Positive climb - flaps up
 

Anyone know any more about this?: https://www.flightglobal.com/news/ar...action-422686/

Hmmm....
 

Not hard to guess though.

Not making any judgements, but I wouldn't mind seeing the hours on both seats on this flight.

Being completely ignorant of the marvels of modern automation I am nonetheless somewhat surprised that the aircraft would allow this?!

Not qualified on Airbus...
 

On my Boeing, it does whatever we tell it. I don't know much about Airbus, but I would imagine the flap lever is one of the few where the crew have direct control over it.

I can see the mistake happening - it's a crossover between "gear up" and "flaps up" and two motor-actions albeit different levers - but as I said, I'd like to see the experience levels.

FATIGUE. FATIGUE. FATIGUE. FATIGUE.

Done it myself as a new F/O on ATR turboprop. Empty A/C, positioning flt.

The Capt. decided to demonstrate to me (and the observer on the j/s) the impressive climb performance of the ATR-42-500. He briefed that since we were very light, we could retract flaps below acceleration alt. Sounded like a good idea at the time... :}

During taxi I kept telling myself "don't retract flaps below min speed, don't retract flaps below min speed, don't retract...)


We took off, Capt. Commanded "Gear up!". I looked at the ASI, saw speed above the bug, guess which lever I moved... :E

Honestly have a hard time seeing how this happened. Positive rate-gear up. Pretty straight forward.Big difference between the feel and movement of the levers. Not an Airbus guy, so may be missing something.

Positive Rate - Positive Identification of ....
 

It doesn't matter how few hours either pilot has on type. Gear lever is a Gear Lever, Flap Lever is a flap Lever. What is clear is that the appropriate lever was not identified before being moved. Pretty basic stuff.

High AOA protection will prevent the slats retracting completely above a certain value but the flaps will retract with lever position.

People are screaming fatigue?? but there is no roster data. If you point fingers at something you should provide supporting evidence, not a stab in the dark.
There is also the call to question the hours of the crew; again no data. was it a training flight?

It is curious considering the bodily actions. A flap lever is beside your hand and needs little body movement; the gear lever is a positive stretch forward.

In a previous carrier, B733, there had been a few cadet errors with mis-hearing commands. F1 takeoffs, at acceleration altitude the call by PF was "bug UP." Flaps
UP selected in error. The call was changed to try and avert this error.

Interesting, considering the control freak nature of much of the FBW a/c, that there is no lock on there flap lever below a certain RA height e.g. 100-200'. Perhaps it was considered and perhaps it was decided that trained pilots could not be so dumb. That theory has been disproved many times.
However, I am not an advocate of dumbing down our profession into more auto-dependancy.

I'd be interested to hear how the a/c reacted and how PF reacted. Was this an F1 takeoff; therefore only 1 section to flaps up, or was this a selection from 2nd flap gate to next gate; or was it even from 2nd flap gate all the way up. Ouch.

F1 - UP on B737 and you lose the LED's would make life challenging at low level, especially if max reduced thrust and being in THR HLD. It would take quick action to firewall the levers and stop the nose up pitch and avoid ground contact.

One comment on AV website mentioned: "if it was an F/O action then further sim training, if was a captain's command then demotion." If it was captain's command then PM (F/O) should not have executed it. That's what PM is for. Mind you, in the TR with cadets, it took many head bashings to make the PM's aware that doing something because "I was only obeying orders" was no defence in a screw up.

Next recurrent sim anyone??? It would certainly take fine attitude control not to push to below level flight. Ground effect can be your friend.

Perhaps using the arbitrarily callout "positive climb" gets Airbus observers/"pilots" confused.

Have had an FO do this to me. I had flown with him many times and he never made a remotely similar error before or after. I can only put it down to a "brain fart".

RTO: do explain. To me "positive climb" is a lot less arbitrary than "positive rate". "Positive rate" of what??

In this situation the protections will kick in and whilst the flaps will retract, the leading edge slats won't. A few accidents have been prevented by this. Similar incident with a BAE 146 departing Cairns in Australia had the controller activating the crash alarm as the sink was so pronounced.

Thanks FD't. They did design an a/c for dummies. Ha.;)

Yes, she suits me well. Is the 737 any different in this respect?

