Qatar. Take-off FUBARed. Again.
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Qatar. Take-off FUBARed. Again.
Qatar Airways, whose chief executive Akbar Al Baker has claimed runway overruns that damage aircraft "happen quite often", was forced to abort a take-off of an A350 filled with media guests at high speed in New York on Thursday evening.
Last edited by HighAndFlighty; 11th Dec 2015 at 06:12.
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Very interesting.
Does the A350 really allow the decision making control to be totally in the hands of the computers for an abort when it computes the runway is too short / acceleration rate is insufficient to achieve the required speed in the remaining length?
Is this a computer decision up to v1, or just to, say, 80 knots, which I could possibly understand, or is it just a synthetic warning that the pilot has to action at all speeds?
I don't like some of the Airbus philosophies that take control away from the pilots, warnings I don't mind.
In this case, it seems to be quite an early abort decision, in that they apparently weren't going that fast by my eye.
It will be interesting to see whether human factors were involved here, as at Miami, in the performance calculations, interpretations thereof, etc.
[Airbus A320-family pilot for 5 years]
Does the A350 really allow the decision making control to be totally in the hands of the computers for an abort when it computes the runway is too short / acceleration rate is insufficient to achieve the required speed in the remaining length?
Is this a computer decision up to v1, or just to, say, 80 knots, which I could possibly understand, or is it just a synthetic warning that the pilot has to action at all speeds?
I don't like some of the Airbus philosophies that take control away from the pilots, warnings I don't mind.
In this case, it seems to be quite an early abort decision, in that they apparently weren't going that fast by my eye.
It will be interesting to see whether human factors were involved here, as at Miami, in the performance calculations, interpretations thereof, etc.
[Airbus A320-family pilot for 5 years]
No doubt the reason why will emerge before too long. There's all sorts of possible reasons. The A350 is still quite young, could be a gremlin. JFK is quite a busy and highly controlled airport, so presumably it's unlikely that they started off from halfway down the runway.
Nice to see that Airbus's engineers have thought of this kind of thing in the automation, and (SLF) also slightly worrying that they thought it necessary.
It's also slightly vindictive. Suppose a crew have made a configuration mistake. It's better to have that advertised in such an abrupt and public manner by their own aircraft stopping all by itself. But the crew then have to explain it to their passengers and management... The alternative outcome of the mistake is to have their crash or collision damage plastered all over the news headlines.
Nice to see that Airbus's engineers have thought of this kind of thing in the automation, and (SLF) also slightly worrying that they thought it necessary.
It's also slightly vindictive. Suppose a crew have made a configuration mistake. It's better to have that advertised in such an abrupt and public manner by their own aircraft stopping all by itself. But the crew then have to explain it to their passengers and management... The alternative outcome of the mistake is to have their crash or collision damage plastered all over the news headlines.
Reading the original article is it just possible that someone has misconstrued the meaning of "RTO auto brake" (or whatever Airbus call their equivalent system)......
I've obviously no idea what happened here but FWIW on some Boeings it's certainly possibly to get some distracting low speed RAAS nuisance call outs at JFK in certain circumstances due to the crossing runways.....(e.g When departing 22 Right if you cross 31 Right before you've hit the inhibiting groundspeed ).
Edit to add...having now had a look at the video wannabe has posted it appears to me as if the aircraft stops just short of the very displaced threshold...after the stop you can see piano keys, the numbers ( but I can't read them
), the start of the TDZ markings and the PAPIs in the distance. There also appears to be a taxi way or lights thereof heading off into the 11 o'clock which might be a clue as to the location..............................................
I've obviously no idea what happened here but FWIW on some Boeings it's certainly possibly to get some distracting low speed RAAS nuisance call outs at JFK in certain circumstances due to the crossing runways.....(e.g When departing 22 Right if you cross 31 Right before you've hit the inhibiting groundspeed ).
Edit to add...having now had a look at the video wannabe has posted it appears to me as if the aircraft stops just short of the very displaced threshold...after the stop you can see piano keys, the numbers ( but I can't read them
), the start of the TDZ markings and the PAPIs in the distance. There also appears to be a taxi way or lights thereof heading off into the 11 o'clock which might be a clue as to the location..............................................
Last edited by wiggy; 11th Dec 2015 at 08:47.
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Portion from ATC audio (extracted from LiveATC.net) after RTO RWY 22R.
http://bit.ly/1jStMo5
(Very unofficial transcript, times approximate UTC):
QR7452 then spent around one hour at the Yankee-Alpha intersection before eventually departing from RWY 31L.
http://bit.ly/1jStMo5
(Very unofficial transcript, times approximate UTC):
00:48:29 [JFK Tower] Qatari QR7452 Heavy, what is the reason for the aborted takeoff?
