Well, I gotta tell ya, Trimotor and Groper...

you're both a couple of amateurs compared to White Knight...

who's obvious experience makes you both look like a couple of cowboys!

Get real!...get some experience! :ok:

And then come back and talk to the Pro's!! :ok:

Oh! and by the way "iceman"...

...'bout time you started to run the show yourself, don't you think?

And not rely on others to do what you're paid to do? :ok::ok:

Why so tough on White Knight?

What he's saying actually makes sense. If it takes two crew to run the aircraft, any more is just a pain in the @rse.

If two crew can't do things in time, then operations need to change.

Granted the delivery could have been better, and I have to say White Knight - you came across as a pit of a w@nker with your last comment...

Oh no, not again. This is one of those topics that comes up eventually after every tailstrike. Do a quick search and you'll find plenty of threads that answer this question. Quick answer: who is going to pay for it and why?

White Knight....WOW, just about sums up your rant really.

We went to very different schools on common decency and respect towards others I think. If a fellow pilot who is a necessary part of the crew wants to look at 'the numbers' before you go or has some input on what's about to take place, then what's wrong with that, as long as it's at an appropriate time. "Can't we all just get along?"

...err!... I think you might actually be "The W@nker", Squiffy...

...when one considers your profile!! :ok::ok:

And for you Props...you wanna start showing some some "command potential"?

Thanks Obie.

And remember, don't throw stones in glass houses... "big one"!:D

"Don't throw stones in glass houses"...

Would you like to decipher that for me, Squiffy? :ok::

Hey guys. Back off a bit. What about getting back to the thread.:=

Interesting opinion of your augmented crew you have, White Knight.

If you got the aug. pilots in the flightdeck does it really hurt (apart from your ego) to have them check the figures?

Earlier on this thread somebody owed up to inserting the wrong figures into the box, This got picked up by the AUG. F/O!!! Who in that case might have saved an embarrasing incident or dare I say an accident with or without loss of life.

Manage your resources carefully, one day they might save your arse.

Good call paulg.

Suitably castigated!:oh:

White Knight,


Remind me never to fly with you when you are operating.

3 or 4 pair of ears and eyes are better than two. Your CRM is appalling.:ugh::ugh:

SO...... now that the "boys" are hopefully done with their immature little scrap...
what nos & figures did the EK407crew, unfortunately, punch into the MCDU for TOW & flex T.O. values???

poor white night!!
 

I like flying with the extra crew personally but ( and apart from his tone level and style which was c@#p) White Knight has a small point.

I am of the (personal) opinion that having extra crew on the flight deck is a double edged sword.

yeah - great to help do a bit of the work etc. but I anecdotally believe that sometimes it may not add to safety.

I like the idea of the three pilot crew ( 1 skipper /2 f/o's) as the delineation of command is clear. Sometimes too many cooks etc etc.

This is a little like having two QFI's in the one aircraft - there used to be silly incidents as command was a little blurred sometimes.

Personally , when I am augmenting I offer to do what ever the other captain wants but don't volunteer for anything specifically.

I certainly don't wear a head set normally on take off or interfere on arrival.

Reason - they are good enough to operate by themselves ( of course I will ask if they want help and keep my head out just in case there is something really obvious) but if you are not on the head set etc you cant interfere, they don't assume you will help and when /if it goes south you cannot be held to blame ( assuming it is not fatal of course).

Might be seen as a cop out but I give the two guys in the operating seat the benefit of the doubt that they can do the job they are trained for. Well .... most of the time but EKs recruitment and training lately seems to have missed something but we are all human!!

tail wheel - hmmm like that idea...

So ... back to the thread... what were the numbers in the box... and how small was the yellow trend arrow on take off... just my 2 cents. And the guys were not new to the jet so must be more to it..perhaps busy getting wound up about the change in Ops policy or discussing the FG1 with the big ta ta'S... at least that would be a reason!!!

dont mean to get anyone off side - all is tongue in cheek and meant in a nice tone and style as if we were at a bar chatting over a pint...you know ... civil!!!

ask Al Haynes what he thinks of aug. crew ;)

Aircraft weighing pads !!!!
 

It seems to me that this has similarities with the MK Halifax disaster. Let me be clear and explain.
As stated and , as I understand it the rotation was late and climb out speed "slow".
This is not exactly what happened in Halifax , but there are lessons to be learnt and similarities between the facts of MKJ and what appears to be a thread here.

