KA A320 does unfavorable diversion
 

Last week KA064 did an air turn back to Kota Kinabalo. They had a hydraulics overheat, which remained illuminated. The position of the aircraft was abeam Manila, enroute to HKG. The approx flight time to Manila wad 25 mins. The flight time to return to BKI was around 1hour 10 mins including the 180deg turn.
IOC advised Manila and even the KA Chief Pilot got in on the act, and advised divert to Manila.

The plane did a 180 deg and flew back to Kota Kinabalo, with the green hydraulics in a state of over overheat. The crew consisted of a senior first officer, currently working out his notice , and a junior Captain of the spikey hair , Pokemon Go generation ( You all know where im going with this ;)

When asked why he diverted to BKI, the captain allegedly stated he had never flown to Manila.

No feedback from management on this one . Go figure

It is hard to take your post seriously when it contains this kind of nonsensical elitist trash.

Wait wait, let me get this strait.

The captain was playing Pokemon Go and it took him to KK?

Unbelievable.

Yeah we know where you're going with this, you are going straight up to management and hand in your resignation letter, so you can go back to your back country farmhouse and not having to worry about your colleagues having better hair or more tech savvy than you. Clearly you admit you are getting too old for this game and should be quietly sailing off into the sunset.

Oh yeah btw, you spelt Kota Kinabalu, your online port, wrong in your post, TWICE. So much for being the "experienced" bunch in KA.

What a **** move. <----Tango Whiskey Alpha Tango>

First his FO bad mouths him to the cabin crew and now his 'colleague' vilifies him on pprune.

He made a decision, everybody lived. Yes, he regrets it in hindsight and no, he wouldn't make the same decision if presented with the same scenario again.

He's not one of the 'spikey hair' brigade, doesn't behave in the manner you seem so keen to attribute to them and happens to be one hell of a nice guy. He just happened to have been born in HK and there lies YOUR problem.

Get out of this company, you're not welcome here. Go directly to jail, do not pass Go!, do not collect your gratuity.

Whilst the OP has shot himself in the foot by being slightly disparaging about our HK born friends, I can still see his point and all of you should wind your necks in.

Overheat of ANYTHING is one step down from the biggest f**king emergency possible on a plane- regardless whether the computer tells me Land ASAP in amber or red - use ur brain.So this clown decides to turn back around because Manila with one ILS and an RNAV is unfamiliar???

I'd rather land in Manila than have to land in Puerto princesa because the overheat turned into something much worse.

One day, just one day. Its only a matter of time... Mark my words

On the other hand he had the intestinal fortitude to make a Captain's decision to overrule both IOC and the CP, and did what he thought was right. Sure, we can monday morning quaterback it, and learn from it. But hardly seems "spiky haired" behaviour or to be condemned out of hand

Come on Dan this is FH, it's what we do :E

STP

Heaven forbid diverting to destination when BKI was so close. More to this than meets the eye, even forgetting MNL for a minute (or 25).

That man is one of us, and we should all back him up 100%.

They're all safe, and the airplane is in one piece. What is there to discuss? The extra dough KA will have to cough up for the jet A and flying an engineer down there? Cry me a bleeding river. They can take it off our profit share.

It's bad enough that management is constantly breathing down our necks, ready to jump at our throats at the slightest sideways fart we make.
We all have bad days, however much some of us seem to believe they are above all judgement (and races, apparently...), and when those bad days happen and it's knives out with the fleet office, we'd at least want our colleagues to not stab us in the back as well.

And keep your racist drivel to yourself, or the youtube comment section. While you're there, you can binge watch Donald Trump campaign speeches.

Manila less than half the flying time away, CX port, IOC and CP begging you to go there and the G Hyd is f###ed.......Hmmmm sounds like a great idea to go back to Kota K.

All 40 minutes difference, WOW!! He desired to go to a KA port and do you know for SURE that IOC and the CP was BEGGING him to go to Manila or was that possibly a suggestion?
You have all the facts?

