BA pilot grounded over undisclosed anger

[Auxtank]

Originally Posted by Mike Flynn

The Staines air disaster was the result of the captain’s emotional state.Anger is an emotion that has no place in any aircraft and that applies to passengers and crew.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britis...ays_Flight_548

And the absence of an abilty to question or contradict seniority. Thank goodness it was one of events that CRM grew from.

[hunterboy]

Well, these managers were still alive and well in BA until fairly recently….i remember getting shouted at in the middle of the crew room by a senior Flt Ops Tech manager for the crime of parking in a car park that he deemed me not to be worthy of. The look on his face when I fished out my temporary car park pass was a sight to behold. Skipper told me later I should have walked out of the room and taken it further . Life is too short though. Funnily enough, he didn’t last long either.

[Discorde]

The Staines accident is examined in detail in this thread:

G-ARPI - The Trident Tragedy: 40 years ago today

[blind pew]

ttps://www.pprune.org/showthread.php?t=647322&referrerid=337296
thanks discorde but this is the later thread where I added another observation after a mate died paragliding with a heart condition that mirrored what I saw in Stan the day before papa india..don’t know how to post the link properly
Staines, UK 1972, June 18th.

[bean]

Originally Posted by B Fraser

The UK libel laws are particularly aggressive and this country is known for "libel tourism" e.g. SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation). See numerous examples of books published elsewhere, that cannot be sold in the UK due to court orders etc. I still have my illicit copy of Spycatcher somewhere. See also this forum where a particular airline shall never be mentioned in anything but glowing terms.

The Staines Trident crash was due to the Captain bringing in the leading edge droops, which was not called out by either of the two junior crew on the flight deck. They either did not notice (unlikely IMHO) or the gradient of command was an inhibiting factor.

There is no proof of who retracted the droops whatsoever

[Mike Flynn]

Originally Posted by Auxtank

And the absence of an abilty to question or contradict seniority. Thank goodness it was one of events that CRM grew from.

The days of arrogant former military people still adopting their rank and attitude in daily life are thankfully long gone.I can imagine Keys struggling to come to terms with junior ranks daring to question or indeed argue with him and his blood pressure being through the roof.I grew up in the fifties and sixties in country villages where those who didn’t have a peerage or knighthood would use their ex military ranks such as captain,major and colonel to embellish their status.

In some parts of the world the attitude that you’re not allowed to question your elders still exists

That of course was the reason for the One,Two,Go Flight 269 disaster at Phuket,Thailand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-Tw...nes_Flight_269

Asia has an issue that elevates respect for seniors .

The Korean culture has two features—respect for seniority and age, and quite an authoritarian style," said Thomas Kochan, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "You put those two together, and you may get more one-way communication—and not a lot of it upward,"Executives of South Korea’s Asiana Airlines say they’re altering its pilot training program to encourage communication among senior managers and subordinates, after a July plane crash in San Francisco that killed three people and injured dozens.

A U.S. hearing into the crash revealed one of the pilots said he did not feel he had the authority to abort a low-speed landing as individuals at a “higher level” had to make that decision, .

https://www.cnbc.com/2014/02/10/asia...-us-crash.html

This is an interesting discussion and I wish to point out we know nothing about the BA captain who may well be the victim of a malicious attempt to ruin his career.

[Right20deg]

MF : Agreed. It is one of the reasons Cathay Horrific was populated by young British airline pilots in the late 70s and early 80s. The local talent habitually deferred to authority. Not good.
Major UK airlines commenced their own CRM training using NASA, Bob Helmreich and James Reason to push for the correct attitudes and behaviours. Medical teams looked at what was going on, but stubbornly remained about 20 years behind aviation until the last decade. Now it is mandatory to have Human Factors training. Just took so long.

[Blackfriar]

Originally Posted by pax britanica

Sudden twang

Well done for adding a correction/caution to that.
it was speculated that the Captains state of mind influenced what happened but it was never proven . Essentially he had a row in the crew room before departure but that was all that could be proven. As you point out CVRs are there largely because of this tragic incident

Wasn't the heart attack a bigger contributor to the crash?

