Dragon KA8348 Turned Around Mid-Flight Because Pilot Forgot His Map
 

Perhaps, as the Captain is ex -Ryanair , he forgot that KA dont use e charts and forgot to check the Jepp manuals?

Oh , but I forgot, KA do have e-charts but pilots are prohibited from using them
as their use is not sanctioned in the cockpit . Crazy but true.

Allegedly, the said ex- RYA skipper may soon be Ex KA , with a swift return to Barf a lona.

"e-charts"?

What is this sorcery you talk about?
If such a thing even existed, CXKA, the pinnacle of aviation itself, would have invented it!

Heresy! Witchcraft!

To be fair they did actually invent it,admittedly over a period of 12 years but were just very unlucky that after such endeavours it just didn't work.

iPad anyone?

FOs charts ?

iPad anyone?[/QUOTE]

HKA implementing EFB 3-4 year ago and gave new iPad every flight crew with EFB admin support !

Talk to ATC.......radar to visual?

Anyone ELSE find this difficult to fathom ?

Forget something important ? Sure--it happens from time to time. Comedy of errors; chain of events, and maybe not checking things thoroughly. But there has to be more to this.

Many folks have current charts on an iPad. Maybe not the best solution but one that can work--at least for SA.

AND you have ACARS and SATCOM. Surely you can get the pertinent data uplinked somehow and have ground staff meet you where you wind up with faxed or hard copies of what you need.

Not fun to make the call of shame, but it sure beats turning around midway and landing over something that you can probably work around (even legally).

So's I'm wondering if there's a back story here somewhere.

From what I've learnt they had an e-version of the charts but the paper charts were missing. It was decided (after ACARS consultation) that the risk of a ramp check without paper charts wasn't worth taking.

IIRC The KA A320 ACARS/printer setup is not capable of printing charts and there is no SATCOM.

"Many folks have current charts on an iPad. Maybe not the best solution but one that can work--at least for SA."

Shep , you are comparing Cathay Dragon to a modern , efficient and competently run company. As was posted earlier, iPad charts are NOT authorized for operational use in KA. Period. Even though they are the same e-charts being used operationally by Cathay Pacific across the road ! Perhaps they have better ipads lol.

The SATCOMs were de comissioned when CX transferred their ageing A330s to KA, but never fitted to the A320s .

My guess is that the usual blinker thinking prevailed and those who are paid to support and provided assistance could not think outside of their tiny boxes to create an effective solution. The irony of IOC.

iPads are not for operational use at CX either.

Don't you mean " because neither airline has professional dispatchers to research and provide a 'package' of info including charts at dispatch to a one off charter destination"
Pilots don't carry their own charts .. the airline provides 'mini jepps' specific to each route and destination on the day of departure and I can tell you NO crew looks through them predeparture to check if the arrival pages are there. We assume an airline could at least get that right!!

Rightly so; Not. My. Job.

There is some employee somewhere in CXcity that collects a salary and full benefits for this. Yet another failing task to pawn off on the only employee group in this sinking ship that gets things done. If we are meant to check charts are correct in the binders, well then you could say we need to check every possible alternate is on board as well.

Better start making all flights report 2hrs ahead of time to complete this task.

Well done to this crew for turning around. I hope they did it 10 minutes from top of drop. Only thing better would have been if they diverted into some bumblefack airport without support and then pulled the pin due to hours.

Its the only language they understand. When some little empire, useless outdated department in the big red or green circus tent drops the ball, the last thing you should do is compensate for them and pick it up. Let it fail in spectacular fashion, its the only thing that gets enough attention to actually fix things. Everything else gets promptly swept under the rug by the people that are now scrambling to keep their useless jobs.

Not trying to blame anyone here, but doesn't your checklist specifically say
AIRCRAFT LIBRARY...Check

One off charter ports are not in the port library, a specific trip kit is supposed to be generated.

How many of these cases have we had in the past?
During all my years of flying I have never experienced a crew not checking the 'package' of info including charts at dispatch to a one off charter destination, pre-departure.
The aircraft library for these flights include the 'mini jepps' specific to each route and destination on the day of departure.

I don't get it. Let's say the crew forgot to take the jepp book to the aircraft.. but they should have realised it's not there when preparing for departure from HKG?

When I used to use Jepps (we use iPads now) I used to check for destination and alternate charts in at least one set of Jepps when checking the docs.

It's not that hard.

The problem here is that they did not get a package, and that is not out of the ordinary for a charter as a lot of them go to offline ports that are in the book anyway, so the lack of a package means nothing at the dispatch stage. Part A says it's the airlines responsibility to equip the aircraft, including charts... the company systems failed the crew on that day.