Looks as if this was vert close if true.

Emirates “Near Miss” On Take Off?

Emirates flight 231 from Dubai (DXB) to Washington DC (IAD) appears to have experienced a potentially significant anomaly during take off from Dubai on the 20th of December, according to data from FR24.

According to unconfirmed reports close to the event; and seemingly corroborated by data from FlightRadar24 and other resources, the flight crew failed to correct the take off climb altitude, which was set to 00000 feet instead of 4,000 feet.

This is simply unbelievable.

So not only did PF forget that Take Off attitude normally points UP, and nearly flew a perfectly good airplane plus passengers into the ground, but the PNF, presumably Pilot Monitoring, must have been asleep. Literally unbelievable.

Various accounts report that 4 crew have been sacked by the company in an attempt to create a firebreak in this PR disaster.

Short of an incapacitation of the PF.... Who flies 50kts past rotate speed staring into space at the upwind runway end getting bigger and bigger ? What PM sits there fat dumb and happy watching Armageddon approaching without yelling at the PF and pretty quickly taking control.... or maybe he did just before they went downtown?

After the debacle of EK521 it seems that home-base is a bit too much of a challenge for some. Will we ever know what happened here? In an airline where being fearful for your job is part of the everyday landscape did CRM or Cultural issues prevent a timely intervention? Would you buy a ticket with Emirates?

Thread already exists, and it was moved out of R&N: https://www.pprune.org/middle-east/6...ates-real.html

The FR24/FlightAware data isn't particularly detailed, however it supports the theory that the aircraft was still on the ground when on the 30R stopway, though not other reports that it was only 75' AGL when overflying local houses (actually around 200'), nor that it was descending at that point.

Yes, it is hard not to think "WTF were they doing?", without waiting for the investigation outcome. It is hard not to think "Such guys should not sit in an airliner.", without waiting for the investigation outcome.

Obviously the plane was not malfunctioning, otherwise they would hardly have continued to IAD. Or would they?

4 pilots in the cockpit, none of them with an understanding of pitch when you rotate? That the nose of the aircraft should point up, not down when you get airborne? This is not a recency issue as the 777 pilots work hard in EK. That have fired a lot of pilots with no regard to seniority. Maybe they kept the wrong pilots? This incident that came close to being a major crash into a residential area, was not operated by a competent crew.
EK crashed a fully serviceable 777 in Dubai during a botched go around. They nearly crashed a fully serviceable 777 in Melborne due to finger trouble, and the same in South Africa with a A340. Nearly crashed a A380 in Moscow and one in the US, both nearly flew into the ground in good flight conditions. Nobody looked out the windows.
What is next?

Pilots terminated. Problem solved. Nothing to see here....move on.

Will someone remind me how TOGA works on the 777 and why it didn't give a pitch target?

How do you know the other pilots weren't screaming to do something?
Hard to yank the control column back from the jumpseat.

Having had to intervene myself from the jumpseat (although nothing this serious) my inputs were not even heard the first few times. Due to the PF being overloaded and becoming task focused

If the MCP altitude window is set to the airport elevation when you engage the F/D's, it will engage in TOGA & ALT. You need to set a higher altitude & recycle the F/D's to get back to TOGA & TOGA.
When Alt is engaged changing the MCP Alt window doesn't do anything, until a new pitch mode is selected. I guess this is what happened

As of yet, all pilots have not been terminated.

A regular takeoff roll should never overload a normally competent crew member.

ALL PILOTS NOT TERMINATED.
Thanks Emma. I am guessing that inside information so thanks for that.

If this is true it represents a shocking catalogue of errors on the day, but also in training and culture. This simply could not happen without the crew being so far off the beam as to be unrecognisable to a regular airline pilot. The number of things you have to get wrong to do this is in the multiples territory. From the simple question what does handling pilot do at VR even if there is no call from the copilot - ROTATE to15 degrees is the answer since nothing else will do the job. F/D or no F/D. The plane flies by its attitude on takeoff. Unless you are utterly mesmerised by the magenta line issue. Then how many times do we check the MCP altitude before takeoff - four?

By the way someone said this had been moved to another area? Why would that be? It is very much the stuff of Rumours and News. How could this have been kept quiet I wonder since the aircraft was damage apparently..
Best.....
Retd guy

So what is the tyre limiting speed for a 773? 🤔

There's simply zero hope left in this industry. At a time where we're supposed to be proving to the general public why it's not a great idea to let automation take over our profession, this stunt only proves otherwise why us humans should be replaced... I can only hope now that the pace at which ultra high speed rail services get developed globally picks up so I don't have to worry about whether or not my life is in the hands of a robot, or otherwise someone who probably doesn't know how to tie their own shoe laces.

