time to put a "You are about to screw up and kill us " Button
 

time to put a ''you are about to screw up and kill us" button on the panel next to the flight attendant call button.

press it and a voice booms in the cockpit...you are going to screw up.

and if the pax is right he gets a prize...wrong and he pays.

Facts :- Taxiing is a Critical stage of the flight .

The most useless thing in aviation ,apart from the air in yr fuel tanks , is the runway behind you.

Sorry, gentlemen, but I agree with....
 

Sorry, gentlemen, but I have to agree with 411A. And, I am a major fan of the CRM concept and principles.

The link between the two (this issue and CRM): Standardization is the foundation of good CRM. With good CRM, accidents and incidents are reduced dramatically....almost to nothing.

And, with standardization, there must be explicit/well-defined roles and responsibilities. In practice, this is difficult to achieve with the role-reversal.

The exception is for a TRI/TRE to be giving command training. And, ostensibly, the TRI/TRE has received proper/adequate training for this environment...adequate experience....etc.

Please don not misunderstand what I am saying. I am not in any way looking down my nose at first officers. Many of them I've flown with over the years were extremely competent. And, frankly, on more than one occasion, a good F/O has keep my XXX out of trouble.

But, standardization is critical....and this means well-defined roles. A quarterback and a receiver....we just don't switch places, switch roles.....and one cannot function without the other.

My opinion.....probably worth nothing from this old, retired guy.


Fly safe,

PantLoad

(Sorry about the spelling, etc. It's late, here. What the hell am I doing up this late!)

My company's SOPs require both pilots to positively identify the runway and intersection and to confirm it's correct for the performance calculation. It seems like a bit of a 'noddy' procedure, but it would hae preventd this incident.

I know that the intersection wasn't marked, but there would have been enough clues to warn them. The fact that they were lining up next to the terminal being one - something which the riding engineer noticed.

Can't say it would have made any difference in their start of T/O position but I remember back in the day typing taxi instructions in the MCDU; especially at an airport foreign to me. Could glance at it whilst underway. Even more so when his or her nibs was at the tiller. I'm sure some of them did something similar as they knew full well my pencil too had an eraser.

Well, you can't blame the Tower Controller, how much is he / she supposed to know about B777 performance !



In any case the responsibility is and was the Captains in this case.



411a, the ultimate troll and s**t stirrer likes to postulate this would not happen if BA did not allow their FO's to taxi the Aircraft. This is nonsense, regardless of who is taxiing the Captain is always in charge and should maintain situational awareness at all times.



It seems like good practice and preparation for when a First Officer upgrades to Captain. We don't do it where I work but there is no tiller on my FO's side so that would make it a little difficult :confused:

OKFINE,

You want to be careful there, as there have been incidences of taxi details ending up inappropriately placed in the legs or other pages once airborne due to failing to delete the taxi instructions from the MCDU/CDU data entry line.

Could end up being one of the holes in the Swiss cheese!

SMOC

Your caution is noted. I took care to alleviate same prior to throttle-up. I would hope that had failure to do so resulted in questions being asked, I could respond that at least the aluminum and its contents were intact. Cheers.

Stilton...The tower controller was aware that something was not right. He asked if the aircraft wanted to backtrack(aware that he was at diiferent intersection).When the crew stated they were happy to depart from Alpha....he KNEW that they were in the wrong position. Why he didn't re-iterate that fact is a mystery (especially since there were TWO of them there and the INSTRUCTOR should be looking out for errors EXACTLY like this)

Complacency
 

The other thing no-one has mentioned here is complacency. This pair were out on a little evening jaunt from Antigua and back, after the shuttle it would be back to the bar. The weather was lovely, only a few pax, light fuel load, a bit of VFR big jet flying in the Caribbean, it makes up for the crap days. Their guard was down and it should be a lesson to us all.

PS kotakota, you forgot he other useless thing, blue sky above you.

No procedure in aviation (411A's personal SOP's excepted of course) are perfect. However, to think that any of BA's are implemented on some personal whim or preference misses the point completely.

Everything they do as a company is based on statistical risk assesment - allowing the FO to taxy/park/'run the sector' may lead to certain errors (every SOP can lead2 to errors), but it reduces the risk of (potentially much more serious?) errors committed by that FO when he becomes a Captain, as a result of his exposure to decision making at an earlier stage. Thats not my personal view - in BA it simply would not be SOP if it caused more problems than it avoided. Believe me, the lawyers would see to that.

