Wrong weight entry … again
I doubt if any passengers let alone a significant number of our customers are looking at their watches and tapping their fingers/toes.
In flight, pax complained that he had previously flown a well known European airline, the citizens of which Country were well known for precision and efficiency, and that Capt. had announced a 45 min delay, and precisely 45 mins later the engines started - what was wrong with me ?
I explained that the previous Capt. had probably been ready in only 20 mins, but would have waited the full 45 mins. to prove the National ( and his ) point !!
JW411 - currently in Santa Monica on hols. I'll have a beer in the Kings' Head for you. ( when I leave Sears, need to upgrade my tool kit ! )
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PJ - unfortunately the 'on-time' management/bonus-driven culture is wide-spread. A few years back at LGW I was 'preparing' for 'ready-for-flight' with pax still boarding when I heard the forward (737) door slam shut and seconds later a harrassed purser rushed in to tell me the dispatcher had 'pushed' the last few pax in, shut the door in her face and was removing the jetty (aka 'on-time' for him/aka 'delay now down to Captain'). I duly vacated my seat, opened the door and summoned him back for 'a chat' - but that is what we were up against - and it messed up his 'Christmas turkey' I think
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Ish + Ish = Ishish
After the war it is easy to be a Minister of war...
Anyway....
When we talk about wrong V1 Vr and V2, would it not be helpful to check The Actual Acceleration till 100 KTS or any other bellow V1
against Calculated Acceleration in seconds.
It is not only weight that can lead to underspeed at V1 Vr and V2, but also:
change of wind,
engines' thrust bellow expected,
brakes not exactly off for one reason or another, etc. etc.
(or check the Acceleration even by INS or GPS etc. g-Force
if available perhaps like in (411A) L1011s)
Anyway....
When we talk about wrong V1 Vr and V2, would it not be helpful to check The Actual Acceleration till 100 KTS or any other bellow V1
against Calculated Acceleration in seconds.
It is not only weight that can lead to underspeed at V1 Vr and V2, but also:
change of wind,
engines' thrust bellow expected,
brakes not exactly off for one reason or another, etc. etc.
(or check the Acceleration even by INS or GPS etc. g-Force
if available perhaps like in (411A) L1011s)
BOAC;
I know you know all that I'm about to say but I would like to offer a thought as I think the continued public discussion of this is important.
Our industry sells "time" and nothing else. So the pressure is natural understandably needs to be managed - that's the key point for the commander.
In practise, managing commercial pressures is part of what we do, just like everyone else in the chain of command. It is the balance that is the key. Experienced commanders already quietly do this without fanfare. The discussion here is important for those coming up for or who have just begun their first command either in an aircraft or on-board ship.
As a testimony to how well the industry legitimately-without-compromise works under such pressures, in almost all cases the issue being discussed is not a problem for crews and no incidents/accidents occur.
There are times, like your example, when the captain's authority to keep the park-brake set while things get sorted out and pointed out, should be exercised and the pressure to depart on-time set aside until it's appropriate to push-back.
Sometimes a reminder from the captain of who is in command is a good thing - in my view, for far too long we have let far too many personnel who will never sit in the oak chair answering the tough questions, have their say in our cockpits and have an effect upon our operation. It is a good thing to regularly draw the line where the law provides and requires.
Would that the Spanair MD82 captain (or even the F/O) in Madrid had done so.
We know that there are parts of the world where cultural behaviours and priorities do not permit this to work, and instead captains are routinely pressured by forces well outside of the cockpit to compromise flight readiness for time, MEL issues and so on. The fatal accident rate reflects this priority.
It is the regulatory authority who licences us and permits us to fly passengers, not our employer.
In the end, we provide a service under licence which has nothing to do with corporate priorities and everything to do with keeping the operation as safe as reasonably possible.
PJ2
unfortunately the 'on-time' management/bonus-driven culture is wide-spread.
Our industry sells "time" and nothing else. So the pressure is natural understandably needs to be managed - that's the key point for the commander.