The Halifax incident sighted in the report as wrong take of power set and (it was the same take off power as the previous , almost empty ferry sector from North of New York , Bradley I think from memory).
So if the wrong take off figures were calculated, based on unreliable, unrealistic weights, then it would seem that the end of the run way arrived sooner than expected, causing the over rotation and a tail strike.
MK's senior mangement and again from memeory the flight safety officer and ops Director were approached by Cranfeild to try and design / understand a method of speed calculation verses runway length etc to prevent this from happeneing again. Whether or not this is ongoing i dont know, but there was an effort to improve and reduce this from happening again.

Not the same as weighing the aircraft on stand but with the same end result in mind.

MK Halifax was caused as we who were involved know by the fatigue and lack of knowledge on the BLT and the latent faults that laid within it. Not wishing to bang on the same drum that was beat for so long , post Halifax but many of the PPruner's balmmed the MK culture for dangerous practice and all the rest of the rubbish that was going around at the time and many blamed Mike Kruger for all sorts of things, many he could be held accountable for, along with 70 % of every other airline owner COO /CEO. But who now will critisise the safety and procedures of EK, not many I would imagine. But you see , and I know hindsight is a wonderful thing, Mike Thorneycroft and his crew were in exactly the same position as the EK crew, only there was an obsticle at the end of the runway (a 10 foot high burm), otherwise they would be here today.

Lessons to be learnt, yes i think so. Dont critisise untill the final incident reports are out.
Goes with out saying that the EK crew did well and got the aircraft on the ground safely, that has to be the message we all focus on not looking for argument fuel, not withstanding this is a rumour forum.

Nuf said :)

I want to be alone!
 

There's enough material here for a Phd in aviation psychology and not all of it "normal". Some of the commentators here truly look for the "loneliness of command". When it all goes tits up for them then they surely will be alone, very much so. I can't see any reason why a commander wouldn't use the brain power of everyone at his/her disposal to "work a problem". The buck stops at the commander's side of the aircraft of course.

The only reason we don't routinely have more than 2 sets of eyes and ears on the flight deck in normal ops is cost, so certain technologies were developed and employed to wind the min crew down to 2.

Granted, the aug crew needs to know what's appropriate and not, though where there is discussion about procedures, performance, other life-threateneing stuff, I'm in the loop - it's my bum too, and just because I'm not the operating captan, dare I say it at this juncture, won't obsolve me from the responsibility of taking any reasonable opportunity to prevent a problem (at best) or having to answer difficult questions as to why I took no notice.

Ask yourself, how would the ensuing investigation view an aug crew's lack of 'oversight' that resulted in a problem? Perhaps we are about to have a definitive answer on that one. Realise one thing though: as the aug crew you are sufficiently disconnected from the operation to have the spare capacity to recognise when things are not right. Seize the opportunity. How you then approach the question of intervention is up to your CRM skills.

I AM on headset for arrival and departure, and have been pleased to be so several times, with incorrectly understood clearances, and other little career-affecting gems cropping up a the end of a long day..

Perhaps some of us here are frightened of being monitored, fearing scrutiny. If so, it's time to question your own operation: if it goes wrong, your life will be nothing but scrutiny. Ask the poor sods imn MEL: at least we can.

Now, back to what happened in MEL...

Aug crew has no duties in the flight deck during ground stop. They dont even need to be present. Its actually nicer when they are not. Less people. Less interference. Hence they carry no responsibility. If EK chooses to change that, then print out yet another FCI...:suspect:

Agree with you. Aug crew are all too often a distraction - even with the best of intentions. Would be different if the operation was designed for four people but its not. Disruption of normal habit patterns is a hazard.

when I am the augmenting crew I always stay out of the flight deck till the doors are closed, there is no space in the cockpit, its full of ground staff all the time.
but if I am the operating crew I would never throw out the augmenting crew I think whitey is still traumatized from the boarding school experience.

I do wonder how some of you out there would have coped with the 4-man cockpit? (I just missed the 5-man cockpit by the way).

Aha JW411! I have operated 4 man cockpit - Engineers, radio operators et al.
The point I want to stress is the operation and procedures were designed for the extra crew members so all had specific roles. And there was only one captain!
In my opinion its squeezing 4 pilots into a two pilot operation without addressing certain protocols that creates potential human factors problems.

Four pairs of eyes including one TRE didn't pick up the embarrassing reason for RTO and subsequent return to stand on the 380 last week.

Reason for RTO = no FMA indications when take off thrust selected.
Reason for no FMA indications= both Flight Directors off. :eek:

W.K. does have a point however not very diplomatic put. As woodja says a double edged sword. Should this incident turn out to be a data entry error however then I am sure we will here much more about the active role of augmenting crew.

