Panicky pilot caused passenger jet plunge,
 

experience?

Air India Express | Panicky pilot caused passenger jet plunge

Sounds more like a lack of experience.

And there was me thinking that the ability to fly an aeroplane straight and level was a pre-requisite for any commercial pilot. If that panicked the guy then he should lose his licence because he is clearly unfit to be in control of an aeroplane.

sounds like this copilot will soon be a CHIEF PILOT!




(due credit to my pal richard)

Air India Express incident
 

Reported in the Sydney Morning Herald today:

A co-pilot sent an international passenger jet into a terrifying nosedive when he adjusted his seat and accidentally pushed the control column forward, an official report revealed yesterday.
The clumsy officer then panicked and was unable to let the captain, who had gone on a toilet break, back into the cockpit as the plane plunged 7000 feet (2000 metres).
The captain only saved the Boeing 737 aircraft after using an emergency code to get through the cockpit door and take the controls back from the co-pilot, the report by India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said.
The 25-year-old Indian co-pilot told the inquiry he had "got in a panic situation couldn't control the aircraft, neither open the cockpit door and answer the cabin call."
When the captain, 39, got back into the cockpit, he shouted "What are you doing?" as cabin crew ordered the 113 terrified passengers to fasten their seatbelts.
The report said there was "complete commotion" in the cabin and that passengers were "very much scared and were shouting loudly" as the plane dived steeply and boxes and liquor bottles fell into the aisle.
The Air India Express flight was flying at 37,000 feet from Dubai to Pune airport, in western India, on May 26 when the near-disaster occurred. No one was injured.
According to the report, the nosedive was "due to the copilot adjusting his seat forward and inadvertently pressing the control column forward."
The plane fell 2000 feet before the captain got back into the cockpit -- and another 5000 feet as he struggled with the panicking co-pilot.
"There was application of opposite force by pilot and copilot on control column," the report said.
It added that the copilot "probably had no clue to tackle this kind of emergency."
"Appropriate action shall be taken against the involved crew," it concluded.
After the incident, the captain tried to calm passengers by telling them that the aircraft had hit an air pocket.

It lost 7000 feet while at 37,000 feet, in cruise. No, not a near disaster, but very uncomfortable for the passengers/paying customers.
Ok, here's the hard part. How did he not know how to regain his altitude? :confused:
The aircraft descends, and rather than fly it back to altitude, we are told that the co-pilot panicked. If this is true (mind you, this is a media report) then why is that person in a pilot's seat hauling people about?
Not an emergency. Maybe a malfunction, in a particular brain housing group.
Well, one could complain that the captain lied to them, but I'll put myself in his shoes for a moment. Best not to shake the confidence of the pax any further by informing them that 50% of the cockpit crew is not up to scratch. :eek:

Not wishing to jump the gun on the facts, but the chickens are coming home to roost if low timers cannot even get the basics right.

No worry India, get rid of your expierenced expats, promote your senior co-pilots to P1 and carry on with your short sighted approach to employing low timers.

Quoting the first paragraph of the report at the Aviation Herald India...incredible India!

I do hope for the sake of the people who fly Air India Express that this article is total and utter pugwash. Maybe someone from that side of the planet could point us in the direction of the real facts.

PM

This is an account of a DGCA final report, so though the journalist might have gotten a specific wrong here and there--or not--I can't imagine it's "total and utter pugwash."

I can assure you, it's not. And THAT is the worst part of all.

I did a contract at AI as a 777 TRE and NEVER in my professional career have I witnessed such utter corruption, nepotism and a training / safety department that employs bullying and victimizing tactics to humiliate as they see fit. Stone age.

I witnessed pilots (Capts and FO's) unable to fly an aircraft (no AP or FD's) straight and level on downwind and complete a safe landing from a stabilized approach. In the sim I failed a Capt unable to to land the 777 on raw data with a 15 kt x-wind. I was hauled into the safety / training dept and ORDERED to change my appraisal. I resigned. Said Capt flew to DXB and back 2 days later with a "batch-mate" and was checked to line. (All relevant and other authorities received reports from me. I guess they were lost? Yes: that includes you Mr FAA).

