Emirates B777 gear collapse @ DXB?
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Nah - I am, regretfully, not a pilot but I have friends in Air France who tell me they do a certain number of hours per year. I am not sure if this is their choice, a recommendation or an order but it sounds like a good idea.
Certainly moves Air France a long way up on my fly list if it's true.
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framer
The B777 is designed for the auto throttle to be engaged from the very start of the flight until the very end. It stays engaged for the landing. It's the way the manufacturer intended.
As for all this nonsense about flying a Cessna around, give me a break. Perhaps the Captain of the QM2 should take his sail boat out on a Sunday afternoon jolly around the lake?
I fully endorse the idea that Pilots should be encouraged to hand fly THE aircraft they operate within the right conditions, such as good weather, quiet ATC and not after a long duty day. Gaining manual flying experience in single engine machinery is not, in my opinion, the way forward. It's chalk and cheese. If airlines want pilots to gain confidence and practice a few hours of steep turns and visual circuits, give them manual handling sims. Whether we like it or not, the advancement of highly automated machinery does actually bring added safety to flight operations. However, pilots need to be taught to use this automation effectively and correctly and to AVOID getting themselves in these dangerous situations in the first place. The problem the industry faces is teaching resilience to a new generation of pilots taught on highly reliable aircraft. Increasingly, more and more pilots are experiencing, and expecting the system to work as advertised and when it doesn't, the 'startle' factor can be immense. AF447 highlighted that. If you look at the accident rate today compared to even 30 years ago we see that aviation safety has improved dramatically. However, the type and causes of these accidents has changed. Sticking a 27 year old A320 F/O in a Cessna a few hours a year will not address those threats. In fact, the chances of them killing themselves in the single engine prop would be even greater!
All airlines need to teach students on any new type conversion that no matter what aircraft you fly, the basic rules of flying apply. ANC. Aircraft stay in the air courtesy of Bernoulli, not Marconi! Learning by rote is not always good, neither is acknowledging an ATC instruction at such a critical stage of flight.
Harry
The B777 is designed for the auto throttle to be engaged from the very start of the flight until the very end. It stays engaged for the landing. It's the way the manufacturer intended.
As for all this nonsense about flying a Cessna around, give me a break. Perhaps the Captain of the QM2 should take his sail boat out on a Sunday afternoon jolly around the lake?
I fully endorse the idea that Pilots should be encouraged to hand fly THE aircraft they operate within the right conditions, such as good weather, quiet ATC and not after a long duty day. Gaining manual flying experience in single engine machinery is not, in my opinion, the way forward. It's chalk and cheese. If airlines want pilots to gain confidence and practice a few hours of steep turns and visual circuits, give them manual handling sims. Whether we like it or not, the advancement of highly automated machinery does actually bring added safety to flight operations. However, pilots need to be taught to use this automation effectively and correctly and to AVOID getting themselves in these dangerous situations in the first place. The problem the industry faces is teaching resilience to a new generation of pilots taught on highly reliable aircraft. Increasingly, more and more pilots are experiencing, and expecting the system to work as advertised and when it doesn't, the 'startle' factor can be immense. AF447 highlighted that. If you look at the accident rate today compared to even 30 years ago we see that aviation safety has improved dramatically. However, the type and causes of these accidents has changed. Sticking a 27 year old A320 F/O in a Cessna a few hours a year will not address those threats. In fact, the chances of them killing themselves in the single engine prop would be even greater!
All airlines need to teach students on any new type conversion that no matter what aircraft you fly, the basic rules of flying apply. ANC. Aircraft stay in the air courtesy of Bernoulli, not Marconi! Learning by rote is not always good, neither is acknowledging an ATC instruction at such a critical stage of flight.
Harry
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604 & Harry make some sageful points. There are too many pilots, even captains, who graduated wth 148hrs MPL into RHS of a medium jet and then to LHS after 3-4 years of limited apprenticeship. Their training was rigid and trained monkey, with little GH and knowledge of a/c behaviour.
