" How I Almost Destroyed a £50 million War Plane...'
 

A friend emailed me this link thinking I'd be interested. Thought I'd post it here for others to read also.


About "Normalisation of Deviance", or departure from SOPs, self-inflicted culture change and deterioration of safety nets.




How I Almost Destroyed a £50 million War Plane and The Normalisation of Deviance. - Fast Jet Performance

Another one is: 'I've always done that but do I really have to; would it make any difference if I didn't?'
That's when you find out that all the little safety bits you've built up over the years work and you start dropping them at your peril.

Normalisation of Deviance
 

Very good article.

Applies to us blunties too and is part of the mandatory HF training we carry out.

It can be interesting being fairly "new" to an organisation and taking a little step back and observing just what is going on....

Excellent article that many of us can relate to I am sure.

Although this "I know better" culture is gradually being filtered out of airlines, it still exists, and in less "regulated" environments, I am sure it is still rife.

You have to be a bit careful with statements like that, because though completely true, that is not necessarily a good thing.

"I know better" is also known as "airmanship and captaincy"

ie If all there was to being a good captain is knowing and following the rules religiously then an autistic pilot with an eidetic memory would be brilliant.

Captaincy and airmanship are all about knowing when the SOP is wrong for the situation.

That requires an "I know better" attitude.

So yes, airlines are losing the "I know better" attitude.

Great article, as well as some of the others on the site!

In the late eighties I was a young Harrier mech and flying a jet with this sort of mechanical discrepancy was unheard of in our organization. The jet would have been grounded, it may have been authorized for a one-time flight with the gear pinned down. If need be the squadron would fly the part out from home base or a different jet.
Interesting story though, the on deployment get'er done mentality can bread all sorts of "normal deviancy"if left unchecked.

Indeed an interesting story. It's been a long time since I flew single seat jet, but I can't help but think I might have gone inverted and tried the negative G heading away from the hard stuff rather than pointing at it....

I think it was zero G.

Difficult to get that without a ballistic trajectory....

Tourist,

point taken, but, as per the original story, I was thinking of making it up as you go along, rather than utilising imagination/experience to get you out of a dire situation.

I am no fan of the "SOP MONKEY" mentality that seems to have become the modus operandi in one particular large loco, where visual approaches are frowned upon, well, unless accompanied by some convoluted "double brief". I am thinking more in terms of the days when FO's had to remember 20 different sets of SOP's to suit the 20 Capts they flew with, some of which were thinking perhaps a little too far out of the box for everyones well being.

how much for a SR-71
 

Here is another from the confessional :

Speed Is Life - Plane & Pilot Magazine | PlaneAndPilotMag.com

Deviance normalised by fast recall of basics of staying aloft, never mind the G`s, the gear or anything else. Thrust is a must.

I agree with Stone69 - inversion was a much better option.
Thread drift warning!
As a very junior Flight Test Engineer some 40 years ago I needed a -1g/M1.0/1,000ft test point The senior FTE looked a my proposed push to -1g and said "not sure the pilot will like that too much, lets just roll inverted and get a gentle push up" Test point achieved every one happy

I haven't flown fast jets and not done that much aerobatics, but could they not have climbed up into the 10s of thousands, above the cloud (or even in the cloud with radar separation) before attempting a level outside turn pushing constant -ve G around the turn until it's up and locked?


Not that they should have done that either, but it strikes me as a safer option than diving at the ground

Some misunderstandings here.

1. There is no need to "gently push up" once inverted to get -1G. You are already there just by being inverted.

2. As stated, the nature of the problem required zero G, not negative G. -1G would be just as bad under those circumstances as +1G.
0G can only be achieved in a ballistic path (or at a legrange point, but that would be very tricky to achieve under these circumstances!)

3. "I haven't flown fast jets and not done that much aerobatics, but could they not have climbed up into the 10s of thousands, above the cloud (or even in the cloud with radar separation) before attempting a level outside turn pushing constant -ve G around the turn until it's up and locked?"

Their idea was misguided.
Yours is insane, and shows a little lack of understanding of G.
Why turn? What is the added benefit?

To get the -ve acceleration, but having re-read it I misunderstood as I thought I'd seen below 0g but actually was under (at) 0g.

My bad for skim reading.

If you were inverted, level, and activated gear up, would the gear not fall into the gear bay & lock under gravity?

No Go
 

"Important' event or not, I would not have flown that airplane on other than a low, slow ferry and with pinned gear, en-route to a Mx base. No!

Thank you for letting us know.
We will all rest easier knowing of your wisdom.

I fear (or she) had completely missed the point of the (rather excellent, IMHO) article.

Tourist, there are indeed some misunderstandings on here. You do not get -1g simply by rolling inverted. You have to remain in level flight to achieve that. But I don't have a monopoly on wisdom, so please feel free to give me the benefit of yours so I can rest easy as well.