This is the same company that diverted from MAN to LHR because the clever box thought 23R was too short. Says a lot about the culture there.

It baffles me that we've gotten to a point where blindly following the FD's have overridden basic flying skills.

Maybe fatigue played a role in this, but surely how is it possible that none of the pilots noticed the end of the runway coming up?

Children of the Magenta

By now we are seeing the grandchildren of the magenta.

The children of the Flight Director.

The real question is will we ever know the answer?

Are authorities in the Emirate likely to investigate?

They will investigate. They just won’t publish.

Flight of the Navigation Director.

It's not an open or democratic country but it's aviation investigation branch did deliver a credible, reasonable report into the EK 521 crash (the idle thrust go around).
I understand there is no shortage of SOPS in EK. Once the button pressing has been figured out the real issue is the safety culture and training. If pilots are just flying the QAR and petrified to correct any automatic system or call out that's clesrly wrong then something has to change. Not that it will.

just asking
 

Hi,
I read about Children of Magenta, of Flight Directors not beeing followed....
How about assuming that the 4 (!) pilots have a basic sense of self preservation and tried their utmost to get airborne as they had on many other occasions, undoubtedly....

but they couldn´t ....

because something didn´t work as it normally would ? Something - don´t know what´- might have been mechanically wrong, or blocked , or whatever ?
Think 737-MAX.
??

.

The problem with that theory is, that they then flew an aircraft that was not working properly all the way to Washington?

Best advice ever - Flight ‘Suggesters’ notFlight ‘Directors’

It's quite astonishing that in 2022 we have a situation where Boeing aircraft automation is so poorly understood that it leads to both real and near disasters in a way that Airbus aircraft have never. Yet Airbus took the flack for many years for building overly automated aircraft. Having the FD point at the ground when radar altitude is less than 100ft in the takeoff regime (regardless of the MCP setting) is an example of 20th century avionics engineering that needs to change immediately. It's a completely nonsense command.

Hence "look through" the flight director, or even more revolutionary "look outside"

I currently fly a Boeing “classic”, and given the training, flying and access to all the relevant manuals - my sense is that traditionally, Boeing has designed its planes with the assumption that pilots will have the appropriate skills to deal with almost any scenario.

Perhaps that assumption needs to be re-evaluated ?

Not flown Airbus, so can’t comment (would like to though, for comparison!)

Hopefully the report when published will prove informative.

We tried this in a 777 full motion sim a few days ago with altitude in the MCP set to 0000 to see if we could recreate it.

On the take off roll the FMAs read THR TOGA TOGA as usual.

We rotated to 14 degrees. The flight director was giving appropriate pitch demand during rotation and until just after lift off.

FMAs changed to THR LNAV ALT just after it got airborne.

The autopilot was engaged at 100' AGL, Normally it would be at 200 feet minimum but we were interested to see if automatics would make it worse.

With ALT engaged we would have expected the flight director demands to give a descent and take the plane down towards 0000. However it didn't.

After Alt capture It lowered the nose to about 7 degrees pitch up. This resulted in rapid acceleration and approached flap limiting speeds. However the flaps retracted just in time so THR remained constant.

During acceleration to flap up speed the plane climbed at about 300 feet per minute and reached 1100 feet and stayed there and did not descend or climb. It just stayed at 1100 feet in Alt Capture despite the 0000 in the MCP window.

So interesting and slightly different to what I would have expected. This was done at max landing weight so would have been much lighter than the real event.

Edit to add: Very interesting, suninmyeyes. So that points towards a malfunction on the EK jet?


@CW247: I agree. Having a flight director to show you how to pitch up to rotate.........is that really necessary? All you need is a pitch scale and a speed tape.

If so, I think that SIM recurrent training clearly needs to focus much more on the basics: pitch + power + instrumentation - NOT flight directors - because we are now seeing pilots making mistakes in both seats who don't have the many years flying on 'basic T' instrumentation on simple turbo-props that pilots used to have before getting onto the big jets.

How dark was it that way on that night? Somatogravic illusion? Mistake made, then subsequent flat acceleration felt like pitch up? Subsequent confusion and the error not picked as they thought they were climbing… I’ve been through DXB a few times in the dark, and with the ground lighting wouldn’t have thought it likely, but if both pilots had head down staring solely at their magenta lines like the pilot from the other major UAE airline in the YouTube video, who knows.

What I’m interested in, what did the GPWS do during all of this?

Even if it was dark, you can see when you pitch up, (your landing lights illuminate the runway ahead). You can feel that you have lifted off, you can hear that you have lifted off.

Plus, your PFD pitch scale shows you pitching up, and the altitude scale and V/S and Rad Alt, all show you climbing.