Automatics are encouraged and a strict regime of how to fly all types of profiles is beaten into them. Thus their knowledge of what options are available is restricted and there is little discretion on the line. In this situation you do that, in another situation you do this. Rigid. In some operators it is forbidden to use V/S unless specified in an SOP or to turn off the FD. Certain pitch modes MUST be used at all times unless specified in SOP's. There is only one method written down for every profile. There can be so many restrictions about what you can & can't do. Automatics are the norm, but in a limited manner.
As 604 alluded to, there is no thinking and no discretion. There is no questioning as to whether the rigid SOP is in fact the best for the slightly adjusted scenario. Even if there was a question the answer about what is best would be a guess in the dark.
The questions and dangers are obvious, the answers & solutions are over the horizon. Light a/c flying is not the answer, Learning to handle your a/c throughout its envelope in GH and then an in-depth knowledge of its systems capabilities and traps is IMHO the way to go. The TR syllabus would need re-writing, the number of sessions would increase and the prof checks need to come out of the dark ages. The training & checking is not aligned to the technology and operation.
The LST/LPC mandatory items for a small/medium non EFIS twin is the same as a B777. ?????
Automatics are encouraged and a strict regime of how to fly all types of profiles is beaten into them. Thus their knowledge of what options are available is restricted and there is little discretion on the line. In this situation you do that, in another situation you do this. Rigid. In some operators it is forbidden to use V/S unless specified in an SOP or to turn off the FD. Certain pitch modes MUST be used at all times unless specified in SOP's. There is only one method written down for every profile. There can be so many restrictions about what you can & can't do. Automatics are the norm, but in a limited manner.
As 604 alluded to, there is no thinking and no discretion. There is no questioning as to whether the rigid SOP is in fact the best for the slightly adjusted scenario. Even if there was a question the answer about what is best would be a guess in the dark.
The questions and dangers are obvious, the answers & solutions are over the horizon. Light a/c flying is not the answer, Learning to handle your a/c throughout its envelope in GH and then an in-depth knowledge of its systems capabilities and traps is IMHO the way to go. The TR syllabus would need re-writing, the number of sessions would increase and the prof checks need to come out of the dark ages. The training & checking is not aligned to the technology and operation.
The LST/LPC mandatory items for a small/medium non EFIS twin is the same as a B777. ?????
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Rat_5, the simple reason for this process of ever tightening and prescriptive SOP is $$$. The view from the executive suite seems to be that flying has been "conquered", it is no longer the great mysterious frontier. In their worldview, automation has moved the smarts out of the liveware, and into the software. It is a process, it is a procedure, nothing more, nothing less. This has the bonus of allowing everything to be reduced to competency based checking and training. Even this minimum is under constant budget pressure. Pilots & training are viewed as just another component in the CASK to be brutally hacked away. Almost every operator is forced to do the same thing by competitive pressure.
The thing is, it is impossible to prove a negative, that is is impossible to prove training avoided an accident (the accident doesn't happen because the crew's training prevented it, but nobody knows the accident was avoided because it didn't happen). It is impossible for a training manager to go to the senior executives and say, "see we saved you $3 billion in adverse publicity & direct costs as a result of one accident our training prevented this year".
Accounts can only see direct costs, not costs avoided. Training must fall on the cost side of the balance, not the revenue/asset side. This is the fundamental conundrum we as pilots face each and every day at work.
The world is run by the accountants, and they have simply reduced almost all of human endeavors & existence to a simple cost/benefit analysis within the flawed context of being unable to account for the avoidance of negative outcomes.
The thing is, it is impossible to prove a negative, that is is impossible to prove training avoided an accident (the accident doesn't happen because the crew's training prevented it, but nobody knows the accident was avoided because it didn't happen). It is impossible for a training manager to go to the senior executives and say, "see we saved you $3 billion in adverse publicity & direct costs as a result of one accident our training prevented this year".
Accounts can only see direct costs, not costs avoided. Training must fall on the cost side of the balance, not the revenue/asset side. This is the fundamental conundrum we as pilots face each and every day at work.