I don't know why pilots can't just leave the MCP altitude where it was when they shut down. No need to put it to field elevation or even zero.

The MCP altitude is typically be pre-set during the cockpit pre-flight to an anticipated altitude. Why not do it. If it turns out to have not been the proper altitude, it was likely only changed from one improper altitude to another and can be properly set during the briefing.

The MCP altitude should be checked by all pilots during the departure briefing when the initial climb altitude is mentioned. Ideally, the briefing pilot points to it/selects it at that time.

FMA should be checked on the pre-flight for proper indication. In fact, it should also be checked when you turn on the FD switches for a boxed TOGA/TOGA indications(for 10 seconds).

I don't understand why having a mis-set altitude in the MCP would lead to a delayed rotation(if that actually happened).

Alarm bells should be going off if one is reducing the pitch(or only pitching up to 5 degrees) near the ground. A couple of degrees might be reasonable, not ten degrees from typical initial pitch attitude(even after an engine loss V1, this would be way off).

Fight director giving indications you don't want to follow is not just a Boeing thing. I know of an Airbus near crash due to following the FD's on a go-around(Thrust levers put in Flex instead of TOGA - and actually another Boeing crew that didn't press TOGA on a go-around leading to flap over-speeds as they follow inappropriate FD commands).

Looking out the window could make things worse, depending on the situation.

Helpful tip......

When sitting in the jump seats as extra crew, at some point after the cockpit setup but before pushback(when there is time), I like to do a scan of the overhead and forward panels. On occasion, you find something that is not set properly. And you can still listen to the cockpit gossip while doing it. Some prefer to use that time on iPhones.

Whatever damage was sustained on takeoff at Dubai (reportedly due to hitting the localizer array) was either rectified at Dulles (presumably limited to wheel/brake changes) and/or deferred for action back at base (hopefully nothing airworthiness-related, given that the aircraft operated a revenue flight IAD-DXB, but then again ...).

I'm not familiar with modern types such as the 777-300. ( Although, did fly DC10 and B744 over 20 years ago. ) My question: "Is it mandatory to engage flight director for take-off" ? Rotating followed by nailing the basic parameters not that complicated I'm guessing, even if there is some sort of 'swung cone' for losing a donk at V1 on a twin with spot heights impinging close in. Do recall one of those seasonal DXB temperature inversions making initial climb performance a touch lazy, but this sounds a whole lot more interesting unless there's something we don't know. One comment I read elsewhere would leave potential pax believing that it is normal for the autopilot/s to be fully engaged for takeoff. PR could be awkward, and I doubt whether the average tabloid pages will go much into explaining 'TOGA'.

The pilots are rumoured to learn their fate or fortune over the next day or so.

The screenshot of the company NOTAM that was leaked was, (in my view) a knee jerk reaction that was misplaced and has been withdrawn. The aircraft had been on the ground in Dubai for a little less than 24hrs and if it was powered down at any stage, the MCP would have defaulted to 10000ft. If the MCP was set to 0ft, perhaps it was not the previous crew who set this level, as has been suggested.

The 777 will happily take off and fly around without FDs, AT or even FBW. Airline SOPs, however, are generally more restrictive. I would expect EK to have mandated FD on (and probably to be followed on pain of death...)

Unlikely to have a significant inversion this time of year and the -300 is not short in the thrust department. I suspect this accident (if they did hit the LOC array) will be fascinating in terms of HF and company culture. I’m not saying this is the case here (yet), but you can only dumb things down and be prescriptive to a certain level before you leave people unable to cope with much outside the ordinary because they enter a state of cognitive dissonance: the pilot part is saying 15degs NU, ignore the FD, sort it later and/or turn it off; the part that’s been beaten senseless by SOPs says follow the FD otherwise it’s no tea no biscuits in the office...

This is well and truly unbelievable. Flight directors, whatever they show, were never meant to be followed during rotation. At least not on any aircraft I have flown. Once the aircraft is off the ground, you either follow the FDs if their indications make any sense - or, if they don't or are missing altogether, you pitch for an attitude which gives you more or less the correct climb speed, get away from the ground and sort it out whenever safely possible.

Also, that would have made for a great sim scenario. The PM calls "Rotate", no reaction from the PF.

