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AF 777 wrong weight inputs, off by 100 tonnes?

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AF 777 wrong weight inputs, off by 100 tonnes?

Old 2nd Jun 2015, 15:52
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Do you really think that nothing happens in, say, the ME3, or some famous european LCC? Of course, they never show up on avherald, but try to guess why.
Okay let me guess: because, it's all one big conspiracy against AF/the French?
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Old 2nd Jun 2015, 16:16
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I am not saying that the french are perfect, but all cultures have their own peculiarities. I could easily have a go at the Dutch or the spanish or Italians, and certainly the brits, but I won't.
Absolutely right, however there are also plenty of other cultures and nationalities working for BA, EZ, KL.
They all have bad sides, but that doesn't make them, as a whole, bad pilots, as some here seem to suggest about the french
So why aren't there that many topics about British, Dutch, Italian or Spanish airlines then?

Is it all one big conspiracy ay, and LH, IB, BA, EZ, FR and KL all have percentage wise the same amount and severity of incidents and accidents then?
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Old 2nd Jun 2015, 16:31
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Here's a thought - just use full power on all takeoffs and problem goes away.
Brilliant idea.

So you take off fully laden on a 2,000m runway at 3,000ft elevation, at 35oc with a 5 kt tail. But you use full power and everything will be..... everything will be..... Ahhhhhhh.....

You are not a pilot, I hope.
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Old 2nd Jun 2015, 16:49
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I'm not going into details, but you are totally out of line. You obviously have no clue about what's going on here and the way we (the French) work.
Actually we do have an idea. We all know that French ATC have the worst grasp of English in the world, because they refuse to practice it with domestics.

We all know that French ATC put on an unecessary accent, when every other nation can speak English without deliberate inflections (apart from Greece, perhaps).

We all know that airports like CDG have the worst signposting ('cos the locals know where they are going, so everyone should).

And having worked for a short while for Air France I do know how a leper feels. Some of the passengers thought it appropriate to swear at us, and our stupid 'roast-beef' aircraft. I did purchase a bell at one point, but the humour was completely lost in translation.

And we only have to extend those external perceptions to the internal scructure and training in AF, to imagine the many problems. But whatever the problem is, it is axiomatic that there IS a problem, so protesting innocence is simply not good enough.
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Old 2nd Jun 2015, 16:58
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This 100 tonne error is regularly made by aircrew in all sorts of airlines.
Please don't say that. As occasional SLF, I'd like to think that there is some sort of CQI process at work to catch the outlying events and work to eliminate sources of error in the process. Don't get me wrong: I appreciate the piloting skill that manages to get my overweight flight off the runway. I just hope that someone is working to reduce the incidence below what one would define as "regularly".
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Old 2nd Jun 2015, 18:50
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Absolutely right, however there are also plenty of other cultures and nationalities working for BA, EZ, KL
And your point being? You might be surprised to know that several nationalities work in AF as well.

So why aren't there that many topics about British, Dutch, Italian or Spanish airlines then?
Perhaps simply because it seems widely popular judging by the comments on this topic, to slag off the french.

AF have had more than their fair share of problems. Tremendous work is being done internally to solve those problems. However incidents will still occur, as in any other airline. The two recent events, however serious they may be, have occurred in other well respected legacy or low cost carriers. In particular, I'll let you guess which airline has an appalling record of unstable approaches, overruns, near fuel exhaustion due to ludicrous company fuel policy, severe GPWS events, and a hull loss. Not to mention intentionally flying with missing bits of aircraft. That they have not killed anyone yet is purely due to luck... Yet they enjoy a rather undeserved reputation in terms of safety. so as someone said (oh it was you! blimey!) let's not throw stones in the greenhouse, thanks.

You hate the french. Fine. But don't let it cloud your superior judgment...
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Old 2nd Jun 2015, 18:59
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Actually we do have an idea. We all know that French ATC have the worst grasp of English in the world, because they refuse to practice it with domestics
I agree that they are not the best - but they are far from being the worst! Have you actually been anywhere other than brussels? Have you been to Spain lately? Or anywhere around the mediterranean? Or in Asia?