The world is run by the accountants, and they have simply reduced almost all of human endeavors & existence to a simple cost/benefit analysis within the flawed context of being unable to account for the avoidance of negative outcomes.
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I'm afraid the truth is, due to the state of this industry/'profession', an accident not terribly dissimilar to this could well be repeated. In fact, I'm certain it will be. Just as it has been on numerous occasions already.
Ticket prices are cheap, but that's because every conceivable cost, judged by 'someone' as 'unnecessary' is being stripped out for the short term gain of those at the top!
Don't lay the blame purely at the feet of the two pilots. That isn't where it belongs! That does nothing for the future safety of the travelling public!
Let's be a little smarter determining the 'cause'?!
Ticket prices are cheap, but that's because every conceivable cost, judged by 'someone' as 'unnecessary' is being stripped out for the short term gain of those at the top!
Don't lay the blame purely at the feet of the two pilots. That isn't where it belongs! That does nothing for the future safety of the travelling public!
Let's be a little smarter determining the 'cause'?!
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The world is run by the accountants, and they have simply reduced almost all of human endeavors & existence to a simple cost/benefit analysis within the flawed context of being unable to account for the avoidance of negative outcomes.
As for the world being run by accountants, give me a break. Airlines (and all public companies) are run by a management team that answers to shareholders. The world is run by quarterly targets. Accountants are about as powerful as pilots.
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Er, in the real world "negative outcomes" are increasingly rare.
No, it does not undermine my post with respect to the inability to "prove" a negative, you simply cannot show evidence for a non-outcome. "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". This is the basis of Hume's Problem ie "The black Swan" as made famous by Nassim Taleb's book of the same name.
As for the world being run by accountants, give me a break. Airlines (and all public companies) are run by a management team that answers to shareholders.
Last edited by CurtainTwitcher; 12th Sep 2016 at 00:42.
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CurtainTwitcher,
Your post is very true and can be summed up with this old aviation saying:
If you think safety is expensive, you should try an accident.
Your post is very true and can be summed up with this old aviation saying:
If you think safety is expensive, you should try an accident.
I can see the hours required for upgrade increased due to the experience of new hires or lack of. Hours do not reflect experience anymore.
I remember when converting onto my first jet that I had very few problems with the physical handling of go-arounds and the like but often didn’t press the right buttons to sync the automatics. That was fine as an outcome as the flightpath was as intended and it didn’t take long to reengage the right modes once capacity allowed. ANC as posted above.
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This debate has been circulating of a good many years, and is usually resurrected after an avoidable accident. Circulating because it seems to never end. The opinions about the problems & causes seem to be consistent. I have read many suggestions about solutions, but no concerted common plan. IMHO, relevant to jet airliners, chugging around in a spam-can is fun but not a solution. I still feel that the basic MPL course has been diluted too much. I spoke to some CPL colleges and there is an opinion that a jet airliner pilot can be taught almost everything in a ZFT sim. The basic PPL might be enough and then it's in the box being crammed full of MCC/CRM/SOP. Sony play station should start building a/c.
Basic CPL training is the same for everyone, but should it be? Previously a CPL was 250hrs. You could then leap into an air taxi and hour build. You were not in a rigid SOP world flying a high powered performance A a/c. You had to rely on basic airmanship and if you survived for a year or two your learning curve was steep and educational. It was a wonderful world of balancing & combining airmanship, manual flying and management of a flight often in testing Wx conditions into basic airfields with basic aids, and running the show yourself. A marvellous foundation on which to build a career.
The MPL has diluted that foundation extremely. The airline prof' check LPC/OPC is orientated towards very basic skills and rote following of SOP's in very simplistic scenarios. Handling skills in the common manoeuvres is generally OK in both LHS & RHS. The 4 year F/O who can fly now thinks a command is the norm. The biggest difference between LHS & RHS is how & what to think about. It is a management role of the whole operation. How to digest multiple information and make judgements and then apply them as a team. This is hugely different from just flying, but is it taught and encouraged? Is a/c knowledge & systems knowledge deep enough? No.
