a quiet word to the rosterer ensured that I never had to fly with him again ever...similar actions by others ensured the fellow himself was recalibrated.

NC43
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Old 21st May 2006, 08:04
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i sit back i assume...

NUTCRACKER

I thank you for your feedback and in sharing your experiences.

You might not understand how difficult it is for me to approach my company with such incidents...it's something they would shrug off and sweep under the carpet.
I have made mention, however it doesn't mean action would be taken.

I would love to read more the article of mention.

It's such a shame because no matter what cultural background, every culture has it's individual beauty, but it's the little things that can make it so hard to break.
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