Dubai near disaster..?
COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS
I don’t know that this was a factor in this incident but I have always thought poor communications has the potential to cause major accidents !
How often have you been uncertain of clearances given by ATC ?
Poor English ,regional accents, jargon,speed talking,background noise,receiver problems and general casualness being a possible contributor!
At a busy airport remembering and reading back a clearance can be a embarrassment - who wants to go to the sin bin!
If you are flying regularly in a certain environment you become acclimatised to the words and accents/ comms is less of a problem but after a long layoff ie now -and perhaps operating in a strange country the brain does not react as quickly and mistakes can easily be made- everything is more difficult - see currency thread.
Crew co-ordination obviously helps - but in a situation where perhaps you have a senior captain and a new under confident co-pilot- would the co-pilot be bold enough to question a captain’s action in case it makes him look slow/ foolish!
i.e if ATC is noisy /busy and a captain turns confidently onto the runway and piles on the power would a young co- pilot say ‘hang on’ ?
I have always thought that a useful ( cheap) aid would be a training tape with transcripts of ATC from around the world which one could listen to and mug up on before going to a new environment in order to get used to accents etc.
Food for thought??
I don’t know that this was a factor in this incident but I have always thought poor communications has the potential to cause major accidents !
How often have you been uncertain of clearances given by ATC ?
Poor English ,regional accents, jargon,speed talking,background noise,receiver problems and general casualness being a possible contributor!
At a busy airport remembering and reading back a clearance can be a embarrassment - who wants to go to the sin bin!
If you are flying regularly in a certain environment you become acclimatised to the words and accents/ comms is less of a problem but after a long layoff ie now -and perhaps operating in a strange country the brain does not react as quickly and mistakes can easily be made- everything is more difficult - see currency thread.
Crew co-ordination obviously helps - but in a situation where perhaps you have a senior captain and a new under confident co-pilot- would the co-pilot be bold enough to question a captain’s action in case it makes him look slow/ foolish!
i.e if ATC is noisy /busy and a captain turns confidently onto the runway and piles on the power would a young co- pilot say ‘hang on’ ?
I have always thought that a useful ( cheap) aid would be a training tape with transcripts of ATC from around the world which one could listen to and mug up on before going to a new environment in order to get used to accents etc.
Food for thought??
Captainship
I don’t think that anyone sitting in the front row, has any right to be there, if they can’t voice a concern.
Clearly, if they didn’t get a clearance, they should not have moved the aircraft, nor let it move without a challenge.
Should the cvr reveal an ignored or overruled challenge, then there might be cultural issues at Emirates in need of resolving.
Clearly, if they didn’t get a clearance, they should not have moved the aircraft, nor let it move without a challenge.
Should the cvr reveal an ignored or overruled challenge, then there might be cultural issues at Emirates in need of resolving.
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It sometimes seems strange that despite such levels of automation, redundancy and independent checking by multiple different systems on both aircraft and ATC, designed to catch even fantastically unlikely errors, some absolutely critical information is transmitted between the two by voice alone. And then it’s held in short term memory in human wetware before being being fed into a/c systems.
couldn’t there at least be a status flag on both a/c and ATC showing released for takeoff or not?
Although many aspects are good, there is one potential problem with some of the suggestions about RWSL, particularly if it is only installed at an airport where it is perceived that 'there is a need'. The mindset with RWSL is that when the red lights are off, we can cross/roll, when you then arrive at an intersection or line up on a runway where there is no need, at least half the protection of the system is lost. There is an additional gotcha if you are used to operating from airports with RWSL and then find yourself somewhere with a less sophisticated system, the usual mindset can be a problem.
I've also got a slight hesitation about the control systems, which are driven by ASMGCS data, and rules about when the RWSL is activated - having had some involvement in setting up RIMCAS (Runway Incursion Monitoring and Alerting System) at a pretty simple airport, getting the rules correct so there are no false alerts is not easy. With RIMCAS, the alerts are 'only' raised to ATC and humans can assess whether the alert is legitimate, although there is often little time for this (or, worse, an alert is ignored because 'it always goes off when this happens'), RWSL, as I understand it, is fully autonomous - the system is most useful at complex airports where the ruleset which does not produce erroneous operation will be difficult to compile. And then, of course, one day ATC will say, "Ignore the THLs, clear for take-off". The tech-savvy will now start talking about AI......
RWSL is probably the best system around at the moment , however it is a pure US/FAA system , still defined as an advisory system (*) and only installed in 20 airports in the US. and as far as I know is not for export ( waiting to be corrected if I am wrong)
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I was under the impression that it was installed at Paris CDG; if it isn’t the system is a dead ringer and is called RWSL
The RWSL system was deployed at Paris-CDG on the Northern inner runway (09R/27L) on the 24th of October 2016 and on the Southern inner runway (08L/26R) on the 23rd of May 2017 RWSL is a type of autonomous runway incursion warning system (ARIWS) as defined in ICAO Annex 14 aerodromes. Also deployed in the USA and in Japan, France participated, together with Japan, the USA and other worldwide experts in criteria harmonization, promoted by ICAO, to ensure worldwide and consistent operational use where implemented.