In practise, managing commercial pressures is part of what we do, just like everyone else in the chain of command. It is the balance that is the key. Experienced commanders already quietly do this without fanfare. The discussion here is important for those coming up for or who have just begun their first command either in an aircraft or on-board ship.
As a testimony to how well the industry legitimately-without-compromise works under such pressures, in almost all cases the issue being discussed is not a problem for crews and no incidents/accidents occur.
There are times, like your example, when the captain's authority to keep the park-brake set while things get sorted out and pointed out, should be exercised and the pressure to depart on-time set aside until it's appropriate to push-back.
Sometimes a reminder from the captain of who is in command is a good thing - in my view, for far too long we have let far too many personnel who will never sit in the oak chair answering the tough questions, have their say in our cockpits and have an effect upon our operation. It is a good thing to regularly draw the line where the law provides and requires.
Would that the Spanair MD82 captain (or even the F/O) in Madrid had done so.
We know that there are parts of the world where cultural behaviours and priorities do not permit this to work, and instead captains are routinely pressured by forces well outside of the cockpit to compromise flight readiness for time, MEL issues and so on. The fatal accident rate reflects this priority.
It is the regulatory authority who licences us and permits us to fly passengers, not our employer.
In the end, we provide a service under licence which has nothing to do with corporate priorities and everything to do with keeping the operation as safe as reasonably possible.
PJ2
Last edited by PJ2; 18th Jul 2010 at 16:06.
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It is the regulatory authority who licences us and permits us to fly passengers, not our employer.
Nice, but naive. You tend to forget that in a lot of places they report to the same bosses, or at least share the same bed.
Gretchenfrage;
No, the view is not naive. Did you read the entire post? That very point is acknowledged as is the accident rate for those countries in which the relationships you describe obtain. From the post:
The comments are addressed to those for whom a normal regulatory relationship applies, and to those who may be just beginning their command, (which I also stated in a previous post). I acknowledged in a reply to BOAC that a fully sterile cockpit during departure is probably like "trying to climb Everest", but that doesn't invalidate the original point which is made thoroughly enough in the other posts in the thread.
Nice, but naive. You tend to forget that in a lot of places they report to the same bosses, or at least share the same bed.
Originally Posted by PJ2
We know that there are parts of the world where cultural behaviours and priorities do not permit this to work, and instead captains are routinely pressured by forces well outside of the cockpit to compromise flight readiness for time, MEL issues and so on. The fatal accident rate reflects this priority.
unfortunately the 'on-time' management/bonus-driven culture is wide-spread.
10 mins later, repeat performance.
10 mins later I'd had enough, long duty period, other pax to consider, etc. get off, close door pls. Go.
Can't go without Mrs. Potentate. Yes I can. Can't go with Mrs. Potenates bags on board - Yes I can, don't think Mr.or Mrs.Potentate are security risk, my decision ( long prior to 9/11 ) pls. close door as you leave, now, thank you.
More wetting of pants, and then 2 black Mercedes slid under the nose, problem solved.
Yes, culture comes into it, sadly. I'd probably have been sacked, but I was near the end anyway, and equally it would have been a wasted gesture, those sort of people are going to ignore them like us anyway, 'twas always, and always will be, thus.
Might have made me feel good tho' !!! Unfortunately it would only have been a Battle I'd won, not the War.
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After pushback, sids, runways, winds and conditions change. The take-off data has to be reprogrammed. The Before Take-off Check is the last error trap in the chain. The item, "Takeoff Data" is responded to on the Airbus in our airline with "FCU, FMA, PFD, ND, set." The Captain's response is "Reviewed and Set."
It's very easy to parrot this during taxi without really checking.
If you can't see yourself making the mistakes, I think you are more likely to make them.
It's very easy to parrot this during taxi without really checking.
If you can't see yourself making the mistakes, I think you are more likely to make them.
Normalisation...
Hi.... FWIW...
Good summation PJ.
"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself". L. N. Tolstoy, (1828-1910).