To Err is human
 

We all make mistakes, and this looks like a grave error in performance calcultion. Top job for getting it back on the deck so everyone can tell the tale! I personally knew 7 who are not able to have that privillige in a very similar scenario .

The boys up front are going to take some heat, but don't be fooled,any one of us could be next. Learn from their mistakes.

Bottom line- Stick to SOP's...And if White Knight is in the other seat cut his throat!

Safe flying

Hey Mig 15, where do you get off bringing this thread back to the point??

Why doesn't someone start up an aug crew pros and cons thread somewhere relevant... like JetBlast, and leave this thread alone?

Augmenting crew dont have set /standardized "jobs" to do ,,,if its ad-hoc ,,,it will be looking for an accident to happen ! Distractions are up there in the causal factors leading to accidents. Awareness, situational or otherwise, cause their fair share of prangs ,,,, and this is coming from a Cessna 150 pilot !!! You are either an INTEGRAL part of the crew on that segment OR you are NOT !!!!

I am not a professional pilot, so it is not really my place to post on this discussion, but one thing is shouting out to be said.

The Turkish incident at Schipol involved a three-man crew with a safety pilot. It is not yet official and we do not know the other circumstances, but there is speculation on the other thread that the third pilot also failed to spot the speed decay etc.

So, my question is, was he operating as White Knight (and others) would like him to? That is, staying out of the picture, not raising a concern? You get my point.

It's reported that he (the 3rd man) did say '... Boss, power, power!'

Whether that was during the attempted recovery (when the PLs came back again) or before the stick-shaker we don't know yet..

Even allowing for the Oz public service record for inertia, am a bit surprised at least some preliminary finding has not emerged.
Even verification of the cargo weight and distribution ought to have been revealed.
After all, some poor sods are paying premium rates to get their cargo delivered by air.
I would assume it is possible to have the FDR analyzed in Oz?:confused:

Keep it simple, and well-defined
 

I have no practical experience of any aspect of aircraft operation, other than those that become obvious to fequent SLF. However, at various time during a long working life I have been involved in the design and programming of computer systems, ancient and modern, been Quality Manager in a software development activity, and worked as an ISO 9000 Lead Auditor.

From a quality management perspective, I am amazed at the divergence of opinions expressed by apparently experienced flight crew about the correct way to use (or not use) relief crew during flight preparation. As an ISO 9000 Auditor observing the activity I would almost certainly have raised an "Observation" if the SOP did not address the situation and a "Non-conformance" if the SOP said something and it was not followed. But then, I have not seen any airline claiming ISO 9000 conformance for any aspect of its business.

Calculation of V1 (and other critical speeds) depends on the mass of the aircraft, and in the case of V1 on the runway length and surface condition. In all the relevant posts I have encountered in this and other threads there seems to be an assumption that the mass fed into the calculation is accurate and the assumed power will be achieved. These assumptions are obviously realised fairly closely in most cases. However, if you are much heavier than assumed or pushing less hard than necessary, V1 may be achieved with too little concrete left to stop on and v2 might not be achieved in the available distance. If I had been given the job of designing such a safety-critical system I would have built an additional output into the calculation, the time to achieve V1. Failure to meet that time would require the takeoff to be rejected. "Reject" calls at other, lower speeds could be included in the system, but are not really necessary. If you are accelerating too slowly, then you will have even more distance to stop in than if you had reached V1 in the expected time. Going by the stopwatch is surely much simpler than looking for external markings or markers on and around the runway.

The idea of having an aircraft sit on a weighing machine at the gate is superficially attractive, but I can appreciate that there are vast complicaions of cost and reliability. However, it is not necessary to weigh the whole aircraft. Simply measuring the weight on the nose gear, along with the assumed total weight, should give enough information to calculate the position of the centre of gravity. A gross error in weight would show up as a CofG far removed from what was expected. In principle it should also be possible for an aircraft to weigh itself without external equipment, by use of strain gauges on the undercarriage legs, or through a computation based on oleo internal pressures and suspension displacement.

And finally, I am horrified by the need, or even just commonly used technique, of giving the engine control system an inaccurate air temperature in order to operate at reduced thrust. Specifying the required thrust, either directly or as a proportion of the nominal maximum, would surely be less error-prone. Say what you want, and let the computers work out how to give it to you.

Dairyground,

Well constructed post. Note that, in answer to your last comment, there are two methods of operating the engine at reduced thrust: one is a 'fixed % derate' and the other is 'assumed temperature'.