There are hundreds of ways to skin a cat.
All is well, everybody safe, great result, well done and let 's move on. Next case....

@Dan Buster: couldn't have said it any better. This is one of the problems with our profession (and part of the reason why our conditions continue to suffer), there's simply too many out there that would rather watch a guy crash and burn than to lay a helping hand. Once guys figure out that we are all in this together and that the only way up is by building rather than tearing down, then perhaps, just perhaps we might one day hold the upper hand on those that deem our profession nothing more than a bunch of trained monkeys pressing buttons.

Tsimbeit,

Either he is your mate or it was you so that's ok. Pretty hard to justify flying an extra 40 minutes with a major malfunction when he/you could have gone to MNL.

Return to base was a solid call in my opinion, if not time critical, no need to go rushing into an unfamiliar port, pax don't want to be in Manilla anyway, either Hong Kong or kk.

Rather happy he didn't buckle under the pressure of OPS or management and worked autonomously to a solution.

Ps not on Airbus, so I have no idea how time critical the failure was.

Not throwing stones here. Simply making comment regarding some queries from non Airbus guys above. Time critical? There are 3 hydraulic systems. From my understanding of the event 'one' of them had an overheat. Not failure. Airbus do not consider one hydraulic system shut down a significant event. Neither does KA. Hence, perhaps, some of the sarcasm above.

Xwind landing, no it wasn't me or my mate, I am sorry to disappoint you.

Do you ever wonder why many people don't respect 'pilots' nowadays?

It is because of a group of embarrassing, miserable losers like yourself.

Toxic and selfish, no team players, unhappy, dogmatic, negative, disappointed and angry about most things in their sad lives.

This is dangerous because they also believe that they are better than others and unfortunately people around them must suffer their BS and boring company.

Sadly their best mate is, schadenfreude.

Next case.....

Tismbeit,

I've made plenty of f### ups, no shame in it as long as you learn from it. Your mate made a bad decision simple as that. No point trying to argue the sky isn't blue.

Xwindldg, quite obviously what you learned from your f**k ups were to publicly shame others when given the opportunity, so you can find some sort of moral redemption yourself. Can't wait to hear you criticizing your own mistakes next.

You can say he made a bad decision all you like, as far as I'm concerned you didn't provide any evidence for that statement.

Dan Buster already explained that there were three possible decisions to make of which he chose a perfectly valid one. The company might not have agreed as operationally it might not have been their preference, but who cares? Ultimately the decision to return stands up to scrutiny. It was not time critical, the plane was not on fire, the passengers just came from BKI, etc.

I'm surprised how a non-event can turn into such a vilification excersize. Give it a rest.

Dress it up all you like. A Hydraulic system had an overheat. Dan can give you as much data as he wants between the temperature that gives an overheat warning and the actual igniting point of the fluid.

And you would rather risk it being nothing whilst abeam Puerto Princesa? How familiar is that port to KA/CX pilots?

Besides all that. You guys are missing the biggest point of all and I must admit Dan my old mucker has certainly lost some integrity when it comes to his past and future posts on experience levels and children of the magenta.

What Captain decides to abandon the nearest suitable airfield that is a CX AND KA port with an RNAV and ILS because he is 'unfamiliar' with it??? This is the type of question I thought Dan Buster would ask. Or are you getting soft in your old age?

And from his own peers no less.
What a display of camaraderie and solidarity. :yuk:
And then we complain when management tries to turn us against ourselves for their own gain. I guess they're the ones with the brains after all.

tsimbeit,

Wow, talk about not wanting to admit a mistake. Getting all emotional about it doesn't change the facts.

I haven't been to KK for years.

Ha!! I didn't even say it was you and you're getting all defensive. That's gold!

This comment is the best and closest to the mark...

What a tedious blathering resulting in a tedious read. Always ready to hang a colleague. I do however find it incredulous (if its true) that an ERA is written off simply because the capt. hadn't operated there before. What on earth would happen enroute to europe or transpac? A happy ending safety-wise but operational sense and airmanship must surely be the basis of sound command!!