I think rigid SOP philosophy has tried to cover too many of those decision making possibilities. This starts wth 'minimum fuel' being the norm and you better have a mighty good reason not to follow that rule. I found senior SFO's didn't know how to decide a safe fuel figure, which might well be minimum. Then, en-route, the continue-divert decision making was scant on dodgy Wx days. Training was orientated too much towards correct following of SOP's and procedures. The comfort zone was defined and quite small. Circumstances which shift a crew towards the edges of that comfort zone can cause incidents and even worse. We are seeing perfectly serviceable a/c being mis-managed mis-handled. I think the root cause goes back to basic training and recurrent training of jet airliner programs. There is now such a variety of commercial pax aviation operations, from air taxis - turbo-prop airlines - biz jets - airliners that I think the initial class training needs to be reviewed.
We hear much 'beating of gums' by general airline pilots. We don't hear much from XAA's, NTSB's, AIB's, airline HOT's, airline CP's. Why the silence? Where is the joint debate including those who need to authorise, mandate & execute any changes? Pilots' comments on this subject have been repeated for years, but nothing has changed and accidents are still occurring. For how much longer?
This thread has drifted away from the EK incident and, perhaps naturally, reverted back to the debate about basic skills and airline culture. Regarding training: I relate to my doctor & lawyer friends: they do a basic foundation course and then specialise. Each are of considerable length. We do a short CPL - ATPL foundation and then a very basic type rating course. The checks we perform and similar for all classes. is this the correct method for our profession? The operating world has changed hugely; the training & checking world less so. Are they in step/phase/balance? Are they coordinated?
As many have said $$$ is the controlling factor in many minds. One wonders if the huge compensation payouts claimed after accidents could have been better spent.
Basic CPL training is the same for everyone, but should it be? Previously a CPL was 250hrs. You could then leap into an air taxi and hour build. You were not in a rigid SOP world flying a high powered performance A a/c. You had to rely on basic airmanship and if you survived for a year or two your learning curve was steep and educational. It was a wonderful world of balancing & combining airmanship, manual flying and management of a flight often in testing Wx conditions into basic airfields with basic aids, and running the show yourself. A marvellous foundation on which to build a career.
The MPL has diluted that foundation extremely. The airline prof' check LPC/OPC is orientated towards very basic skills and rote following of SOP's in very simplistic scenarios. Handling skills in the common manoeuvres is generally OK in both LHS & RHS. The 4 year F/O who can fly now thinks a command is the norm. The biggest difference between LHS & RHS is how & what to think about. It is a management role of the whole operation. How to digest multiple information and make judgements and then apply them as a team. This is hugely different from just flying, but is it taught and encouraged? Is a/c knowledge & systems knowledge deep enough? No.
I think rigid SOP philosophy has tried to cover too many of those decision making possibilities. This starts wth 'minimum fuel' being the norm and you better have a mighty good reason not to follow that rule. I found senior SFO's didn't know how to decide a safe fuel figure, which might well be minimum. Then, en-route, the continue-divert decision making was scant on dodgy Wx days. Training was orientated too much towards correct following of SOP's and procedures. The comfort zone was defined and quite small. Circumstances which shift a crew towards the edges of that comfort zone can cause incidents and even worse. We are seeing perfectly serviceable a/c being mis-managed mis-handled. I think the root cause goes back to basic training and recurrent training of jet airliner programs. There is now such a variety of commercial pax aviation operations, from air taxis - turbo-prop airlines - biz jets - airliners that I think the initial class training needs to be reviewed.
We hear much 'beating of gums' by general airline pilots. We don't hear much from XAA's, NTSB's, AIB's, airline HOT's, airline CP's. Why the silence? Where is the joint debate including those who need to authorise, mandate & execute any changes? Pilots' comments on this subject have been repeated for years, but nothing has changed and accidents are still occurring. For how much longer?