8.5 degrees keeps you out of a Tailstrike. 777-300 Tail strikes at 8.9 degrees normal liftoff attitude is 8.0 degrees ... on the 300 ER. Tail strikes at 10.0 degrees... normal liftoff is at 9.0 degrees

Just some thoughts how it could've happened. I am still lost for words if this was an otherwise uneventful "departure".
- Different airspeed readings, followed by confusion. Should have come up in the story that's been told.
- Flaps not set?
- Glued to the runway to duck under birds and things went too far. Do birds even live in the desert?
- Trim mis set nose down. There was an odd procedure for a while on the 737 to trim full fwd for de-icing.

yes yes... I know checklist, procedures, take off config warning et al. should've stopped it. I am just speculating.

Given the reported circumstances, a tailstrike does indeed sound an unlikely scenario.

Think it's fairly well known at this stage that it is related to the altitude set in the MCP for the departure

How would any MCP setting cause 4400 m takeoff run and 216 kts on ground? It has nothing to do with the director.

Read the earlier posts. Mis-set Alt Sel meant the FD didn't give an initial take-off pitch target, instead it was probably in Alt. Have a read of post #15!
The assumption therefore being that the PF didn't apply any significant nose-up to rotate until they got to the far end of the rwy.

Be interesting to see what the roster was like for preceding week or so ?

And EK reaps what it sows, and learns nothing.

The Joberg over-run years ago? Bad training and over relience on generated, rather than raw information.

The 777 hull loss, including a fatality? bad training and fear culture coupled with too much relience on automation.

This one? Ddidn't rotate because the FD didn't say to? Really???

Not long before leaving I had a (non) incident,complete with frog-march to the office, becaue I disconnected the AP to correct a rapidly decreasing airspeed due to windshear and the 777s habit of going into ALT CAP early.

The verdict? You should have let the automation deal with it until stck shaker.

Thise who do not learn from the past are apt to repeat it....

The FD has nothing to do with initiating the rotation. That is based on the non-flying pilot saying 'rotate' which is soon after the automated V1 call(unless a contaminated runway) which is based on reading the airspeed indicator. I suppose someone could rotate very slowly but something hasn't been fully explained at this early stage yet.

You rotate into the FD. If the FD is in ALT.. and you follow the FD and don’t rotate to around 15 degrees, but follow the FD in ALT, I would suggest perhaps very little rotation will occur.

Maybe the take off was attempted with the autopilot engaged on the ground. This has happened once before in a 777, off 12R as I recall. I believe the pitch mode was ALT and the ASR quoted the pilot as reporting "higher than usual stick force" required to rotate the aircraft. It was not a ULR flight so although they used a lot of additional runway they still didn't hit anything. Washington would be a different story. I'm not saying this is what happened but it is reminiscent of the other event and to the best of my knowledge nothing was changed to prevent it happening again.

The 777 FD pitch bar sometimes has a way of sitting lower than the desired climb attitude after rotation. If the nose is lowered toward it, the pitch bar will usually then behave correctly and rise to the appropriate angle. Some people will ignore the FD and fly the proper attitude and be called at by the PM for not following the FD. Others will do what the FD tells them by lowering the nose after rotation, then raising it again, frustrating the other pilot who believes in ignoring spurious data. This should all be trained out of the pilots by the training dept but that's another discussion altogether.

Prob just a rumor but it was mentioned to me that someone in the company was suggesting that the PF on rotation realized that the take-off climb altitude was set to 0, called for the PM to set it, the PM then (unknown reason) didn't set it and instead turned on the autopilot with it set to 0.

Agreed. As much I would love to experience flying 777 or A380, Emirates has always been off my list since they don’t allow raw data flying. Not only it’s important to maintain basic flying skills, nothing makes me more happy flying wise than doing raw data take offs and approaches some times to times on my Baby Bus. =)

Frankly this has nothing to do with raw data skills. It's a procedural lapse with four pilots in front under what circumstances not known yet. They could all be very proficient in raw data flying. It's happened once before in the air with four in front involved in non-professional chat, overspeed then with speed brakes underspeed, AP tripping and altitude excursion in RVSM airspace. Another example of more the merrier in front not being true.

This is absolutely gobsmacking.
Since when on any Boeing has rotation ever been commanded by the Flight Director?
Quite apart from the obvious breakdown of SOPs and CRM etc. at what stage does the Lizard brain kick in with the realisation that you are going to die ?
By the way setting 0 on the MCP altitude window is a very bad idea at any time and something I was warned against very early on flying Boeings.