Taking the wrong a/c

[jondc9]

I recall taking the wrong plane...the board at the gate said: IND.

The paperwork in the plane showed WX for IND and the flight plan for IND.

The people that got on the plane were going to IND

The baggage on the plane was going to IND

We were going to IND


halfway to IND, we got an ACARS message saying we took the wrong plane


We looked closely at the paperwork and sure enough the "N" number was for a different plane.


The funny thing is / was that the other "N" number plane had never gotten to the departure airport.

The plane we took was the only one of its type at the field with our Paintjob.


The mistake had happened days before. Someone botched up the lines of flight for 2 planes.


From then on I did look at the "N" number on the flight plan a bit closer...same thing with MX log book "N" numbers.


How does this pertain to LEX? It might show fatigue, it might show a screwup or it might be a paperwork error by someone in a concrete building sipping a cup of coffee.


y'all be careful out there

jon

[Speedpig]

So, when y'all do the pre-flight walk round... do you not check the tail number?
My simple mind is telling me that would be very basic airmanship.... y'all.
Did you fly for SouthWest? What a bunch of cowboys...... IMHO

[wileydog3]

Speedpig

Quite a marvelous display of a professional skill in the critique, Speedpig.

And since you are obviously not with Southwest, what august organization is blessed with your presence?

Finally, there is opinion and then there is informed opinion. Thanks for demonstrating the difference between the two. Your input is graciously appreciated.

[jondc9]

dear speedpig:

You are quite right, I was wrong to take said aircraft. As I explained, it was the only plane my airline had at the aerodrome. it was the type I was current in and the only destination within hours of takeoff time was the one I was going to.(as well as pax, luggage etc.)


And what I DO check on preflight walkaround is stuff like: rivets, tires, static discharge wicks, cowling fasteners, pitot tubes, and about 300 other things.

The "N" number, while outside on the fuselage, is also on the instrument panel, or what YOU might call the dashboard.


Basic airmanship allowed us to arrive safely, ahead of schedule, under fuel burn and in one piece.

Believing that it was the correct plane might have been anyone's judgement in the circumstances I've listed.

Basic airmanship is not the same as basic book-keeping. As one of the best pilots I have ever flown with said: Some pilots are good at paperwork, some at flying...very rare to find someone good at both.


And in this situation, which I bring to the discussion, what would have been better, taking off in the wrong plane from LEX or taking off from the wrong runway?

It is good for all of us to bring our little stories to the discussion, perhaps others will learn from them.

jon (not southwest)

[Speedpig]

Originally Posted by wileydog3

Quite a marvelous display of a professional skill in the critique, Speedpig.
And since you are obviously not with Southwest, what august organization is blessed with your presence?
Finally, there is opinion and then there is informed opinion. Thanks for demonstrating the difference between the two. Your input is graciously appreciated.

Thanks Wiley,
No, thankfully, I am not with Southwest. I do have a very long story to tell about a couple of flights I did with them however and don't have time to tell it here...
My name gives a clue to my lucky employer.

jon,
I appreciate your story and I was only joshing with you. From your reply, I think you gathered that.
Is there room for pilots who are "not good book-keepers" nowadays?

SP

[jondc9]

dear speed pig


thanks for explaining the joshing. sometimes on the internet, stuff like that isn't clear. I appreciate your joke.

My friend who made the statement about pilots and paperwork added more to that...he said that chief pilots were usually good at paperwork...so there is room for everyone I suppose (joshing).

is it true that your airline picks you up from home in a limo and takes you straight to the plane?