This thread has drifted away from the EK incident and, perhaps naturally, reverted back to the debate about basic skills and airline culture. Regarding training: I relate to my doctor & lawyer friends: they do a basic foundation course and then specialise. Each are of considerable length. We do a short CPL - ATPL foundation and then a very basic type rating course. The checks we perform and similar for all classes. is this the correct method for our profession? The operating world has changed hugely; the training & checking world less so. Are they in step/phase/balance? Are they coordinated?
As many have said $$$ is the controlling factor in many minds. One wonders if the huge compensation payouts claimed after accidents could have been better spent.
Last edited by RAT 5; 12th Sep 2016 at 07:41.
framer
The B777 is designed for the auto throttle to be engaged from the very start of the flight until the very end. It stays engaged for the landing. It's the way the manufacturer intended.
The B777 is designed for the auto throttle to be engaged from the very start of the flight until the very end. It stays engaged for the landing. It's the way the manufacturer intended.
The design of the system means that when the pressure comes on, when the brain is working at maximum capacity to process large amounts of information, the pilot no longer has subconscious muscle memory to push the levers up. Why would he? All he has done year in year out is push a button and all is well.
Do more hours make you better or worse at handling the type of incident we’re discussing here? Would someone with 10,000 hours on the 777, i.e. 10,000hrs of autothrottle usage be preferable to someone who had 200hrs but it was all manual or would it be the other way round?
Every time the button is pushed and the result is satisfactory, the likelihood of a mentally overloaded pilot instinctively pushing the thrust up reduces.
What's the answer? Expensive would be my first guess. Automation reduces risk more than it creates it to a certain point and then it doesn't. I think we may be there. As others have pointed out we have had year on year ( bar one) an improving safety record but the types of crashes have changed. I think the optimum safety position would be to have similar line SOP's / aircraft systems as we do now, but a large increase in ZFT sim manual flying.
I'm not suggesting it will happen, ( it won't) but an hour of raw data manual flying in the sim once a month would see the industry make a major dent in the safety record for the first time in twenty years.
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Harry the cod, " neither is acknowledging an ATC instruction at such a critical stage of flight".
Since when have ATC been allowed/required to instruct aircraft to go around in a situation like this? It is not their business to do so and it may have had more significance than is currently realised, in addition to interrupting at an inappropriate time. Only pilots should make this decision, or not, as the case may be. Do you agree?
Since when have ATC been allowed/required to instruct aircraft to go around in a situation like this? It is not their business to do so and it may have had more significance than is currently realised, in addition to interrupting at an inappropriate time. Only pilots should make this decision, or not, as the case may be. Do you agree?
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Having read nearly every post with interest I have the following point to add.
If the 777 knows it has WoW and knows not to apply TOGA, then why can it not inform the crew of that if they push the button. A simple voice alert of 'No TOGA' would inform the crew that their request for TOGA was not implemented by the automatics?
If the 777 knows it has WoW and knows not to apply TOGA, then why can it not inform the crew of that if they push the button. A simple voice alert of 'No TOGA' would inform the crew that their request for TOGA was not implemented by the automatics?
Originally Posted by portmanteau
Since when have ATC been allowed/required to instruct aircraft to go around in a situation like this?
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Only pilots should make this decision.........
Slowly the situation is degenerating into the pointy end being occupied by dumbed down drivers being propped up by automation and a big of book of words.
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604: Indeed. However one wonders at the command courses in some airlines. Hitherto all 'LOFT' exercises in recurrency training had mostly been single failures of simple nature. In command courses they 'should' be a little more complicated and include multiple failures and subtle ones that require sound knowledge of the a/c, the environment and sound common sense management of the scenario. I wonder if, in your world, that is happening, or are the better SOP disciples being promoted without little advanced education?
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In command courses they 'should' be a little more complicated and include multiple failures and subtle ones that require sound knowledge of the a/c, the environment and sound common sense management of the scenario.
You're solving the wrong problem, and possibly one that doesn't even exist?
These pilots experienced no 'failures'. They just weren't able to fly the aeroplane. As has happened numerous times now! My position is, the 'system' set them up to fail!
Let's solve the problems we are facing, THEN move on to situations that are frequently well handled. Such as the multiple failures, and common sense management of the Qantas A380.