Yup, and few companies adhere to the 'BA way'.
For a very good reason...it is nonsense.:E

411A
 

Have you tried it over a reasonable period of time?

If as I suspect you have not then you too are guilty of giving us the benefit of your inexperience.

Pilots are great at resisting change but before it is too late you too could open your mind to new ideas rather than relying on the mantra than "it has always been done that way so it must be right".

Yes I suppose being a big fish in a very small pond, a la 411a might lead one to believe they have become the crucible of all things aviation.



:D

It would make a great GOUGE Question.
 

HOW WOULD YOU IDENTIFY ALPHA?

I just looked at a taxi diagram, Bravo has the tower and fire station across the way.

flightwatch

An excellent factual post and from many years experience too. Your comment about pilot's naturally resisting change is so true. I was once on a QF 747-400 and visited the flight deck being curious as I was on the same aircraft with BA at the time.

BA jumbos have a shared bunk with a door and two bunks one above the other. QF have (or had) a single first class seat at the back of the FD behind a curtain and a second first class seat behind a curtain at the back of the upper deck where BA have a large wardrobe for passenger coats, etc.

On noise issues alone I thought the setup was inferior to ours. I mentioned this interesting arrangement and the SFO on the FD replied in that wonderful Australian style that 'the company want to give us a double bunk area behind a door but we're fighting it'!

Similarly, so much of the criticism of BA SOPs is from those not having ever experienced them. I have experienced both. I prefer BA SOPs. With reference to command conversions I gained my command on the B757 after 10 years on the B747 so a type AND command conversion. I completed that conversion in 24 sectors including a two sector final check.

In my 12 years as an FO in BA there were two basic types of captain - those who made all the decisions and paid scant regard to the guy in the RHS (who may well have had a command elsewhere and would not necessarily be wet behind the ears) and those who had sufficient confidence in themselves to actually allow FOs to make decisions and allow them to learn and develop. It is never in question who has the final say nor that the captain will override anything he/she is not happy with.

In the incident which is the subject of this thread it is plain there were a number of contributing factors. Anybody in commercial aviation will know of many, many seemingly inexplicable events which could so easily have been tragedies were it not for an element of luck.

Having flown close to 900 hrs for several years on the B777 it may well be that fatigue played a part but that cannot be proven. Complacency may also feature and that is something which all of us fight very hard to avoid. Hands up anybody who has never frightened themselves having lapsed from one's usual high standards, breathed a sigh of relief and learnt from the experience.

Given that BA has an open and 'no blame' safety reporting culture with the exception of actions deemed negligent. It is indicative of how seriously the company view the incident given the captain lost his command, something which rarely happens. In most cases retraining and supervision is the norm.

Those posters claiming BA should insist on minimum signage, etc at airports they operate to have clearly never ventured far from the civilised world.

Thank you M. Mouse.

Interesting, isn’t it, how our self appointed expert never replies when challenged?

I too prefer BA SOPs however for the next few months until anno domini catches up with me I can only use my discretion to allow the co-pilot to make as many decisions and carry out my duties to the permitted limit which sadly doesn’t extend to letting him taxy the aircraft. I fail to see in the incident above how whoever was taxying was relevant; the fact is that both pilots mis-identified the intersection.

I seem to remember that a seat change in BA was accomplished in around 12 sectors, with my present mob it is many more.

Dont worry about 411a, he is suffering from the desert heat and probably still pulling cactus spines out of his ar.. , which has fuddled his brain!

I have to know....does 411A own a goldfish?

So in this case the F/O was taxying the a/c leaving the captain to moniter the taxi route. In other words the captain had more capacity to spot the mistake. This incident has absolutely nothing to do with who was controlling the a/c. Be honest, you just don't like the idea of some young upstart touching "your" thrust levers!

BA and many others have been following these procedures for a long time. They are safe and they work. If it bruises your ego then on behalf of BA and many other airlines, I can only apologise :hmm:

The pilot not taxiing often has more to do than simply monitor the taxi route & check the charts. In our outfit he/she does the take-off review & the before take-off checklist.

The take-off review involves a run around the cockpit calling a number of settings & and visually checking them. If you don't want to break the flow & miss something, you will have your head inside the cockpit for a while while you are doing this, followed by selecting the before take-off checklist. I'm not saying that it is right, it is just what my outfit expects us to do.