Oh but wait no one is being excessively negative about the french to the point of literally making things up... This is only a conspiracy theory. :roll eyes:

I'll leave you to it then. If it makes you feel better about yourselves please indulge
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Old 3rd Jun 2015, 05:46
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@silvertate
when every other nation can speak English without deliberate inflections (apart from Greece, perhaps).
And maybe apart from Texans!


This being said, maybe AF are on news because the French Safety Office (BEA) issues bimonthly lists of incidents on their public website. Not many safety offices do the same.... Not seen, not caught!
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Old 3rd Jun 2015, 06:14
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Searching through the U.S. ASRS database, it should be possible to get an idea of what is happening elsewhere. Those reports are anonymous, of course. For instance report number 1202628 says "B757-300 FO reports being given the zero fuel weight by the Captain when requesting the takeoff weight for V speed calculation. The aircraft does not rotate or lift off at the predicted speeds, but does takeoff and climb normally once the required speed is obtained."
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Old 3rd Jun 2015, 12:01
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I would humbly suggest that this is just another example of cockpit dumb down.

Anyone who has "actually" flown real a/c and not just on FS has some common sense checks based on expected V1, VR and V2 numbers for the a/c type and approx guessed TOW. These numbers sit in your brain as defaults. When you see a number that is 20-30kts different it should trigger an immediate "excuse me, let's stop and re-think" moment.

If it doesn't the crew is either incompetent or so fatigued that death is an acceptable option.
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Old 3rd Jun 2015, 14:08
  #51 (permalink)  
 
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Exclamation

AF has had more than their fair share of incidents/accidents in recent times. If I were their CEO I would have an outside company undergo a thorough audit on their training and proficiency standards. Something is not right.
Show me one airline that does not have incidents on a regular basis. It's called "flying the line" or "sh!t happens". I agree the attitude and/or culture can and does play a role however even operators with a better safety record deal with incidents and their tendencies every week. It's a constant improvement process. My airline publishes safety bulletins on a regular basis, if I'd publish every incident on here, you won't be able to sleep! I bet you the same with your operator or your favorite airline.

Could it also be that perhaps the real problem is not really the safety culture, but rather an extremely arrogant superiority complex culture, also known as French chauvinism? An inbred culture that is not open for change? A culture that prevents fresh (foreign!? English?!) ideas and lessons to take root? A culture that insists of doing everything "the French way" by actively swimming against the stream of common sense, from speaking French to ATC, to having checklists and call outs in French and making an LP6 in French more important than an LP6 in English?
French vs. English. Another PpruNe pet argument. Open your horizon and look at some Canadian operators. Or look further South where people speak Spanish (Shock, Horror!). According to your theory planes should be flying out of the skies daily! I disagree that speaking English to ATC in France/or elsewhere will improve anything. Other countries do it their way also (using their native language), and many people live with it just fine! I have discussed this issue many times here, and I firmly believe that this argument is a PpruNe Francophobic pet argument (did you know that even Germany allows German/English ATC radio comm?). Why is the language issue mainly brought up with France on this bulletin board? There is more airspace on this planet where Spanish is used. But there's hardly any complaint! Why is it that mainly the Brits complain about France and their ways? Contempt, historical roots, war of cultures? I have yet to see the same amount of discussions on this issue on a US bulletin board. And there is Spanish-speaking airspace "down South" that's much more challenging! Besides, on a busy frequency (ORD, JFK, CDG, FRA sometimes) it is nearly impossible to maintain aural situation awareness just by listening. The TCAS screen/overlay has mainly solved that problem.

So why aren't there that many topics about British, Dutch, Italian or Spanish airlines then?
This being said, maybe AF are on news because the French Safety Office (BEA) issues bimonthly lists of incidents on their public website. Not many safety offices do the same.... Not seen, not caught!
Thank you! I was looking for this reporting reference. I wonder how many other authorities are doing "this" to their national/favorite carriers? Remember the LH crosswind/wingtip incident in HAM? This incident was brought to the public's attention not through a safety report but YouTube. And that video was taken off line several times, in order to prevent bad publicity.

This whole safety statistic argument is mainly fruitless because there are no standards in what gets reported, what operator was involved, and what gets published (to the average plebs, anyway).

I was unfortunate enough to fly a now defunct Mexican carrier called Aerolineas Internacionales. PERFECT record! No accidents or incidents. On paper!