IMHO, Aerospace "safety Culture" is fundamentally a myth. Safety is paid lip service at all levels, including a number of investigative organisations, (which have been politicised to the point of irrelevance).
For commercial enterprises, including operators and manufacturers, the same applies.
The institutional "systems" safety leader should be NASA (+ one assumes ESA & FRS...), given their operation at the edge of known technology. The lip service paid to safety review is evident to the lack of critical evaluation of systems prior to Apollo 1, Challenger, & Columbia. Between the last events, where one assumes that the soul searching following the loss of Challenger and the tightening of safety oversight existed for a period until corporate memory dimmed leading to Columbia is belied by the events of Phase 1 ISS, the NASA crews on MIR. In that time, safety was continuously compromised by the politicising of the task, including under reporting of risks and criticality of events, denying event occurrences, while providing little support to the first 5 increment crews.
NASA has a history of normalising abnormal operations where no loss of life actually occurred, consider the O Ring erosion issue, well identified before 28th January 1986, MIR fire(s) before Phase 1 increment 3 Kvant-1 module fire, loss of power, depressurisation, comms losses etc. Trivialising of a near miss between Progress and MIR was followed a few months later with a direct hit and a decompression of the station, and the loss of the just added Spektr module. Notable throughout this history is the sad fact that Safety Officers did speak out about the situations that they were aware of, and for their proactive input ended up in obscurity. In some cases, the usual response from an organisation facing embarrassment, the tried and tested activity of "shooting the messenger" has been engaged in.
"trending away from Goodness..."
Civil aviation... recall the engineer that blew the whistle on falsification of a certain US carrier who had falsified maintenance reports on MD80 Stabiliser Trim actuators.... he is still in professional purgatory. Having followed the regulatory mandated processes.
The MIR safety dissenters ended up in professional obscurity, as did the Challenger M-T dissenters.
Politics trumps commerce, trumps safety.
We are taught to act responsibly and truthfully, and report safety deficiencies. Guess what... that may be the ideal, and desirable, it is inconsistent with the reality of the real world. The organisations do what they can get away with within reason, and generally what benefits the managements continued tenure in management, ie being able to obfuscate sufficiently to avoid direct blame for their complicity with continued disregard of safety standards and duty of care.
FMS design, load sheet processes, and robust performance crosschecks will occur once the pain to management has achieved adequately large magnitudes. Not before.
In the meantime, the poor operator usually will continue to be barraged by conflicting schedule demands in the pre departure period, where generalised (ball park) values would have been readily available with just a little bit of common sense.
Excuse the rant...
SMS...
CRM...
EMC...
HF...
great concepts; management invariably fails to implement any of them into their own processes. For the guys/girls flying the line? keep up your skills and any process that retains SA, or gives the hairs on the back of your neck a fair weighting. Flying is fundamentally safe, it just is unforgiving of loss of situational awareness. Don't expect any acronym, however well intentioned, stopping you becoming a statistic.
Crews: "In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you". Tolstoy.
Managers: "A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction". Tolstoy.
PJ: "Management positions in the safety department are sometimes viewed as backwaters with little possibility for advancement and so may not always be taken seriously. Depending however upon how strongly the organization's CEO feels about safety and its importance, mid-level managers may behave in a way that is contrary to the interests of SMS. Budgets and defending one's department's expenses is a far more powerful motivator than any safety information one gets on a monthly basis. If one can escape "flak" from one's boss, knowing that the CEO's priorities are costs and productivity, one will do so with little thought. If the CEO sends out the message that inappropriate risk and safety violations will not be tolerated, you may be sure that the organizations senior and mid-level management will make this their own priority because they know they have the support (and the job security) of their leader.
The actual ignoring of safety information, (knowing there is danger, but ignoring it), is rare, and implies what Diane Vaughan called, "amoral calculation" - an intentional dis-interest in safety information that will increase costs, cause delays or require re-design of processes or components. She also coined the term, 'normalizaion of deviance' which is the result of such "ignoring" - one just points to the lack of untoward outcomes when standards are reduced and declares that the new, lower standard is acceptable. I think there is ample indication that very few within an organization behave in this manner but instead feel as though what they are doing is exactly the right thing and do not see it as increasing risk. As discussed in Vaughan's book, this is what the normalization of deviance does within an organization".