00:48:34 [QR7452] Uhh…
00:48:41 [QR7452] Uh, warning for a take off, that's the cause of (the aborted) takeoff, uh, we just need a couple of minutes to decide if we can, uh, give it another try from RWY 22R for now
00:48:53 [JFK Tower] Qatari QR7452 Heavy, thank you, hold short of Yankee-Alpha, you can take as long as you'd like over there, let me know if you require any assistance from us
00:49:02 [QR7452] That's a, copy thank you and a, we'll let you know, Qatari QR7452 Heavy
00:48:34 [QR7452] Uhh…
00:48:41 [QR7452] Uh, warning for a take off, that's the cause of (the aborted) takeoff, uh, we just need a couple of minutes to decide if we can, uh, give it another try from RWY 22R for now
00:48:53 [JFK Tower] Qatari QR7452 Heavy, thank you, hold short of Yankee-Alpha, you can take as long as you'd like over there, let me know if you require any assistance from us
00:49:02 [QR7452] That's a, copy thank you and a, we'll let you know, Qatari QR7452 Heavy
As a neutral observer I see this: an event transpires wherein an aircraft is on takeoff roll, for some reason the take off roll aborts, they contact tower, clear the runway, and about an hour later determine (doubtless with some comms back to company base) that it's now OK to continue with the trip.
So they do.
For the passengers, that's about a one hour delay in the trip.
To put this in perspective:
I have been stuck in an aircraft on a hot summer day in Texas for over four hours, as the crew await the new slot time up in DFW since Wx rolled in up there and all times are being redone. When we get there, Captain waves off (he explained it as interval too close to the passengers) and so we have to get sequenced in for another approach. All told, the delay in actual arrival time as two minutes short of five hours. Needless to say, connections to Boston missed.
With this A350: is this really a problem? Better safe than sorry. Nobody got hurt.
The provided video only raised this point to me: one of the pax is during takeoff roll messing about with what looks like a cell phone. I thought that wasn't correct.
So they do.
For the passengers, that's about a one hour delay in the trip.
To put this in perspective:
I have been stuck in an aircraft on a hot summer day in Texas for over four hours, as the crew await the new slot time up in DFW since Wx rolled in up there and all times are being redone. When we get there, Captain waves off (he explained it as interval too close to the passengers) and so we have to get sequenced in for another approach. All told, the delay in actual arrival time as two minutes short of five hours. Needless to say, connections to Boston missed.
With this A350: is this really a problem? Better safe than sorry. Nobody got hurt.
The provided video only raised this point to me: one of the pax is during takeoff roll messing about with what looks like a cell phone. I thought that wasn't correct.
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Does the A350 really allow the decision making control to be totally in the hands of the computers for an abort when it computes the runway is too short / acceleration rate is insufficient to achieve the required speed in the remaining length?
It could be a warning from the RAAS, which gives warning if unsufficient runway available or taking of from a wrong intersection.
RAAS is not an Airbus invention.
Airbusses cannot take off with the wrong configuration, because it's tested before take off and newer ECAMs even give warnings when setting wrong configuration while setting them.
Dani
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Do we know the speed at which the abort happened?
No requirement to go back to the gate for tire/brakes inspection?
No requirement to go back to the gate for tire/brakes inspection?
If it was at high speed, as you say, get it fully checked out for CYA. Uh, I mean in the interests of safety, of course.
Most of the delay may have been finding out if whatever fault that caused the reject was deferrable for an ETOPS crossing. I went through a forty minute drill holding on the ramp for a minor deferrable item after pushback a few months ago. All the gurus had to have a Kumbaya session on the radio and maintenance came up with a bunch of codes and employee numbers for us to enter into the log book.
In the old days if you 'knew' it wasn't important, you'd just takeoff and write it up inbound to the next station. Or, so I'm told, of course I've never done that myself.
The QR crew was very wise for not being more specific on the radio in my opinion. There are inevitably feds giving checks listening and a recorder running in the tower and on liveatc.net if you say something that might be second guessed later by the FAA, the company or PPRuNe.
The term 'abort' is recently considered insensitive and 'reject' is now used in the manuals that I have. Now, about that hoarfrost paragraph...
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Brake fans are an option on the 350.
Our mob in their usual wisdom haven't got them...
Our mob in their usual wisdom haven't got them...
But, the beancounters don't see any benefit and like fuel dump and thrust reversers (e.g. the KC-46A), some operators don't have them on widebodies.