When I recently converted to my Airbus, during Sim LOFT training the exercise included a scenario where we had to G/A off an approach, enter holding, and estimate our time to diversion. Straightforward stuff.
But when I used my old iron dial pilots brain to do the numbers the instructor quite rightly pointed out that the FMS would do all that for me. I suggested I'd usually to do my own gross error check anyhow as a matter of course, especially given what had just happened to Hapag that same month.
His answer was he knew nothing about the Hapag incident, and just forget about wasting time with mental arithmetic...trust the FMS.

Naturally I still do my mental arithmetic. :suspect:

Deja vu all over again
 

The conversation between the A-310 FO and the captain is very similar to the conversation between the FO and the captain of the Air Transat A-330 that ran out of fuel over the Atlantic. The first officer ran several hand calculations checking the fuel consumption against the tank readings. While he was doing that and telling the captain of the problem the captain insisted that it was a computer error. This was further complicated by the readings of high oil pressure and the low oil temperature. The cold fuel spraying on the oil cooler caused this. This situation was never covered in the simulator nor was it covered in the manuals.

:E :E

I shot coffee out of my nose with that one! I'm still laughing....

411A nailed it. His stock's up a few points (and it needed to be!)

The plaque on the wall of my flying club in the late eighties said it all: under a photo of the club's geared-up T-34A, it said, "All the excuses in all the world will not help you if you run your aircraft out of fuel."

The FO is now flying on the 747?. He should feel a lot safer if its a "classic"--For the obvious reason!:O

Sim Ride
 

I am interested by Few Cloudy's comment that the Captain's flying would not have got even a marginal pass in a sim ride. That seems to be a sensible perspective. Any sim instructors care to comment on how they would have judged the Captain's real life actions if it had happened in the sim.

Airmanship - Unsatisfactory
CRM - Unsatisfactory
Knowldge of ac systems - Unsatisfactory
Ac handling - Satisfactory
Command decision making - Unsatisfactory

Overall assessment - Fail

Remedial training required - Technical refresher training. CRM training.



.........or words to that effect.

view from the ground, I am sorry but that is one of the most inane questions I have seen , even on pprune!

Look , quite simply the guy stuffed up big time and wasting bandwidth asking questions like that is in my opinion plain silly.

Who cares what some sim instructor may think? The point is is that for whatever reason the guy pressed on, he made a very poor decision and luckily no one was killed.

Asking for an opinion as to whether or not he would have failed a sim ride in those circumstances is akin to asking someone if they would like more money or not, what do you think the answer is going to be??

faheel, a bit harsh!! Don't forget that in many airlines, "Sim Instructors" are also line training captains who spend half their time in the real world, not just pushing the "V1 Cut" button!

If you consider all the circumstances (under JAR 1.965 I think it is?) for CRM assessment in the Simulator these days, then what if Captain X had flown a LOFT scenario like that at some stage prior to his epic flight? Had he perhaps shown weaknesses in systems knowledge or CRM before? If so, what actions were taken? Are there maybe lessons to be learned that are similar to those from the CrossAir accident at ZRH?

Douglas thats an interesting point, and without wishing to digress too much from the issue at hand I wonder just how many companies have now split the 'Line Standards' section from the 'SIM Checking/Training Section'. Thats what has been done in my own company and I just wonder now what possesses any sane individual to dedicate their lives almost entirely to (as you say) pushing the V1 Cut button, day after day....

Back to the original posting on this thread and "the trial is expected to last two days". Can anyone elucidate on the trial procedure in Germany? Presumably it won't be a selection of people off the street.

Assuming it's not, and that the "jury" will actually be a board of impartial and knowleagable people, two days shouldn't be too many to reach a conclusion. It'd be difficult to find three knowlegeable people in the world, let alone in Germany, who were unaware of this accident.

If that's the case, I would just guess that most impartial observers would have come down close to 411's comments, and some time ago. Which would mean that the trial is really about establishing what punishment should be meted out to the crew.

I'd be for community service - if punishment were to be meted. Jail would be ridiculous.

If your headwinds seem to be increasing over the Montana Rockies, and your Boeing 757 FMC shows a constantly decreasing amount of Arrival Fuel (the A-310 won't show such unwelcome changes in arrival fuel?), then there is a problem. The Captain chose to descend from about FL 330 to 280 after asking ATC about lower altitude winds, and after about 10 minutes or so, the Arrival Fuel increased to a much healthier amount.

We always compare total fuel to the paper flight plan fuel at one or two fixes on short legs, more on long ones. Wasn't the Boeing FMC's PLANNED FUEL numbers very similar to Dispatch's flight plan fuel? Believe we entered known winds at numerous fixes and a cost index of about 55, and a cruise enroute temperature or such.

With a major ATC or weather re-route (June-August...even in March), we can send the new route to Dispatch and let them calculate destination arrival fuel as a back-up.