I think Southwest is a bunch of cowboys. I still remember reporting a "super cell" thunderstorm on a busy airway...just trying to help out...southwest buggers made fun of me...I have feeling that they didn't know what a "super cell" was.

all the best

jon

[Rongotai]

Originally Posted by Speedpig

So, when y'all do the pre-flight walk round... do you not check the tail number?
My simple mind is telling me that would be very basic airmanship.... y'all.
Did you fly for SouthWest? What a bunch of cowboys...... IMHO

This is another example of the accident promoting model of how pilots are expected to behave.
It is an unfortunate research verifiable - and verified - reality, that the number of itemised tasks that flight crew are required to do at certain times are actually beyond the capacity of any human cognitive apparatus. The threshhold can be further lowered by short turn round, fatigue, etc.
Confronted with this almost all flight crew prioritise - usually subconsciously. The first things that go to the bottom of the priority list (and therefore don't get done some of the time) are items that aren't safety or mission critical, followed by things that have never been 'wrong' in the experience of the particular pilot. It is in this latter group that Reason's 'holes in the cheese' often occur.
It is no good assuming that these sorts of errors are indicative that the person is a 'cowboy'. We all do it all the time. It's just that most of us don't fly planes full of passengers. We don't solve these problems by blaming the perpetrators if what we have asked them to do is cognitively impossible. What the industry has done is progressively use technology to provide (sometimes literally) bells and whistles, and refined procedures to bring attention to an overlooked item when safety is compromised.
But what the operational costs side of the industry does (passengers shopping for the cheapest fares and accountants looking for cost savings) is constantly force changes to the operational rules that introduce new holes in the cheese that need to be plugged.
There are, of course, cowboy individuals and cowboy operators. But before we rush to judgment we need to make the effort to identify the difference between cowboy behaviour and systemic failures that sometimes trap fully professional performers.

[Speedpig]

I wish to make it very clear. I was not insinuating that these pilots, or Comair are cowboys.
I was having a bit of fun with jon over the use of his y'all and referring to SouthWest who, IMHO and based on my experience with them, fall into that particular category of professionalism. This is just my opinion (it may be other's too from what I hear).

SP

[Two's in]

The screw up with the maximum permutations is being scheduled to fly Aircraft A, signing out Aircraft B, and actually flying Aircraft C. It happens more than you might think, Stetson or not.

[wileydog3]

Originally Posted by Speedpig

I wish to make it very clear. I was not insinuating that these pilots, or Comair are cowboys.
I was having a bit of fun with jon over the use of his y'all and referring to SouthWest who, IMHO and based on my experience with them, fall into that particular category of professionalism. This is just my opinion (it may be other's too from what I hear).
SP

My error. I obviously missed your dry wit. My apology.

And now for something completely different.... a Captain with three buttocks...

[Huck]

Rumour is that SWA did some extensive reworking of their flight ops as a result of the Burbank, CA overrun a few years ago.
Someone else will have to provide the details, but I hear the cowboy way has been curtailed somewhat.
I heard that all checklists and configuration changes are completed before leaving the ramp, for example. That way they can still taxi fast but with fewer distractions.

[Earthmover]

Surely an understandable human mistake that someone has the balls to own up to. What happened to 'there but for the grace of God etc?' And how come there are so many perfect people out there who are immune to plain human error? - because I haven't met too many in the real world (very much including me)

I sympathise - I didn't make the same mistake exactly, but I did land at an airport with the right aircraft - but with the wrong tech-log! ... and oh boy did that cause some confusion and a lot of adjusting. It was placed on the aircraft by an engineer who was signing off the PDI on two aircraft ... and he accidentally swapped them. Each aircraft's Captain (one of them yours truly) failed to spot the transposition ... mea culpa.

[jondc9]

earthmover

regarding tech log mixup, that happened at our airline too...FAA went NUTS, wanted to fine pilots 10,000 bucks per leg with wrong log

too bad the FAA wouldn't quit worrying about paperwork and start worrying about stuff that will really get you.

sure you might miss something on the wrong log, but puhlease mr . faa!

thanks for admiting to a mistake earthmover, there are those that have made mistakes and the rest are liars

[Earthmover]

Yep, ... I would fly in your aircraft, no question.

There is a wonderful little book published over here long before 9/11 by an ex BA Captain called Ken Bere, it's titled "Bluff your way on the flight deck" - it was a light-hearted explanation of our job designed to help people visiting the flight-deck with what to say and how to avoid appearing dumb. In it he says something like "most airline pilots have an honours degree in self-doubt"

Sums it up perfectly - mine's a masters degree!!!