Read another article on how kids forge log books, almost completely and are given jobs on 737 NG's: Rajasthan: Fraud pilots busted: Nation : India Today

(At least these kids were caught, but how the hell did they ever get to occupy the seat? The trainers and examiners who passed them should be stripped of their licenses too, as and where needed).

Blame the pilots? The airlines? Or blame the despicably corrupt and [criminally] negligent SYSTEM that allows this to happen. And what about the utter xenophobic attitude of all too many hunting, driving, lobbying for the removal of the expat Capts with many, many thousands of hours so they can be replaced by "Commanders" with anything from 1500 hrs TT hours to 2 or 3000 hrs TT, and FO's to fill that void with 175-200 hrs!?

Mangalore? NOTHING was learnt nor will it be. In all too many eyes it was completely THE EXPAT'S fault, not the system that screened, hired, assessed and monitored the entire pilot body: national and expat alike. Too many pockets lined and whistles wet as a result of the siphoning off of part of the expats' salary, and so, and so on, and so on. Been said and documented all before......

Good news there are some good eggs in the bunch seeking to steer things in the right direction at AI. Hats off to them.

And we just hear about this "near-disaster" (pffft, yeah right!) now? How convenient :ugh:

That doesn't even looks like a low-timer. That's just plain stupidity! Mind you, he could have been one of those kids with 20 real flight hours but with 200 on his logbook.

I trained with some of these "wonders" in the Philippines.

Of note was the hotshot who attempted to fly his 152 on a hot day direct to 11000 feet with no regard to oil temp warnings etc etc.

The aircraft he destroyed was the only one he would use as it was "lucky", despite there being 15 others available.

This is the same individual who proclaimed himself to be the Indian Motocross Champion....despite him being unable to produce a single wheelie after 10 minutes riding a bike my 8 year old could wheelie.

I pity the Philippine flight schools obliged to take these overpaid, over egotistic idiots.

Common sense = 0
Basic Aviation Knowledge = 0
Money = unlimited
Access to exam papers = 100 percent
Ability= 10 percent
Perceived Ability = 300 percent
Ego = Unlimited

:(

SSS

Well, I did a Googling and...

The DGCA's report, whilst being appearing to be thorough in determining what happened to the control column and auto-pilot modes, appears to be painfully lacking in analysis and recommendations to prevent similar occurrences and recovery from "upsets." I'm also not totally convinced that the F/O told the investigators really what happened.

Another thing which springs to mind is how does this company get insurance? Are they actually insured? Neither pilot had more than a 1,000 jet time and also the investigator's appear not to have looked into any of the Operator's training records and systems. I do hope for India's sake that the performance of the DGCA and Air India Express is not representative of the standard of her Aviation.

PM

I hope the DGCA got it right. There are a lot of events in that cockpit that paralleled the events of Egyptair flight 990.:suspect:

Having just read the report, I have to agree with Machinbird and feel we should be looking at this from a different, rather more sinister, angle.

If we read the co-pilots actions, it is way way beyond incompetent.

Not too well established why, if he was completing paperwork, he needed to put his seat forward ? au contraire, easier to sit further back from the column in a non Airbus FBW ship to complete papers.
Initial push force causing CWS was 20lb, okay, but when alt wng sounded he panicked and applied 50lb DOWN FORCE ? ? ' Yeah, that would help :*

Subsequently he put the column forward again and indeed when the Capt intervened he was doing so with 125lb pullback versus a 200ld push force from Cojo-Boy.

If this wasn't another Egypt Air/ Silk Air scenario what was it ?
I find it difficult to believe anyone could be quite this incompetent, and the aircraft was trying to help him by going into Alt Acq, while all he could do was pull the thrust back and apply even more push force.

The only thing he missed was pulling the CVR/FDR breakers, otherwise I think we can see what was intended here.

I sincerely hope he doesn't fly anymore, either for them or anyone else, as he is either too cr@p to be allowed to do so, or suicidal, neither being a very satisfactory scenario.

The official accident report doesn't even acknowledge the fact that the red autopilot disconnect button would have put the copilot into the situation where he has been trained to recover.