The design of the flap lever track is somewhat smart: Before selecting any position, the pilot must pull the lever out of the detent. Balks at positions 1 and 3
prevent the pilot from calling(*) for excessive flap/slat travel with a single action.
(FCOM DSC 27-30-20: A).
(*) ->> "commanding i.e. selecting"

After landing yours truly retracts the flaps to clean from Full and 3 at once as per training. With such repetitive action, it is natural to develop muscle memory that overcomes those "balks".

Now if most of your take-offs are F1, and then after a long long time since LTUS /IOE you do an F3 takeoff, your hand will find the flap lever in a familiar location an the muscle memory could play its game all too well.

If you move the handle and then end up in a high alpha , then alpha lock is lost!

Slat Alpha Lock / Speed Baulk The Air Data / Inertial Reference Units ( ADIRU's ) supply corrected angle-of-attack ( alpha ) and computed air speed ( CAS ) data to the SFCC. The SFCC use the data to prevent slat retraction at high alpha and / or low CAS. Slat retraction is not possible if: On A319 & A320 - the alpha is more than 8.5 deg. - the CAS is less than 148 knots. The function resets if alpha decreases below 7.6 deg. or CAS increases over 154 knots. On A321: - the alpha is more than 8.0 deg. - the CAS is less than 165 knots. The function resets if alpha decreases below 7.1 deg. or CAS increases over 171 knots.

Alpha lock/speed baulk is not possible if: On A319 & A320 - the slat retraction is set before alpha is more than 8.5 deg. or CAS less than 148 knots - the aircraft is on the ground with CAS below 60 knots.
On A321 : - the slat retraction is set before alpha is more than 8.0 deg. or CAS less than 165 knots - the aircraft is on the ground with CAS below 60 knots.

When the function is active, the ECAM shows the message A-Lock ( cyan, pulsing ) below the slat position ind

After a long day I did it to my FO. Luckely on the 1-11 the flaps took so long to completely retract that I had time to reset before any probs.

In addition, I think we used 'Positive rates' years ago at one airline. Maybe it was before the IVSI off the IRS and we were supposed to check for both positive vertical speed and altimeter increasing.

An exhaustive PPRuNe discussion of the subject in an earlier thread:

http://www.pprune.org/questions/4925...ive-climb.html

One of my favorite comments from this earlier thread:

What do you think? Pancakes?

Read ze books and be wise. This year Boeing refers to "positive rate of climb" which most operators shortens to "positive rate". Positive climb is a statement of inferiority complex - we have to be different than the bloody yanks. Because we know better over here. Just like the "sharklets"

Surely, flap retraction is not done until clear of the runway. It prevents the gear being selected by mistake. I once had the "pleasure" of ferrying a slightly bent aeroplane following just that. The aircraft had bounced on landing, the FO selected the gear instead of the flap, and....

This is a human factors issue and is rare but it does occasionally happen and can happen with an experienced or inexperienced pilot. Back in the 80's as a two striper on a 747 classic I called "positive climb" and the Captain with 28 years in the company called "flap up". I replied "gear up" paused, he confirmed and I raised the gear. Later the Captain could not believe he had said flap but fortunately the Flight Engineer told him in no uncertain terms he had.


Loganair back in the 80's had a policy of hitting flap up on touchdown on the Fokker F27 to dump lift and get the weight on the wheels. Unfortunately on one touchdown the copilot selected the gear up and sod's law it was a crosswind and the squat switch was on the downwind main gear and the gear raised dinging both props.


Occasionally you get a pilot calling for gear up and the other pilot's hand goes towards the flap lever momentarily before self correcting. Seen it all but it is very rare that someone goes ahead and actually selects flap up instead of gear up. The beauty of having two pilots is one notices the error and normally stops it before it happens. But if an error can be made it will be made due fatigue, complacency, distraction.

Suninmyeyes: Small world. That was the accident I referred to in the post above yours. Location, Manchester. Reg G-OMAN iirc. I ferried it to Norwich for repair.

Right engine BALPA NIgel Nigel BA let's see what RAT 5 says. You have to assume as GIB is Cat C the LHS has plenty of experience.