A narrowbody aircraft barely made it to a divert airport with maybe emergency fuel (!) onboard, not far short of the destination, when the uplatch check was done too quickly during climb, and hanging a bit below the gear well it caused lots of extra fuel burn. Just ONE gear door!!:uhoh: :yuk:

Beagle and Few Cloudy
 

411a has perfectly summarised the essence of this thread.

The A310 FMS calculation can be corrected for aircraft individual fuel burn under Ref>Ref Index>A/C Status>change the consumption value.

The FMS would have been aware of the increased fuel burn. It could have been checked under Prog>Fuel Pred>EFOB at EDDV.
Assuming that the mode was the default FF+FQ (calculation based on fuel flow and fuel quantity) then the value shown would have been minus or with a warning 'Entry out of range'.

As for Few Cloudy and his marginal standard simulator check questions - get back on yer bike and ride off to the STCM!

Two questions if I may......

1. Is there anyone who is going to post "I would have made the same descion/s as the Capt."?

2. Was/is there any way the F/O could have releived the Capt. of his command?

Hello!

> SLFguy: Is there anyone who is going to post "I would have
> made the same descion/s as the Capt."?

If my calculations - or instuments that I have learned to trust -would have indicated that the fuel was sufficient, I would have done the same. I already have made a similar mistake once, but in a much smaller aircraft (Cessna Golden Eagle) and luckily with some lbs of fuel (not many though) still in the tanks after landing: I had relied on the figures of a fuel totaliser (accurate to the last digit during several years of flying this aircraft!) that were incorrectly entered by someone else.

> SLFguy: Was/is there any way the F/O could have releived the Capt. of his command?

If he had bothered to calculate the endurance exactly, based on actual consumption figures (!), and thereby proven to the Captain that they wouln't make it to Vienna; and the Capt. had still tried to press on, then maybe. But he didn't and surely the Capt. would have believed him, if he had (my guess).

> broadreach: Can anyone elucidate on the trial procedure in Germany?

I will give it a try, but I'm more familiar with aviation terms than with juridical ones!

> broadreach: Presumably it won't be a selection of people off the street.

But it will!
Jurors are always 'selected from the street' here. More precisely, they are elected by a comittee for four years from a preselected 'cross section' of the population in a way, that all groups/sexes/ages/professions are represented in more or less equal numbers, one of the few prerequisites being of course that they are german citizens.

In a trial like this one, there are usually two jurors and one judge, all three have equal weight when it comes to decide on the verdict. None of them needs to know anything about the subject of the trial, but if they do, this is _not_ a reason for excluding them from the trial. Therefore, it does not matter at all if details of the case have been reported by the press or not.

> Which would mean that the trial is really about establishing what punishment should be meted out to the crew.

Exactly. But a punishment has already been established before the trial, however: The Captain has received a summons (I hope, that 'babelfish' gave me the correct translations for 'Strafbefehl'!) over 10 months imprisoment on probation. This is intended to save the taxpayer and the accused the time and expense of a court case. Only an option in 'minor' cases though.

He has elected not to accept this summons, therefore he has to face trial now. I assume, that his lawyer (defendent) sees a fair chance of getting a better verdict than the 10 months, otherwise he would have talked him into accepting the summons. Lawyers are not paid so well here that they will go to court in any case, like in the US for example, so there is no big financial interest on part of the lawyer in this trial.

Therefore we can consider these 10 months as the absolute maximum he will possibly get (and since it was 'on probation' in the first place, he will definitely NOT got to jail!); if his lawyer is worth his money, he may get away with a fine or even an 'innocent' verdict in the end!

The 'experts' mentioned by broadreach will be questioned as witnesses during the trail, but they have nothing to do with the verdict itself. And, if I have read my newspaper correctly, not 'the crew' is under accusation, but the Captain alone. The First Officer will be heard as witness only.

I hope I got everything right...

Greetings, Max

Completely agree with 411A........you don't need a computer to tell you that gear down = increased drag = increased fuel comsumption!!

What happens when all of your appendages are not sucked up.
 

A Lufthansa A-310 on its’ first revenue flight landed in Cairo and they were unable to retract the flaps. The aircraft had to fly back to Frankfurt in a non-revenue status and I believe they made at least one pit stop on the way back.


:E :E

Bandwidth
 

Faheel

So its not wasting bandwidth to berate me then! Anyway I thought it was a reasonable question, since there was some discussion on the thread about whether the Captain deserved to be hero or zero. My point was that if you take the skill of his save out of the equation how would his actions otherwise be judged in the cold light of day, i.e. in a sim. My understanding is that Airline Sim instructors are usually qualified to pass or fail someone's sim check and therefore affect their ability to fly. Therefore there opinion is surely relevant.

Not often I agree with 411A but on this one he's spot on
The book... thrown at him.... big time

Hi Toulouse Recluse,

Those were the days! Actually, if you look I didn't ask any questions - I made the statement that the guy's performance was below standard - in so many words.

No STCMs these days - or SRQMs either - but the bike is still pumped up!

FC.

What Next:
Thanks for your lucid explanation.
Broadreach