I agree with captplaystation - I'll add AIE to my no fly list.

If the Captain re-entered the cockpit around 40 seconds after the incident started and "only" 2000ft were lost, how the hell does one loses 5000ft more? What the copilot states in the report doesn't match the FDR recordings; how the hell does one, as a copilot, keeps pushing the column with a 200lb(!) force while the Captain is trying to recover the aircraft??? Panicking? Yeah, I bet you did! :mad:

I agree with captplaystation:

Why would anybody need training to recover an aircraft in automated mode. Two clicks and you are a 727.

As a TRI, I was dismissed for refusing to sign off a Captain
 

Several years ago, in Delhi, I was responsable for training an airforce CAPTAIN, a 2 seater recon flight.

To cut the very long, 2 year, story short he failed his TR check ride, unable to actually command an aircraft. Lost in the visual circuit, and had no idea how to fly the NDB approach.

Eventually I found out part of the reason, was that as a 2 seater, he was not responsable for navigation, or "command", always given a PAR from the back seater.

Upon advising the company for the last time that this guy should never be permitted to actually be in command of anything other than a TUK TUK, I was remined that if I did not sign him off, as Captain would have my visa recinded, for actions detremental to the country, and thus be unwelcome.

The next morning, I was woken up by a smile face, handed a cup of fresh tea, with real milk, and asked to fasten my seat belt. Welcome home, top deck of the 747 was never a sweeter place to be as the sun rose over Heathrow.

Nothing changes, glf

ps asking to come back last week, to work there again...Hope CID refuse to let me enter.

Hang on a minute...didn't I already post something on this earlier?
Where did my thread go?

Did the Captain ever complete his visit to the washroom?

After this, I imagine it was too late! :)

Throughout this debacle it's highly likely that the Flight Director System would have been commanding pitch guidance designed to a return the aircraft to its previously assigned (MCP) altitude, as well as providing roll guidance designed to return the aircraft to its (LNAV?) track.

The auto-throttle (assuming it was engaged) would have been managing thrust to maintain the airspeed (be that MCP or VNAV derived).

It's therefore truly staggering that these two pilots seemed unable to follow basic Flight Director System information, regardless of whether the aircraft was being flown via the autopilot in Control Wheel Steering mode, or not ?!!! :ugh:

How easy is to "accidently" disengage the autopilot and do this sort of "manoever"?. I was under the understanding if the autopilot remained active until the disarm "button" was pressed to prevent accidents like Eastern Airlines 401

p.s. I am just curious. My flight experience is upto the level of a Grob 115 and Microsoft flight sim. I am just trying to educate myself

Well, staggering that the copilot did what he did. The Captain rushed in immediately to recover the aircraft (which he correctly did, apparently), not before fighting with the "panicked" copilot for the controls :eek: :eek: :eek:

It is kind of easy to disengage the autopilot by just moving the yoke with sufficient force. Every type has its own "trigger force", so to speak. The aircraft will, however, under normal circumstances announce you (via aural and/or visual warnings) that you disengaged the autopilot (or that it disengaged itself) in an usual way. That was one of the reasons learned from EAL401, even though the A310 failed to get the lesson and subsequently didn't help to prevent one of them making a big smoking hole in the Siberia region, only this time it was a kid who flew the plane!

And by the way, what really prevents accidents like EAL401 (and most of other kinds as well) is called CRM :ok:

lets just hope that the -0.2g didnt come while he was mid-stream :}:}

On the contrary. The flight directors should never be used to recover from an unusual attitude. That is not their primary purpose. It may have been this blind reliance on FD indications that caused the first officer to lose the plot. All he had to do was to disengage the autopilot and autothrottles, get rid of the FD's and simply use his manual flying skills (presuming he had some in the first instance which seems doubtful ..) to return to controlled flight. Then, when he had the aircraft under control manually he could re-introduce the appropriate automatics at his leisure.

In fact under the heading of Automatic Flight, the 737 FCTM states in part: "Early intervention prevents unsatisfactory performance or a degraded flight path...reducing the level of automation as far as manual flight may be necessary to ensure proper control of the airplane is maintained".

