Emirates 777 - Auckland

[portquartercv67]

This incident only highlights in my mind the necessity to change the format of notams in general. I am sure there are many goldenarms out there who "claim" to read them all. But wouldn't it be nice if the Human Performance engineers in conjunction with pilots and the regulating authorities could agree on a format that highlighted the "killer items" and separated them from the all nice to know stuff. doesn't mean we should not be responible for reading them all, but after all, our job is always one of prioritizing and there is only so much information that one can absorb. at least only so much that this average pilot can.

[Eliason]

To sort the Notams by necessity is a good idea - though it might vary what's important for the type of aircraft and/or operation you do...

What sometimes gets at me is when they don't clean out notams... some airports keep notams for ever. Example:

30 SEP 2005 16:11 UNTIL PERM INTERMEDIATE HOLDING POSITION T (TANGO) WITHDRAWN
LOWW - mark, the notam is from 2005!

You find many like this at some airports which sometimes makes it hard to spot the important ones...

[Fix Info]

Notam Overload

I can still recall a flight from Rome to Milan a few years ago, as part of a FCO-MXP-DXB flight. We had somewhere between 10-15 pages of Notams to go through for just FCO and MXP. None of us were particularly experienced flying in Italy, and therefore we had to actually slowly read through all of them. Due to the shortness of the sector, we couldn't read them in the air. You all know about the time pressure pre-departure. The situation seemed almost custom made for mistakes.

There's no proper Dispatch at EK, and therefore it's all non-abridged regular notams. Some dealt with ridiculous things like PPL-type speed control into MXP. The kind of stuff you learn about in your basic flying school. Please tell me how I'm supposed to be able to safeguard against missing important info among all the nonsense if I'm operating under those circumstances?

I know many french words to use for guys who point fingers and claim that us golden boys on the flight deck should be responsible and read all the material given to us. How come flight operations management don't take any responsibility and give us proper dispatchers? How come it's 2007 and we all still use a Notam system designed in the 1950s to minimize character transmissions? Where are the filters for all the gunk that's already published in the Jeppesens many months ago? Where are the graphics? Why can't the airport operators figure out that it's unsafe and inapropriate to shove tons of unnecessary information down the throats of throttle pushers?

We're human, and will make human errors. It's the responsibility of desk pushers to supply me with reasonable information both from a quantity and a quality point of view. If that's not happening, errors WILL take place, and safety WILL be compromised.

[SLFguy]

"desk pushers"


...big lads your Ops lot then?

[TE RANGI]

Kudos Fix Info

A thoughtful, accurate post, couldn't have put it better muself.

The Notam overload is not unique to EK. Many carriers have the same problem.

[propaganda]

Last company had notam'd WIP TORA/LDA reductions programmed into the OPS ( Hammerhead ) performance computers..not too difficult. Just an additional reminder and safeguard.
Bring back flight ops briefing officers...

[Mike773]

Where I work we have dispatch/flight ops officers at all online airports. It's up to us to go through the NOTAMs pages and highlight the important stuff. The crew get the entire volume (18-odd pages usually) so can read them for themselves if necessary later, but we only highlight relevant things (we ignore 34R/16L stuff at YSSY since 747s don't use it, for example). We also give them "painted" airport maps to show TWY closures etc. when there's something new.

So I hope propoganda's comment above continues to be heard by my company at least!!

[Dookie on Drums]

(we ignore 34R/16L stuff at YSSY since 747s don't use it, for example)

They don't???

I think you'll find 747's have been known to use 34R/16L at YSSY although not common.

[Mike773]

Our Long-Haul 74's don't that's for sure. Can't speak for anyone else though.

[noip]

747 usage of 16L/34R at Sydney is unusual, but has happened on two occasions I'm aware of, both because of the closure of the longer runway.

There is an outstanding photo of QF5 at rotate, departing on 34R for Singapore .. 34L being blocked by an A340 with a hydraulic failure.