In German there is a good saying "Papier ist geduldig"
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Old 4th Jun 2015, 11:15
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Finally... a commonsense comment (made by VR-HFX) ...

'I would humbly suggest that this is just another example of cockpit dumb down.

Anyone who has "actually" flown real a/c and not just on FS has some common sense checks based on expected V1, VR and V2 numbers for the a/c type and approx guessed TOW. These numbers sit in your brain as defaults. When you see a number that is 20-30kts different it should trigger an immediate "excuse me, let's stop and re-think" moment".


I would just add to this that include an appreciation of an approximate thrust setting... and then incidents like this should NEVER happen.

But... commonsense ('airmanship')... Either you have it or you don't... :roll eyes:

THAT is the problem in todays aviation IMHO... And that goes a lot further into the entire selection and training debate... which in todays world seems to have been dumbed down by the size of the 'sponsors' wallet...
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Old 4th Jun 2015, 12:46
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Bingo!........
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Old 4th Jun 2015, 19:26
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Bingo ?

Quoting ATSB report about Emirates weight/speeds errors on Melbourne take off (100 t error):

Incorrect weight 262.9 t : V1=143 VR=145 V2 = 154 FLEX temp = 74°
Actual weight 362.9 t : V1=149 VR = 161 V2=173 FLEX temp = 43°

In previous 2 months, pilots used 3 A340 types, weight ranging from 150 to 370 t and quoting one pilot, numbers are loosing their meaning, they become only numbers...

Still bingo ?
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Old 4th Jun 2015, 20:21
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I fly small a/c B738 in comparison to these guys. I did fly B767's -200 & -300, but the weight range was not too drastic. As suggested I have a 'feeling' for the correct figures. Reading this thread I now appreciate the spectrum of weights the A340 & B777 -ABC, -FGH, - XYZ can throw at you. Thus it is not quite so easy as I would have expected. Having a 'feeling' for the numbers might not be quite so instinctive as many of us might have thought. Still.......
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Old 5th Jun 2015, 10:19
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VR HFX's comments may have been commonsense but don't reflect how things are now. I am likely to be flying an aircraft at 70T one day and another at 230T the next. The performance programmes are clunky to put it politely and a single digit out of place can cause a major error which isn't necessarily obvious.
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Old 5th Jun 2015, 11:16
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Single digit errors

Reading the majority of posts on this thread leads me to a number of conclusions. The most over-riding one however is that many posters seem to blame the technology or, in some cases, the fact that they fly aircraft with large performance/weight differences on a given day. As a former F/E with responsibility for initial extraction of performance data from tabulated data which was then confirmed (with out access to the TOLD card) by the non-handling pilot I never knew of the gross errors which seem to occur from time to time in more recent times. I know I come from another era, however I believe that now that there are only two sets of eyes in the flight deck of heavies that the insertion of data into the electronic systems should demand double checking. It is, or should be, a self preservation action if nothing else.

Just wanted to remark on EEngr's post in relation to Piltdown's earlier post. I certainly do not believe the 100 tonne error is made regularly. I am aware of several which made the news and I accept that an occasional event occurs which goes unreported. I also am aware that the work load is now higher than in the past with all sorts of varying power settings being used. It was pretty simple in my day I guess with only two or three derates available and fairly basic data from the steam age being used.

Last edited by Old Fella; 6th Jun 2015 at 04:07. Reason: added comment
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Old 5th Jun 2015, 12:58
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you'd think with all the technology around it would be pretty easy to have a (small) gadget that gave the aircraft weight to say +/- 1 percent................
A system with that level of precision is really easy to design and build.

A system with that level of accuracy under all loading conditions over several years of service? Not so much.
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Old 5th Jun 2015, 14:49
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Old Fella, in the good old days when we used tables as you describe, an error might swing things by a knot or two. That's not how it is now. There's still a cross-check as there always has been but the calculations are very error-intolerant and have to be done multiple times for various runway options and often revised at the last minute under time pressure when the load changes
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Old 5th Jun 2015, 15:03
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How much deflection is there in the undercarriage between empty and dry to fully tanked and loaded? Could the difference in height be measured and used as a double check, turning a 777 into a giant set of scales?
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