It's been a while since I've operated there, but from what I can recall, it's not that long of a runway in the first place, why limit your options by choosing an intersection? :confused:

How many of you on the flight deck, at a holding point or lineing up, would interrupt proceedures and interact with pax via cabin crew?

If the attendant call dings whilst lining up I would certainly abort the take off. In my mind I would imagine the cabin becoming unsecured. During the actual T/O roll however I would continue.

To be told that a passenger was sure we had lined up in the wrong place, I don't know, if I had suspected the runway looked short, ATC had questioned the line up point, and now a third point that a pax had gone to the trouble to give a relatively specific point about the wrong intersection, I would HOPE I would seriously question what I was doing. But in reality? Who knows.

I would be extremely concerned at venturing anywhere near any type of flying machine with 411a on board.
The people in the front office are a team. As others have alluded to on here, similar to a football team. So what 411a is saying ostensibly is, only the striker can score a goal. The midfield, defenders even the goal keeper are unable or not allowed to score a goal for the TEAM?

He claims to be a Captain and gives the air of never having made a mistake, because after all he has four gold/silver bars on his wrist.
He also claims to be TRI/TRE, so it must follow it is impossible for him to make a mistake.

The person sitting in the LHS on KLM4805 I seem to recall was a Captain, oh and a TRI/TRE and what a total xxxx up he made. From the ATC transcripts it is more than obvious the F/O and F/E were to intimidated to exercise any form of CRM and dare question not only the Captain, who was not only in charge, but was a TRI/TRE and the "glamour" face of the airline, who in 411a analogy being both a Captain and TRI/TRE NEVER make mistakes.
I view that accident as the Captain was adequately trained/ responsible to handle the tiller enough to backtrack/taxi down the runway, but incompetent to command the aircraft thereafter.

Am I to believe this guy is telling the wider forum and the public that a F/O is adequately qualified to operate the aircraft in all manner of flight, navigation, approach, go-around, land etc but should the God like genius in the LHS become incopacitated die and the F/O gets the aircraft safely on the ground, he is totally incapable of taxiing the same aircraft off the runway?
How does he treat the other members of the team behind the cockpit door?

AFOS

Reading the report it was interesting to notice not only the good call by the positioning engineer to raise his concerns, but also the sound presence of mind, along with the CC, to sit on hands once underway. With the ASDA from B and the V1 in use any prompt to the flightdeck could have lead to an abort and overrun. That said, with the good VMC I'm sure the crew would have made a decision based on the situation ahead of them.
Long live ginger beers.

I'm a Captain who has just converted from a type with a tiller each side to a type with just one tiller.

So now, I'm always PF on the ground.

Therefore it's me who does the walk round, starts the engines, calls for checklists and taxis every single time.

I really prefer it and as the two of us are always doing exactly the same thing while we're on the ground, there is a much firmer regime in force.

I've really no problem with the BA monitored approach, which we use but I was taught that it's the Captain who watches out for the big stuff and the FO who avoids the wee stuff and I think that this SOP keeps the Captain more in the loop than the old one- although, of course a perfect Captain would be unaffected.:)

I'm 100% sure that having non varying duties on the ground is good.

As an F/O, I watch out for all stuff. If the Captain has missed something big, I'll tell him and I expect him to do the same for me.

BA's ground duties do not 'vary', you are either PF or PNF. Everyone knows what PF or PNF are meant to do and most of us are aware enough to know which one we are being during a particular sector!

Dream Land
 

One consideration may be that the 180 "turn on the runway procedure" for the 777, which they would have needed if they had backtracked, is not the most popular manoeuvre and can introduce it's own problems if not handled properly :\. Frankly if the performance figures aren't marginal I would have opted for the intersection.

In BA, the Captain is always the Captain. It's completely untrue to suggest that the FO having 'the sector' then means he/she makes all the decisions. Obviously the intention is to let them run it as much as practical. If I gave the FO the sector and they suggested an unsuitable fuel figure, for example, I would discuss it with them and tell them why I thought it should be something else. Ultimately we take the fuel I am happy with.

When taxying, regardless of who is physically steering, I am aware that if we get lost, enter an active runway without clearance, hit anything or otherwise mess up that it is me, as the Captain, that is ultimately responsible. The excuse of 'it was the FO's sector' is not one that is going to get you very far in the subsequent debrief.

Extra procedures and checks will always be introduced to try and trap this type of error, but in fact it is not possible to design a 'perfect' system which people can't manage to screw up somehow. We all make mistakes and will continue to do so. Adopting a new procedure will not stop this happening again, it will just make the mistake required for it to happen slightly different.