The report is unbelievable. I would have thought a solo student in a Cessna 150 would have done better than that.

However, I do have one more concern. I notice that the F/O applied enough force to trip the autopilot into CWS. When are we going to train pilots in the use of CWS. CWS can be a useful tool (although I'm not a big fan), BUT, the crew must be properly trained to use it, to recognize when the autopilot goes into CWS, and above all, fly the bloody airplane.

The Goldfish:ugh:

captplaystation:

"I find it difficult to believe anyone could be quite this incompetent, and the aircraft was trying to help him by going into Alt Acq, while all he could do was pull the thrust back and apply even more push force."

They're out there all right. Reference Colgan 3407 in Buffalo, NY where the Captain pulled against the stick PUSHER. In the Colgan accident, fatigue was cited as a major player, whereas I didn't notice fatigue mentioned in this DGCA report (perhaps I missed it). Now I'm just a flight instructor, but it's sad when airline pilots cannot effect recoveries to upsets that a pre-solo student should be able to handle.

I also note the conspicuous absence of the CVR data after the Captain entered the cockpit. Did they sit in silence the whole time or did the Captain ask something along the lines of "what the :mad: just happened?" I'm sure he did. I wonder why that portion of the CVR wasn't published.

Meanwhile, after it appears that the captain saved everybody's lives after the F/O completely screwed up with total incmpetence, it seems the investigation board wants to focus as much blame on the captain as possible.

The captain did not take over control as per standard procedure. What is expected when beyond Mmo and 20° nosedown, a calm "I have control" and wait for the F/O to release the controls?

Then they state that the captain pulled too hard to recover by yanking the control column. What do they expect when the copilot is still pushing forward on the controls at mach 0.9(which was never explained how or why he was doing it).

The PIC, not the crew but the PIC did not do the RVSM contingency procedure done after the altitude deviation seems to be important in the report(good point to make but after an incident like this who would remember).

But they do take time to say in the conclusions that the F/O had no previous incidents.

So in the end the report recommends to "take the appropriate action against the involved crew" Let me guess, the F/O is local and the captain is an expat.

Having read many accident reports but this being my first Indian one, I suspect a low level of competence in their investigations. Seems to match the level of competence in other aviation areas I read about frequently on this board.

My suggested appropriate action is an award for the captain.

I fault the captain for leaving the cockpit with such an idiot at the controls.

GB

The more I read the DGCA report, the more I am reminded of cats covering over something in the "Cat Box".:rolleyes:
Heck yes. His only mistake was getting airborne with that turkey in the other seat. The captain did not cause excessive g levels. The aircraft was seconds away from exploring new airspeed territory. Why does DGCA seem to think they should be second guessing this captain? Now we are second guessing them!
Where is TopTup when we need him?

Graybeard:

If the captain cannot step out to take a quick leak, and trust a co pilot to ensure the trimmed/autopilot on cruise setting is maintained, there are issues well above and beyond the aeronautic skill of the pilot in the other seat. We used to call such things "supervisory error" in the aircraft mishaps I investigated while in the service.

IF the captain cannot do the above, there is no sound reason for that particular copilot to be sitting in ANY cockpit, no less a passenger plane with numerous trusting souls on board.

Distinct odour of 'merde du vache' here....

No surprises there then.

Indeed. Perhaps yet another annual medical will be an effective DGCA solution to such an occurrence.

Just re-read the incident report. I missed the contributing factor of the "Subsequent recovery actions by the PIC without coordination with the copilot"

YGBSM!

Goldfish

Exactly, Lonewolf. It's highly unlikely this Capt chose or had any control of scheduling this FO for this trip, so he had to deal with it. Before leaving the fright deck, it was his job to be absolutely sure it was safe.

GB

punkalouver - both Capt and the FO are Indian, so lets leave the expat vs local debate out of this one

You are correct in assuming the worst about their accident investigating capabilities, I doubt there was a single pilot on the board. If you see previous accident reports you will see that the DGCA like to use "pilot error" as a general cause or contributing factor to any accident. Its easier to blame someone rather than the system.