Forgive my probably ignorant comment. Does instrument lag enter the equation or are the aircrew relying on external observations, looking out of the window?

So that is the question - what did ATC see??

At my airline (not EK) I routinely fly with people who call "positive rate" without so much as a look at the baro altitude tape/rad alt. These are mainly light twin guys who have not been taught properly and think getting the gear up is the end-all-be-all. Poorly trained, and not really 'switched on' types it seems.

If you look at an IVSI during rotation it can indicate a slight, momentary descent before settling up into the positive region. Simply a VSI pointing above zero is not an indication of a positive climb. For all one knows the mains haven't come off the ground yet. Gear-lock solenoids makes a nice click when the weight is off wheels, but again does not mean you won't settle back onto the earth with a windshear or engine failure.

bottom line; use all cues available including looking out the window. Airmanship.

At night over the water, the call "three rates of climb" meant altimeter, rad alt, and VSI all indicating increasing altitude. In a 777 cockpit (I have never flown one) what does the call out for "positive rate" mean that you have checked:
VSI?
Altitude Increase?
Rad Alt?
All three?

Thank you for that post

We seem to be wasting our posting time here with presuming to believe some of the ignorant news reports prior to confirmation by investigators.

I'm sure one can pare the theories down quite a bit by confirming or denying the facts in the post quoted.

Until then lets try to get some confirmation with better sources, We know what can go wrong but don't know yet what went wrong.

..but this is, after all, a rumour forum. Wasting time is pretty well what this is all about, don'tcha think?

According to our 777 FCOM:
'Verify a positive rate of climb on the altimeter and call “POSITIVE RATE.”'

According to our 777 FCTM:
'Retract the landing gear after a positive rate of climb is indicated on the altimeter.'

Our Airbus manuals are worded differently:
'Announce positive climb, when the vertical speed indication is positive and radio height has increased.'

This is all correct when u fly in normal conditions, when things go wrong PIC will callout what he want, therefore we need to wait until investigators listen to CVR and make judgment who to blame....

After all I might say regardless who's fault it is I am happy all survived.

IanW - let's concentrate on the similarities with SQ and EK and any one of a number of situations where hard lessons have been learned: a fire in an airframe containing tonnes of flammable liquid, and the value of precious seconds.

Give me the EK crew's response any time.

There is obviously some processing lag in the instruments, but for the important stuff (e.g. altitude) it's small - on the order of a tenth of a second.

In this article linked earlier (Australian co-pilot Jeremy Webb escaped Emirates plane crash in Dubai) is a picture of the aircraft from behind showing clear damage at the tail indicating contact with the ground only possible I assume at higher pitch? I am not a commercial pilot but could that indicate that they were increasing pitch for a GA without enough thrust and then settled down tail first on the runway...?

http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/0...d56bee56bcab59

Cap Doug, "aircraft didn't respond" I am guessing due to spool up and wind shear? Engines did respond, however, correct? The reason I ask is the TLA resolvers (self-powered) and FADEC systems on this aircraft are isolated and self-contained, and self-monitoring with dual redundancy on all of the above per engine as I am sure you know. Just looking for clarification, thank you.

Different grip and movement, one would think muscle memory would have prevented this from happening if the PM's mental intention was flaps first.

I chalk that one up to a line training SNAFU. It is a known human factors issue.

A couple of people have already made reference to it, Wirbelstrum being one of them. I have since trawled my manuals and can only find one reference in the BFCTM. I thought the info I was looking for was in the FCOM Automatics! I am sure there is some logic along the lines of.......if you are less than 5' for more or less than 2 seconds one condition will not give you FD guidance and the other will not give you thrust, requiring manual input.....buggered if I can find the reference!

Regards

GBD

Crickey there are a lot of duplicate replies in here.

Can I please suggest you all read the thread before simply saying the same things over and over again.

Does anyone have anything NEW?

One of the things in all of my career as an Mil ATCO was this ingrained mantra of AVIATE-NAVIGATE-COMMUNICATE (mentioned earlier by DaveReid I believe).

Bouncing down the runway then there will be a great deal of "aviating" going on, but zero need for any navigation and perhaps a great need to communicate.

Perhaps it is time to consider changing this to AVIATE-COMMUNICATE-NAVIGATE. After all, there are folk on the end of the radio who can help with the latter part. Sadly we couldn't be of much help in the aviating bit but certainly bailed a few out of grief with the navigation part, but only after they had wasted time trying to sort it themselves when they were at their busiest.

I often discussed this with FJ pilots and it was always a very interesting debate. The worrying part was that the most common response for doing it the A-N-C way was "well...that's how it has always been done".

I fully understand that there will be times when A-N-C is appropriate but I would suggest there are more occasions when A-C-N would be the sensible option.

Tha ATC recording is probably from ATC Live. From listening to other airports on the website it doesn't stay on 1 frequency but jumps around to a couple frequencies in use at the airport. You don't get a complete picture of all transmissions, so careful making any conclusions through this median.

I think the widely reported, but erroneous, media item about the tower gear check came from an early posting on the Aviation Herald which Simon has now corrected.

From the comment thread on the AV Herald EK521 article:

The Western Australian has used the videos from this incident to create a video on leaving your OH baggage behind and properly evacuating an ac.

https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/wa...baggage/#page1

Dubai ATC don't make a ''check gear' call. What they will do is tell you where they wish you to vacate the runway.
Inadvertant AT disconnect is unlikely in a 777.
Aviate Navigate Communicate always for me.

I see that evacuating passengers were burning their feet on the 49C tarmac.


Not a good idea to be in bare feet on take off or landing, always leave your shoes on.
You never know.