Why not just have a challenge and response R/T between a controller and two or four well-rested, well paid, qualified pilots and simulators to practice in?
The crew obviously THOUGHT that they had take off clearance - the question is why?
Perhaps they mistook departure clearance for t/o clearance?
All should be revealed in the inquiry.
Perhaps they mistook departure clearance for t/o clearance?
All should be revealed in the inquiry.
Yes indeed. Many such tales abound.
I am somewhat surprised they were able to take off without having the Captain's seat-cover replaced. After a high speed RTO on instruction by the Tower with another 777 looming in the windscreen I'm not sure I'd be in the right state of mind to continue the pairing, not least because the outcome is almost assured. What did Ops have to say? Still, plenty of time to be sacked after the duty is completed.
The luck of the devil continues: DXB, JNB, MEL, DXB, DME, JFK, DXB, DXB.....
I am somewhat surprised they were able to take off without having the Captain's seat-cover replaced. After a high speed RTO on instruction by the Tower with another 777 looming in the windscreen I'm not sure I'd be in the right state of mind to continue the pairing, not least because the outcome is almost assured. What did Ops have to say? Still, plenty of time to be sacked after the duty is completed.
The luck of the devil continues: DXB, JNB, MEL, DXB, DME, JFK, DXB, DXB.....
de minimus non curat lex
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COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS
I don’t know that this was a factor in this incident but I have always thought poor communications has the potential to cause major accidents !
How often have you been uncertain of clearances given by ATC ?
Poor English ,regional accents, jargon,speed talking,background noise,receiver problems and general casualness being a possible contributor!
At a busy airport remembering and reading back a clearance can be a embarrassment - who wants to go to the sin bin!
If you are flying regularly in a certain environment you become acclimatised to the words and accents/ comms is less of a problem but after a long layoff ie now -and perhaps operating in a strange country the brain does not react as quickly and mistakes can easily be made- everything is more difficult - see currency thread.
Crew co-ordination obviously helps - but in a situation where perhaps you have a senior captain and a new under confident co-pilot- would the co-pilot be bold enough to question a captain’s action in case it makes him look slow/ foolish!
i.e if ATC is noisy /busy and a captain turns confidently onto the runway and piles on the power would a young co- pilot say ‘hang on’ ?
I have always thought that a useful ( cheap) aid would be a training tape with transcripts of ATC from around the world which one could listen to and mug up on before going to a new environment in order to get used to accents etc.
Food for thought??
I don’t know that this was a factor in this incident but I have always thought poor communications has the potential to cause major accidents !
How often have you been uncertain of clearances given by ATC ?
Poor English ,regional accents, jargon,speed talking,background noise,receiver problems and general casualness being a possible contributor!
At a busy airport remembering and reading back a clearance can be a embarrassment - who wants to go to the sin bin!
If you are flying regularly in a certain environment you become acclimatised to the words and accents/ comms is less of a problem but after a long layoff ie now -and perhaps operating in a strange country the brain does not react as quickly and mistakes can easily be made- everything is more difficult - see currency thread.
Crew co-ordination obviously helps - but in a situation where perhaps you have a senior captain and a new under confident co-pilot- would the co-pilot be bold enough to question a captain’s action in case it makes him look slow/ foolish!
i.e if ATC is noisy /busy and a captain turns confidently onto the runway and piles on the power would a young co- pilot say ‘hang on’ ?
I have always thought that a useful ( cheap) aid would be a training tape with transcripts of ATC from around the world which one could listen to and mug up on before going to a new environment in order to get used to accents etc.
Food for thought??
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How often have you received, eg, an instruction to line up and wait, acknowledged it, then done a bunch of other things and as you get to the hold short line, suddenly think, hang on were we told to line up and wait? I wonder if that sort of thing is more likely at your base when the same voice gives you exactly the same instructions that you have heard 100s of times before so that your brain somehow struggles to distinguish today’s sequence from all the others and starts to fill in gaps.
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It's one of the oldest challenges in aviation. You have to learn to associate an action with every important clearance. A clearance can be a trigger to write something or select something. Use a pen (remember those?). I personally use the MCDU scratchpad. "Taxi A, B, C1 to and hold short of 27L" becomes A/B/C1//27L. When I'm lining up, I will ad a /LU. Takeoff clearance is definitely the selection of the "Takeoff" light on Airbus. On Boeing, I don't know what you might use, but for gods sake, choose one!
Why not just have a challenge and response R/T between a controller and two or four well-rested, well paid, qualified pilots and simulators to practice in?
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Hi. I thought CVR recording time had gone up to 10 hours now? plus they have to have their own power supply. Perhaps you don't have to retrofit it. i would have thought though, that a failure to obtain Takeoff clearance, would necessitate the company pulling the CVR immediately for analysis, to clear or otherwise the pilots.
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