Don't see the difference. You call positive climb when you have a positive VS. Do you think this incident would have been avoided if they used "positive rate" instead of "positive climb"? Positive climb is a statement of a positive VS, nothing more nothing less. You still haven't explained how positive rate is any less arbitrary. Just some nonsensical ramblings about Boeings.

positive rate vs positive climb


seriously guys, this is exactly what I hate in this profession done more and more by stupids who only learn procedures instead flying.
Yeah, even in cockpits many still discuss about where is the "comma" and what page exactly. Now the best pilot is the one who knows by heart all sops word by word, better than a monkey, not the only one who can still think by himself and fly a plane properly.
Thank you Mr autopilot.

Not just positive V/S but also an increasing altimeter reading.

Herod Wrote
Hi Herod, I did wonder if that was the one! I thought it was G-IOMA. I'm glad the Norwich based operator gave the unfortunate co-pilot a job on the basis she was unlikely to make the same mistake twice. I suspect an unhappy atmosphere in the flight deck with an anxious co-pilot trying to please the Captain led to a rushed and incorrect movement. There may have been a similar thing in the Papa India Staines accident with the premature droop retraction.

Suninmyeyes
Papa India was a complicated training/management accident with a probable misunderstood command outside of sop but P2s flat mate had selected land flap at noise abatement cut back instead of up the week before.
Probably because we shouldn't have been flying on line due to inadequate training and incompetent procedures - there was a work to rule and a war zone atmosphere.
The culprit went on to fly Concorde which IMHO proves that it wasn't a lack of ability - just a sh@t system.

It can happen. Just look first and never move quickly. Many years ago on a new type I remember pulling on the wrong handle instead of the flap handle. But fortunately, it wasn't possible to move in the direction I was pulling on it. I also had a captain select the gear down above Vlo when I asked for flaps once.

I agree. No matter how competent, knowledgeable or well prepared people are, very occasionally they can perform something that is normally routine differently and are unable to explain why afterwards.

It may be something intrinsic to the human condition and the way our cognitive apparatus works. It might be easier to accept that we are all susceptible to the odd “brain fart” and to develop our procedures with this in mind. I guess that is part of the logic behind read backs of instructions, as it helps to trap an incipient error, much as in the “gear up” “flaps up...” “no, gear up!” example above.

It also shows that doing things in a hurry without time for intellectual examination of your proposed actions can lead to problems. Are we in such a desperate need to get the gear up that we don’t have time to think/check about which control we’re going to use to do it...?

Its not the first
 

It's been done before.

Have a google of "BASI VH-NJL December 1997" or https://www.atsb.gov.au/media/156999...704041_001.pdf .

It'll be done again.

Suninmyeyes. Yep, and a very competent FO she was too. However, I think she may have been the only person to be involved in two mishaps on the same page of Flight's list of accidents/incidents that year. She was my FO on the second one, and I couldn't have asked for a more helpful colleague.

_____:ok:_____

Anyone flown the Beechcraft Baron ? Some have the gear handle on the left and the flap handle on the right and some have it the other way around. A few people have managed to retract the gear while exiting the runway.

Exactly. It was done to me once by an experienced and very competent FO. Just a case of wrong motor programme. Thankfully, both of us identified the mistake as it happened and he move the lever straight back before the flaps could respond. It didn't even show up on the data monitoring.

No-flaps takeoff
 

Unrelated (but it's been bugging me for a couple of weeks anyway, so what the hell.)

I was mildly perturbed that my Austrian Airlines flight a couple of weeks ago took off without any flaps; but subsequently gather that on that particular aircraft (Fokker 100) it's normal procedure. At the time I simply reasoned that we were relatively lightly loaded.

Are any of the bigger birds - such as the A320 I assume we're talking about here - authorised for flapless takeoff, out of interest? (Good to know such that the next time I'm mildly perturbed I can either raise the level to "highly" or reduce to "not at all" ;-).)

The A300 is. In the A32S config 1 + f is needed for takeoff as a minimum.

There's been a lot of talk of semantics here. For Airbus the command is Flaps Zero for flaps up. And Gear Up to raise the gear. Flaps Up is not a standard call.