'Uncontrolled Rest' again? Virgin 206
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Xiam the bean counters rule on that. Safety is just a word to them unfortunately.
I spent years doing 2 pilot long haul with an occasional extra pilot to get around the old sector rules. Trying to keep awake was always a challenge. But despite requests even for a fire watch on empty long sectors fell on deaf ears of said bean counters.
I spent years doing 2 pilot long haul with an occasional extra pilot to get around the old sector rules. Trying to keep awake was always a challenge. But despite requests even for a fire watch on empty long sectors fell on deaf ears of said bean counters.
Is the aircraft not fitted with some sort of alarm that sounds after a pre-set time if no control inputs (including key presses) are detected? With this flight operated by a 787-9 I am even more surprised if that is not the case.
Keeping Danny in Sandwiches
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Before we castigate the crew, could this be another case of sleeping receivers? We’ve had quite a few incidences of this in our airline...
I'm sure a radio engineer can give a more accurate description of the function.
In my current case of uncontrolled awakening (all dark and quiet outside), let me give you a correct link to the ‘sleeping receivers’ web page that has been mentioned in this thread two times already in a sort of misspelled format that awakens an error page only.
The correct link is: Sleeping Receiver - SKYbrary Aviation Safety .
The correct link is: Sleeping Receiver - SKYbrary Aviation Safety .
.Given that our 777's were delivered with that alerting function and even our 744's were retrofitted no doubt as part of some software upgrade I'd be mighty surprised if it didn't come as standard out of the box on the 787.
Can't remember exactly how long you have to wait until the EICAS alert is triggered but it is under 30 minutes, and for those that don't know, if the visual alert is ignored it can start to get very noisy very quickly.....
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Is the aircraft not fitted with some sort of alarm that sounds after a pre-set time if no control inputs (including key presses) are detected? With this flight operated by a 787-9 I am even more surprised if that is not the case.
The company sets the time limit and it's active when the aircraft is Clean, above 20,000ft and in the cruise.
Never catch on!
crossed (again!
) with Wiggy. 
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I've designed and built a number of transceivers, so this is an area where I have working knowledge, just not of the particular requirements for aviation certification. For all I know relays may still be common practice but that would be a source of considerable surprise.
I'd love to see any concrete evidence - particularly repeatable - of the 'sleeping radio' phenomenon. Whenever you get believable reports of that kind of behaviour, you start constructing imaginary scenarios of a combination of circumstances that could cause the equipment to behave in that way. I'm fairly good at fault-finding in that way but there are no obvious failure modes that I can think of to cause the reported behaviour. If imagination doesn't lead to a cause, next you need an actual example to investigate.
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If it had been a problem with the radio then the pilots would not have heard anything from either ATC or other aircraft. Would not most people become rather concerned if they hadn't heard anything for thirty minutes in that part of the world?
As ever when we reach explanations in the n th degree of unlikeliness it is to the obvious one should look.
Most "sleeping receivers" are almost certainly are brought about by sleeping pilots.
Rationale? There being hundreds of alert pilots for every sleepy one we should be swamped with credible reports from alert pilots who have caught their receivers asleep yet we are not.
Oddly, "Sleepy receivers" only seem to get detected by ATC, and anecdotal evidence is often that the initial response from aircrew once the "receiver" has awoken is far from alert.
Go figure what the "sleepy receiver" really is...
Most "sleeping receivers" are almost certainly are brought about by sleeping pilots.
Rationale? There being hundreds of alert pilots for every sleepy one we should be swamped with credible reports from alert pilots who have caught their receivers asleep yet we are not.
Oddly, "Sleepy receivers" only seem to get detected by ATC, and anecdotal evidence is often that the initial response from aircrew once the "receiver" has awoken is far from alert.
Go figure what the "sleepy receiver" really is...
Last edited by Wageslave; 10th Mar 2016 at 15:27.
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Having had an incident of this type a long time ago. It transpired that the previous sector had failed to hand us over and due to ducting the frequency picked up another station on the same frequency, so as far as we were concerned we could still hear the controller. (Note the change over boundaries were not as clear as they are now)
Of interest I was discussing this in a bar, when an old boy commented that once in a viking(i think) he heard Heathrow tower whilst on finals into Delhi.
Of interest I was discussing this in a bar, when an old boy commented that once in a viking(i think) he heard Heathrow tower whilst on finals into Delhi.
