Sleeping pilot
There are apocryphal reports of VC10 flight crew (two pilots & F/E) all sleeping until woken by the Mach clacker (overspeed warning) triggered by the aircraft accelerating as weight reduced as fuel burnt (no autothrottle in cruise flight).
Iirc in the 70s a dc8 or 707 freighter overflew it’s west coast destination and were fortunately woken up by repeated selcal transmissions whilst they still had enough fuel after doing a 180 and getting to an airfield.
Fallen asleep in descent during my annual route check on the last sector back to Europe from the east coast and witnessed a few other colleagues accidentally falling asleep including a management pilot who had just given out about a fellow copilot doing same. FE and I commented and a few months later procédures were changed.
In both my first and last company management fiddled schedules so that we « accidentally » exceeded agreed flight time limitations. The first using airport standby for what was a scheduled operation to Nicosia and back at night; the other were Atlanta during winter where we regularly arrived an hour late west bound and another after the Alaskan volcano went bang and we routed Tokyo - Bombay - Zurich without a heavy crew..again with a management pilot.
Had à mate who managed to miss calling the Swiss when passing over the country…but not through sleeping.
Fallen asleep in descent during my annual route check on the last sector back to Europe from the east coast and witnessed a few other colleagues accidentally falling asleep including a management pilot who had just given out about a fellow copilot doing same. FE and I commented and a few months later procédures were changed.
In both my first and last company management fiddled schedules so that we « accidentally » exceeded agreed flight time limitations. The first using airport standby for what was a scheduled operation to Nicosia and back at night; the other were Atlanta during winter where we regularly arrived an hour late west bound and another after the Alaskan volcano went bang and we routed Tokyo - Bombay - Zurich without a heavy crew..again with a management pilot.
Had à mate who managed to miss calling the Swiss when passing over the country…but not through sleeping.
The Capt got sacked for falling asleep and not answering the radio and Pprune descends into duty times and here is was and I heard this debate.
Heres the obvious question; what was the FO doing while the Capt was asleep?
Heres the obvious question; what was the FO doing while the Capt was asleep?
Capitan Speaking and F/O Sleeping? Those two were frequently mentioned in Straight & Level in Flight in days gone by…
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AvHerald has usually more reliable information. Apparently the FO was taking an approved controlled rest on the flightdeck, and the captain later on tried to explain the whole situation by blaming "malfunctioning" com equipment. Which seems to be the reason for his dismissal rather than the falling asleep thing itself.
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For MXP-JFK 10.30 + FDP clearly ATA have loads of money to buy new A350 and a nice shiny colour scheme but not have gone low cost on the manning level.
On trains you have a dead man's handle that stops the train if the driver doesn't respond. While stopping a plane is not possible (unless its fitted with the new emergency divert/land system), surely its not beyond the bounds of possibility that something to wake the crew could be installed on the flight deck to generate an alarm if it is not responded to?
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Nemo Me Impune Lacessit
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Among foreign airlines Singapore Airlines can be counted as operating a crewing system very similar to that of Delta, always erring on the side of safety, certainly during the ten years I was a 747-400 captain with them.
Buttonpusher
At where I work we mostly have 3 man crews except a few destinations going across the Atlantic to Europe…..funny how those 2 man trips are always for pick up ;-)
In the early nineties we used to fly from Munich to Los Angeles in a 767 with a two pilot crew. About 13 to 13.5 hours and I can vouch that I was not near the top of my performance when we arrived at LA in the early evening rush time. I was very pleased to retire not long after we flew these scheduledt flights.
In the early nineties we used to fly from Munich to Los Angeles in a 767 with a two pilot crew. About 13 to 13.5 hours and I can vouch that I was not near the top of my performance when we arrived at LA in the early evening rush time. I was very pleased to retire not long after we flew these scheduledt flights.
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On trains you have a dead man's handle that stops the train if the driver doesn't respond. While stopping a plane is not possible (unless its fitted with the new emergency divert/land system), surely its not beyond the bounds of possibility that something to wake the crew could be installed on the flight deck to generate an alarm if it is not responded to?
In the early nineties we used to fly from Munich to Los Angeles in a 767 with a two pilot crew. About 13 to 13.5 hours and I can vouch that I was not near the top of my performance when we arrived at LA in the early evening rush time. I was very pleased to retire not long after we flew these scheduledt flights.
I would hope the Purser or #1 would be doing periodic checks to see if coffee, food or leg stretch might be wanted. This should be discussed in the crew briefing. Captain and flight deck crew should be doing group briefings with cabin crew so everyone gets to meet and have a common strategy in place for the trip. It’s easy to get complacent and a proper crew preflight briefing is important to safety. Even just 5-7 minutes can solve issues before they start.