And Wileydog .. didn't know there were 'Monty Python' fans in Atlanta...??

[jondc9]

and I yours earthmover.

monty python is quite big in america, even atlanta!

I recall seeing "and now for something completely different" in a movie theatre about 31 years ago in San Francisco.

I do have to give the upper class twit award to a combination of FAA and airline management types.

[Miles Magister]

It is not just which aircraft is parked at the gate. In the good ould days when a young military pilots walked out to the line of aircraft which stretched right accross the airfield, there were those who had strapped the wrong one to their back side and those who did not tell the truth!!

[DC-Mainliner]

It's amazing to me to see how quickly the FAA will file and win an enforcement case on a pilot taking an aircraft and a release with a wrong N-Number, or a pilot who parks an aircraft following a marshaller who has the wrong colored wands (per FOM discription, etc.) - yet - the same inspector will have no idea on how to handle a company who pushes pilots way past fatigue and threatens to suspend them for calling in sick.

Now, to be fair, there are reasons why the N-Number is critical on a release. For one, the dispatcher partially shares the responsibility for 121 ops with the Captain. The dispatcher is not in the loop when the N-number is wrong on the release! The MEL staus, BOW, weight and balance (if it's centralized) - it's all wrong on the paperwork and it causes a moment of concern as to how many other parameters were wrong on that flight.

But really, the big fight in safety is operational deviations that cause perfrectly good airplanes to be flown into the trees or ground. That's where the FAA is least capable of helping out, historically. They really like to make sure the paperwork looks nice.

[Brian Abraham]

Passenger DC-10 many years ago pushing back from gate and cabin crew start the brief with the usual welcome aboard "flight XYZ to Timbuktu". But we're not going to Timbuktu shout most of the passengers in unison, we're going to Sin City. Answer - well your all on the wrong aircraft you should be on the one to our left (same aircraft type, which was likewise pushing back). Brakes on, five minutes of sorting to find all is in order and on we go. Always wondered what might have been the cause.
Must confess to Miles, did the same, long, long flight line, wrong aircraft and flew the mission.

[SeniorDispatcher]

Originally Posted by DC-Mainliner

Now, to be fair, there are reasons why the N-Number is critical on a release.

None the least of which is that it's a required element as per 121.687(a)(1)...

Originally Posted by DC-Mainliner

For one, the dispatcher partially shares the responsibility for 121 ops with the Captain.

Partially? 121.533(b) mentions "the pilot in command and the aircraft are jointly responsible", i.e. no "partially" or other qualifiers.

Originally Posted by DC-Mainliner

The dispatcher is not in the loop when the N-number is wrong on the release! The MEL staus, BOW, weight and balance (if it's centralized) - it's all wrong on the paperwork and it causes a moment of concern as to how many other parameters were wrong on that flight.

The dispatcher shares that same concern. As far as the dispatcher "not being in the loop" as far as the error being made on the paperwork, that's largely a factor of the computer system in place at a particular airline, and they can vary wildly from one airline to another. Notwithstanding the process of how an incorrect aircraft number could end up on a dispatch release, it's still something dispatcher -does- need to be in the loop on, lest an aircraft with a restrictive MEL item get sent on a flight it shouldn't be on, and subject the dispatcher to a 121.605 violation. In my 25+ years, and primarily before our computer systems had evolved to their current state, it was quite easy to make a typo on the aircraft number. I've had some crews tell me of errors, and I've had to tell some crews of errors, including one late VP of Flight Ops (who called me at TOC to advise I'd made a typo on the aircraft number. Not -this- time--he'd taken the wrong bird). The key here is that, no matter who initiated the mistake, it was usually caught early enough via communicaton between PIC and dispatcher. The computer system at my airline has long since evolved to a state where incorrect aircraft numbers on releases are rare occurences, and we now more often see cases of some crews "assuming" that the aircraft on gate A1 is "theirs" versus the one on gate Z33 that really is... Hey, we're all human, and I probably wouldn't relish the bag drag either...