They were only doing what they were trained to do.
Out of the box decision making is not trained at KA. All exercises are canned with no time to stop mid-exercise and assess the effect of your decisions or the other possibilities, due to unrealistic time constraints.
Current PC has an off route diversion but again canned exercise as it is an escape route.
Just of interest most of the top brass in training are cadets or airforce and before I get into trouble for that comment, it is good and bad. The guys did nothing wrong just were just not trained to think outside the box.

Not trained to think outside the box?????????? You must be kidding me????
That is supposed to be our bread and butter.

What a stupid comment.....

Another excellent example of how it's done properly here in FH. Good onya cobber :E

STP

Wow, I cant believe that the point here is being missed. (in my opinion). The point is his reason for why NOT Manilla. For an aircraft captain to say I didn't go to an major, well resourced international airport because I'm unfamiliar - doesn't deserve to hold a command. Arent we supposed to handle anything thrown at us? Good grief - Ive not been to Manilla, that is NO excuse. And if the issue was not so serious and did not require getting on the ground ASAP, and the loss of one hydraulic system is not so serious etc etc, then KK was NOT the best choice, HK was.

Been to Manila lately Rod? 'Well resourced' is not how I would describe the place!

That said, if a diversion was necessary, then I believe Manila was the obvious choice and should have been given some consideration.

About 2 years Buzz. By well resourced I meant in terms of getting in there - approaches, that in reality, you just load in the box, take your vectors, press APP button, down you go. If any captain cannot do that, he should be shot. And that applies to the spikes, AND the Gweillos.

I'm not familiar with the term spikes - could you elaborate please? :E

STP

I'm frankly disgusted to read fellow airline pilots obvious undertones of casual racism towards fellow company colleagues. I think it's fairly obvious what you are getting at with spikes, and Pokemon go generation.

KA's a training airline turning cadets into commanders inside of 5 years and the Capt in this event is brand new. Not even enough experience to be unleashed into the contract world. There would be some patience with the decision making process in this event and nobody here has considered enroute weather. This route has had some seriously spectacular turbulence events at KA.

The patience management has afforded this captain hasn't been witnessed here on pprune and the racial undertones of some posters is an ugly disgrace. Especially when some of the comments show a pretty modest capability themselves. You can sit pretty in a legacy carrier but I doubt you would keep your job in most airlines diverting to an ERA with a single HYD overheat on an A320.


I remember when this type of good guff was taught. Some guys above have been watching too many WW2 movies; even under pressure due system damage, in mist or spray form, the flashpoint of modern HYD fluids three times the ECAM value overheat value .

Non-technical skills are an emerging issue under the pressure of rapid upgrades. I've mentioned this before, just recently, on another thread where the pilots of KA have been scrutinized for their decision making under pressure. CRM has not evolved nor kept pace with the industry locally- it was well behind when I started here and progress has only been TEM. The decision making template taught seems flawed lacking thorough crew assessment of risk- the CLEAR model- and is little more than a decades old, elemental OODA loop, that is out of place in the modern operation with new factors at play such as less autonomy and more operational control and media hyper-sensitivity. Now consider a culture of self-induced fuel pressure due paranoia and a reporting culture so badly shutdown that the ability to learn the lessons of others is at a modest level. To pick up in these areas would need external assistance.

Bingo!
Even if there was none it shows the armchair heroes aren't in full possession of the facts.

The plan from day one, was to create a Hong Kong airline run by locals, with the original experienced expats passing on their skills and knowledge to cadets and other staff.

"KA's a training airline turning cadets into commanders", correct but that's where it stops.

The local group of pilots have completely missed out on the experience to be gained from participating in training, flight operations management, DPA committee work (negotiations and other business).

Where is the integration after all these 30+ years?

Gnadenburg,

What if that ERA was a full 40 minutes closer and the company were asking you to go there?

ACMS read my comments again, yes it is supposed to be our bread and butter but obviously the system does not allow this to develop naturally.