The taxi in this case was quite short & it is possible that the captain had his head inside at the critical moment that the aircraft was turned onto 'B'. Not the best time to be 'heads down', but you could be forgiven for thinking that it was a simple taxi route & not prone to error. Particularly if you hadn't been there before.

So it is not necessarily the case that the captain had more capacity to spot the error. He may in fact have had less!

I bet the engineer will take the jump seat for the rest of his career!

Indeed so, Oakape, however I doubt our self-appointed BA experts would want to admit this, as it would damage their 'we know best' image.:rolleyes:
And, then we come to intersection takeoffs....this one in particular.
Was it such a waste of time to taxi to the end of the runway?
And, one can't use the excuse of a narrow runway either, as there are turning pads available.
The safer alternative is clearly to begin the takeoff from the end of the runway, yet our happless BA pilots chose otherwise.
Only three words needed to describe these two...careless and reckless.

Is M.Mouse correct? Do BA still have a 'no blame culture'? Are they really that backward? Forward thinking organisations through that concept out at least a decade ago.

A Safety Case for each destination would have prevented what could have been a major disaster as it would have highlighted the airport's shortcomings. The lack of teeth of CAA's ASSI organisation is also rather concerning.

Not really, in this day and age, and on modern jets. A take off from the full length would have used a higher derate, and consequently the aircraft would need more runway, than from an intersection where a higher power setting would be used, and consequently less runway needed. A point often overlooked by the "runway behind you" brigade.

Regardless of your views on whether the captain should taxy the aircraft or not, I am at a loss to see what difference it would have made in this incident. I mean, he was on the flight deck, right? So he didn't do the take off brief, but presumably he listened to it?

Apart from 411a, who clearly came forth from his mother's womb, wearing 4 stripes, and a set of pilot's wings, we all have to start somewhere. IMHO, but only having known BA SOPs, the more you can get the FO to act as captain the better. We are all qualified P1 on the aircraft, and it will make the transition to captaincy that bit more straightforward when the time comes. In addition, many folk are vastly experienced in the RHS, either from a military background, or having held commands in other airlines.

Care to expand on that rather interesting statement?

411A thank you so much for the laugh of the week when you refer to BA pilots as 'self-appointed BA experts '.

Kettle to pot, are you receiving over.

Not necessarily used a 'higher' derate, Slickster...the pilots can select any derate they so desire, within limitations, or....none at all.
Unless of course, perhaps for BA, who would not necessarily have common sense.
So, I gather that with your statement, re intersection takeoffs, you were quite OK and in agreement with the concerned pilots actions?
The shorter the runway the better, perhaps?:rolleyes:

BA are already directly responsible for one 777 accident, one wonders if they are aiming for some kind of record, with their (collectively) strange ideas?

411A
 

You can choose not to derate, but in the long-term you are setting yourself and your mates up for a higher incidence of engine failures. You really ought not to cane the poor engines just for the sake of an anachronistic view of your 'rights' as captain.

By the way, I get the impression 411A once failed the BA selection procedure (or am I being unkind?) :O

AD

To BarbiesBoyfriend and 411A:

Regarding the whole issue of F/O's shouldn't be allowed to taxi, and there only having a tiller on Captains side, what is the procedure if the Captain became incapacitated during flight?

With only one tiller, I presume the F/O would fly the aircraft from right hand seat, land, stop it on runway, apply brakes and await tug? And with that (as I only fly small turbo prop aircraft, we have no tillers), is the tiller not required to control the steering as the aircraft slows down on the runway?

Looking forward to some clarification...

Utter rubbish.

You are forgetting many variables, such as aircraft weight etc.

Our company has worked out a standard derate (in this case it is the maximum 61 degrees) for use at domestic weights at domestic airports. So on one runway for the same derate we can use full length and a variety of intersections.

(ah the power of a 767!)


As for this quote....hmmm...sometimes its more the "runway ahead" of you when you do a high speed RTO.........

411A has an obsession with the British, and all things BA. He hates both. At every opportunity he posts here, and I assume, anywhere else he can, and posts the same obsessive diatribe over and over again.

By virtue of the internet he attains a large audience, and that seems to sustain him and his ego.

His main mode of operation is to say the same thing over and over again in the vain hope that what he says will become the truth. His views belong in a bygone age. The world and aviation have long since moved on from his archaic views and beliefs. Thank God.

At the end of the day he is an old man, with old ideas, flying an old aeroplane, in a tiny operation in a tiny backwater.