The actual ignoring of safety information, (knowing there is danger, but ignoring it), is rare, and implies what Diane Vaughan called, "amoral calculation" - an intentional dis-interest in safety information that will increase costs, cause delays or require re-design of processes or components. She also coined the term, 'normalizaion of deviance' which is the result of such "ignoring" - one just points to the lack of untoward outcomes when standards are reduced and declares that the new, lower standard is acceptable. I think there is ample indication that very few within an organization behave in this manner but instead feel as though what they are doing is exactly the right thing and do not see it as increasing risk. As discussed in Vaughan's book, this is what the normalization of deviance does within an organization".
"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself". L. N. Tolstoy, (1828-1910).
IMHO, Aerospace "safety Culture" is fundamentally a myth. Safety is paid lip service at all levels, including a number of investigative organisations, (which have been politicised to the point of irrelevance).
For commercial enterprises, including operators and manufacturers, the same applies.
The institutional "systems" safety leader should be NASA (+ one assumes ESA & FRS...), given their operation at the edge of known technology. The lip service paid to safety review is evident to the lack of critical evaluation of systems prior to Apollo 1, Challenger, & Columbia. Between the last events, where one assumes that the soul searching following the loss of Challenger and the tightening of safety oversight existed for a period until corporate memory dimmed leading to Columbia is belied by the events of Phase 1 ISS, the NASA crews on MIR. In that time, safety was continuously compromised by the politicising of the task, including under reporting of risks and criticality of events, denying event occurrences, while providing little support to the first 5 increment crews.
NASA has a history of normalising abnormal operations where no loss of life actually occurred, consider the O Ring erosion issue, well identified before 28th January 1986, MIR fire(s) before Phase 1 increment 3 Kvant-1 module fire, loss of power, depressurisation, comms losses etc. Trivialising of a near miss between Progress and MIR was followed a few months later with a direct hit and a decompression of the station, and the loss of the just added Spektr module. Notable throughout this history is the sad fact that Safety Officers did speak out about the situations that they were aware of, and for their proactive input ended up in obscurity. In some cases, the usual response from an organisation facing embarrassment, the tried and tested activity of "shooting the messenger" has been engaged in.
"trending away from Goodness..."
Civil aviation... recall the engineer that blew the whistle on falsification of a certain US carrier who had falsified maintenance reports on MD80 Stabiliser Trim actuators.... he is still in professional purgatory. Having followed the regulatory mandated processes.
The MIR safety dissenters ended up in professional obscurity, as did the Challenger M-T dissenters.
Politics trumps commerce, trumps safety.
We are taught to act responsibly and truthfully, and report safety deficiencies. Guess what... that may be the ideal, and desirable, it is inconsistent with the reality of the real world. The organisations do what they can get away with within reason, and generally what benefits the managements continued tenure in management, ie being able to obfuscate sufficiently to avoid direct blame for their complicity with continued disregard of safety standards and duty of care.
FMS design, load sheet processes, and robust performance crosschecks will occur once the pain to management has achieved adequately large magnitudes. Not before.
In the meantime, the poor operator usually will continue to be barraged by conflicting schedule demands in the pre departure period, where generalised (ball park) values would have been readily available with just a little bit of common sense.
Excuse the rant...
SMS...
CRM...
EMC...
HF...
great concepts; management invariably fails to implement any of them into their own processes. For the guys/girls flying the line? keep up your skills and any process that retains SA, or gives the hairs on the back of your neck a fair weighting. Flying is fundamentally safe, it just is unforgiving of loss of situational awareness. Don't expect any acronym, however well intentioned, stopping you becoming a statistic.
Crews: "In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you". Tolstoy.
Managers: "A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction". Tolstoy.