[Prob30Tempo TSRA]

Anger is a fairly standard human emotion within limits . I’d consider this reporting crossing the line

[dr dre]

Originally Posted by Prob30Tempo TSRA

Anger is a fairly standard human emotion within limits . I’d consider this reporting crossing the line

But not anger directed inappropriately at co-workers. Given the propensity for the Captain to “lash out without warning” this would have a detrimental effect on safety.

[B Fraser]

Originally Posted by bean

There is no proof of who retracted the droops whatsoever

The extract from the AAIB report reads.....

"(1) The abnormal heart condition of Captain Key leading to lack of concentration and impaired judgement sufficient to account for his toleration of the speed errors and to his retraction of, or order to retract, the droops in mistake for the flaps."

Trident I G-ARPI: Main document (fss.aero)

[Mike Flynn]

Originally Posted by B Fraser

The extract from the AAIB report reads.....

"(1) The abnormal heart condition of Captain Key leading to lack of concentration and impaired judgement sufficient to account for his toleration of the speed errors and to his retraction of, or order to retract, the droops in mistake for the flaps."

Trident I G-ARPI: Main document (fss.aero)

Added to the fact the culture at the time resulted in the junior crew not taking action themselves to immediately question what was happening until it was too late.Similar to flight OG269 at Phuket,Thailand.

[stiglet]

If as Mr Good Cat implies in #39 that PI did not have a CVR, which is what I recall, and no one survived, then where is the information that the captain either retracted the droops or called for them to be retracted by mistake? The order in which the scenario unfolded, which no one really knows, is surely crucial to who did what.

[Mike Flynn]

Originally Posted by stiglet

If as Mr Good Cat implies in #39 that PI did not have a CVR, which is what I recall, and no one survived, then where is the information that the captain either retracted the droops or called for them to be retracted by mistake? The order in which the scenario unfolded, which no one really knows, is surely crucial to who did what.

The buck stops with the captain who was a very experienced pilot and in charge of that fatal flight.

[stiglet]

Absolutely Mike, I wasn't trying to apportion blame anywhere. The comment was made that the captain actually did something or called for something that was complied with, maybe he was not 'in charge', or more likely 'in control' because he was incapacitated by a heart attack. My point was that if the first issue the crew had was a captain becoming incapacitated then everything that followed and who did what is unknown. This inexperienced crew had the misfortune to be confronted with multiple issues, one likely influenced by another, at the worse possible time in the flight.

[hec7or]

If I recall correctly from reading the Staines AIB report, Captain was assumed to be PF and the wire FDR readout indicated that several attempts were made to fly the anticipated pitch attitude for flap retraction but this produced a descent due to the LE devices being retracted which the crew would not have expected and a higher than normal attitude was adopted to maintain at least level flight which resulted in a loss of airspeed. PF was clearly confused but not incapacitated, normal SOP would require PF to call for PM to retract TE/LE devices.

[Magplug]

The power of social media is utterly amazing...... The number of guilty verdicts that can be extrapolated from one, unsubstantiated report, is quite breathtaking.

[bean]

Originally Posted by B Fraser

The extract from the AAIB report reads.....

"(1) The abnormal heart condition of Captain Key leading to lack of concentration and impaired judgement sufficient to account for his toleration of the speed errors and to his retraction of, or order to retract, the droops in mistake for the flaps."

Trident I G-ARPI: Main document (fss.aero)

No. There is no way of knowing who moved the droop lever other than it was one of the three pilots. you have not read the report thoroughly

[Mike Flynn]

Originally Posted by bean

No. There is no way of knowing who moved the droop lever other than it was one of the three pilots. you have not read the report thoroughly

That’s true. However looking at the experience of the crew we can draw our own conclusions.

Captain Key was aged 51 and had 15,000 flying hours experience, including 4,000 on Tridents. Keighley was aged 22 and had joined line flying a month and a half earlier, with 29 hours as P2. Ticehurst was aged 24 and had over 1,400 hours, including 750 hours on Tridents

Key would have immediately noticed the problem unless he was incapacitated.The other two were far too inexperienced.

[Thud105]

I wouldn't call 1,400 hours TT, and 750 hours on type 'inexperienced'.