In the former, should additional thrust be required, the crew will find that it is not available. In the latter, while the temperature that the engine is being asked to 'assume' will be higher than the ambient (at least 1°C higher), this calculation can be done with tables and charts, based on all the usual performance criteria, though is typically done by a performance computer of some kind. This 'assumed temp' is then passed to the aircraft system. Should the crew decide that 'max chat' is required (there are a number of scenarios), full power will be available to them. This undoubtedly saved the day in MEL recently.

It should also be noted that in the assumed temp method, there is a significant performance margin, starting with the aeroplane (aerodynamically) not knowing that the engine is assumign it to be warmer than it is. This will have also helped in MEL.

In short, the assumed temp thrust reducted method is safer than a perormance limited full thrust take-off. As for the sysem of determining and entering data, that is another story (and would affect all departures).

Acceleration times to V1, and he mointoring thereof, is interesting and seems to be confined to some military ops. Frankly, I don't need to be monitoring a stopwatch approaching V1 on many departures, where the V1 can approach three miles per minute. That said, I'd be surprised if it were not a simple thing to automate. The side effect might be that we begine to find out how much heavier the aircraft are than the loadsheet says, given pax and carry-on baggage weights...

Different aircraft and in test configuration, but interesting video nevertheless -

Airbus A380 Tailstrike 1 - Video

Good post Dairlyground.

All I would add is that the distance/time check could be done before V1, and still leave room to reject. As some other posters have said, pick a speed, and if you're not there by "x" time, then abort because something is wrong.

No need for a speed / time check on 777 as ASI has a speed trend vector incorporated in its display. Effectively it is an obvious indicator of your level of acceleration during takeoff. On 777 it will usually extend 30 knots. I would think the Airbus would have similar.
Assumed temp method of calculating reduced thrust take-offs is the most conservative method because the various takeoff speeds it provides assume conditions are more restrictive than they really are. Full thrust can always be selected after V1 without fear of being below Vmcg.
Its very simple in practice and not a factor so long as correct data is input.

This gets interesting!

Notwithstanding the different oppinions on how to integrate the augmenting crew, it will run down to whether a misinput will be determined as fault, and subsequently HOW the enquiring bodies will define the role of the second set of crew. Will they have any mention of beeing in the slightest way implicated and therefore blamed not having helped to pick up the mistake? Or will the active crew make any statement as to any distraction by too many people in the cockpit?

If an augmenting crew will in any way be held co-responsable, what will be the definition as per when their participation starts? Once they are in the cockpit? Once on board, as their time is logged as well?
If so, then the forcing of them beeing on the deck (by not providing seats) will be very delicate. In my former company they had seats and it was the active crew who would allow or disallow, or ask them to be present, the augmenting guys able to deny.
By forcing them to attend and if they will in any way be held responsible, a subsequent question will be: What happens enroute, when they are sequestred in the rearside topedo tube? If the signing skipper is there and unable to regain his seat in case of a emergency, will he be also implicated in any verdict?

The report and verdict of the concerned authorities will be very, very interesting. It might have huge implications on future SOPs, even hardware solutions ....

The speed trend arrow is extremely useful in determining airspeed acceleration, but provides no direct information as to how much ground you have covered doing so (correct me if I am wrong please) the time/distance check is the only way of ensuring that..

Well, it is a good gross error check. And I love the way on the 77L it shoots up to the top of the scale.

Distance/time check has certain practical difficulties, particularly at night which is most of our ops.

And think about this: even a distance/time check would have to be something calculated for each takeoff to account for weight/rwy etc etc. The key word is "calculated". It would be subject to the same input error.

Many decades ago I watched a USAF Douglas B-66 Destroyer (Twin jet engine all weather day/night reconnaissance aircraft) line up and commence take off from Townsville runway 02. It made lots of noise. In those days distance to run markers were set in the flight strip and lit at night. When two thirds down the runway the pilot aborted and was extremely fortunate to stop in the over-run even though the runway then was 8000 ft long. The brakes overheated.

An hour or so later the pilot had another go at getting off and this time was successful. We were later told by ATC that the B-66 had aborted because it had not reached a certain speed by a certain distance down the runway. Yet when the pilot did the second take off the wind and OAT were same as before.

From that, we got the impression that the speed versus distance abort policy was primitive at its best, and a risk laden way of determining whether to stop or go. Certainly no way would you try that sort of approximation in a modern jet transport.

If they had stopped instead?????
 

And if they rejected even more interesting?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UocxPoUUnIQ

:bored:

Pool,

I agree with you - roles, responsibilities, protocols, hazards.... lots of strands.