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/0260864/M

N

[Xeque]

Reduced power on T/O

I can't speak for the B7xx's and the A3xx's here but I can say that when I learned to fly at Bodmin (a few years ago now) I was taught to use full power until established in the climb and then reduce power to avoid unnecessary engine wear.
We operated off grass runways where moisture and length of grass was a consideration.
I currently fly out of Bang Phra (Chonburi Thailand) on a 900M asphalt runway. Trouble is we have a railway embankment right at the end of 23 with power lines at 150 feet or so just beyond that and a 1,000 ft mountain going the other way. (Check out Google Earth)
Consequently I firewall it to be sure I am off the ground and climbing by the 300M marker so that I know I can clear the obstacles. I don't reduce power until I am over the power lines or have made the left hand turn away from the mountain.
1 minute or so at full chat probably does reduce engine life a little but I would rather that than have less than full power available during take off.

[Mike773]

Sounds reasonable. Obstacles are always taken account when planning take-off power. For us, our Flight Ops system and FMC have the official obstacles for each runway programmed so when we type in the TOW, wind, runway condition etc. it gives us the V1, Vr, V2 results.

Not many obstacles like you describe though at the major airports we operate to though!

Back in the old days, HKG Kai Tak's 31 had a nice big hill to avoid straight ahead.

[Xeque]

Mike 773

Thats right. Turn left and out over the Stonecutters NDB yes?

[Few Cloudy]

Notam - pre-digested

Reduced take off Thrust - please observe Danny's remarks further up...
Subject in Question:
I used to work for an airline which tried to take the aggro out of official Notams by issuing a "predigested" tailored notam for the route.
This was a huge help but it meant that at least one man was fully employed just translating the notams into user friendly versions. And yes I know you can have a route specific Notam in many airports but they are not specific enough and not clear enough.
I was really swimmimng when I then worked for airlines without this service and had to go through the chicken cack by myself. I think this is the "normal" world of flying - but does it have to be?
The man who sieved through the official docs and made a nice user friendly plain English time saving summary for my old airline, could just have easily done this for the flying world in general.
How about a campaign to get this done generally - not too difficult in our digital world?
FC.

[Earthmover]

I went to an East European airport two years ago and when I went through Few Cloudy's beautifully expressive "chicken cack" , there was one buried in the actual airport NOTAMS in the local language forsooth. The rest were in English, just the one in Martian. Unacceptable - there was no possible way we could have known what it implied before we departed - there are not many interpreters hanging around my crew-room at 0500 and I didn't have time to nip back to a motorway service station to ask the serving girl, and there were no plumbers present. To this day I haven't a clue what it meant because I forgot to ask the despatcher when I got there, but we survived.

The whole system is 'pants' as poster after poster states here.

[nojwod]

Reduced thrust

Isn't it true that (perhaps in pre-software driven aircraft) that firewalling the throttles allowed more than 100% N1 or N2 thrust, which was technically available out of the engine but not good for it. I seem to recall a 'normal' figure for a 73 early series of 92 or 96% N1 (or was it N2) being the norm and the throttle was set accordingly. Correct me if I'm wrong it's been a while.

[Shore Guy]

I'm guessing this aircraft was fueled for it's three hour or so flight, but some airlines have tankering programs in effect. Does anyone know what the weights were for this flight?

My guess is if this aircraft had been fueled/loaded for a 10-12-14 hour flight, this might have been front page news.

[777SandMan]

No, minimum fuel is carried on this sector.

[TangoUniform]

C'mon boys and girls, use your heads. The NOTAM system is perfect in all respects. That is, it's perfect to protect the backsides of everyone except the pilots. "Captain, why didn't you read the NOTAM related to xyz on page 3 the forty fifth line down? It was right there in front of you." So the airport is covered, the dispatchers are covered, the managments are covered, the ATC system is covered. And of course you are covered if you can read jibberish at 3am in the morning and remember everything 7 hours later.

So why would anyone ever want to change it? It hangs the pilots out to dry, but everyone else is covered. Watch your six.

[Woof etc]

hmm. Brings to mind the Emirates Incident at Jhb a couple of years ago when one their A340s took out the approach lighting system on a reduced thrust take off.