Avoiding venus...
 

The Air Canada Boeing 767–333 (registration C–GHLQ, serial number 30846) was operating as flight ACA878 from Toronto, Ontario, to Zurich, Switzerland. Approximately halfway across the Atlantic, during the hours of darkness, the aircraft experienced a 46–second pitch excursion

The rest is here - TSB report

Although some will certainly make great use of "The FO initially mistook the planet Venus for an aircraft but the captain advised again that the target was at the 12 o'clock position and 1000 feet below" it still doesn't show great airmanship.

Some pretty good analysis and info about fatigue in that report.
Anyone who does shift work has probably experienced sleep-inertia. It can be very disorienting.

Worth reading.

The f/o must be one gungho fly by the seat of the pants ace with lightning quick reflexes, superb at hands on manual flying! In his mind, do not trust those electronic gizmo like TCAS, EPGWS...they are always giving false indications. Can blame him as he was probably still in dreamland and may still be in dreamland even when fully awake.

In my experience, if one wants to take a " controlled " nap, I always make sure the seat is retracted full back and reclined back with the pilot fully strapped with seat belt and shoulder harness so that he/she does not accidently interfered with the controls in case of sudden reaction to nightmares or agitation. I had one guy who woked up suddenly with a jerk, kicking the rudder and his hands flailing across to the thrust levers!

Fatigue in Air Canada
 

Transportation Safety Board of Canada - AVIATION REPORTS - 2011*- A11F0012

What is interesting but sad, is that the Relief Pilot who was to operate the return leg, ZRH-YYZ, was deadheading in the back. Air Canada, it seems, are trying to save a few bob, as a DHD only attracts 50% of the pilot's hourly rate.
Increasing shareholder value, while at the same time sacrificing flight safety has to be a major concern for those pax travelling Air Canada!
Comments?

Having spent many years on shift work in the pharmaceutical industry I can confirm that 'sleepiness' can create some pretty weird "illusions". Actually I'm surprised to read that a sleeping pilot can have such rapid access to controls on waking.

From the report:

Soooo.....being an airline pilot AND having small kids at the same time is inevitably going to cause fatigue problems??? Well I agree entirely but what can we do?

The really important bit is not to sleep too long. A lot of people think the longer you sleep the better. With controlled rest this is a dangerous assumption. It is extremely important that the nap be no longer than forty minutes. Sleep inertia may (I emphasize may) also have played a role in the Air India Express disaster. I have done a great deal of night flying over recent years and my experience is that a few minutes napping can be extremely helpful, but it needs to be carefully monitored.

The best quote is off Yahoo saying that "The Air Canada pilot was apparently suffering from "sleep inertia" -- the stupor that follows a long nap -- when he sent the plane plunging some 400 feet in 46 seconds, throwing those not wearing safety belts out of their seats."

I'll remembed that insane VS next time I'm landing the Ikarus...

Lots of pilots have flashed the headlights at Venus :O
Recollect elderly BOAC skip saying "Isn't it just lorry drivers who do that sort of thing?"

Aside from the serious issues of fatigue, it makes me feel fell much happier that as SLF I always have the belt on during cruise. (Despite what my wife thinks!)

Lurking....

Similar 'mistakes' made in the maritime world, where Venus is taken to be the stern light of another ship (when slightly above the horizon, a ship close by!).

Less dramatic consequences, of course :).

Isn't it more likely to be Sirius - the brightest star in the sky - which often seems to be changing colour as it rises in the East and is therefore more easily confused with an aircraft?

Does anyone else get the irony that an aircrew member took action to avoid Venus?




Once they land and get to the hotel they spend most of their time chasing it :E

Maybe....
 

My Sfo asked yesterday if Venus was an aircraft :)

And he was wide awake :}

I had an old friend who was a Wop/Ag on Lockheed Hudsons in 1941/2. He actually opened fire on Venus off the coast of Holland one night. He missed.

How do you know?

A sleeping first officer or, maybe a little like Venus, an unidentified flying officer or object!

Seriously though I don't know anything about Air Canada's SOPS but surely they mandate a couple of minutes before an officer who has been sleeping is allowed to take control? This incident is just another marker in the long fatigue debate! Anybody for a 3rd pilot on certain flights?

This needs to be shoved and rubbed in EASAs face until they get the message to leave Euros FTL alone.

"An evening with Venus; a lifetime with Mercury....."

Venus in the East?
 

There are some very sensible comments that note that Venus is currently in the West in the evening. That's true, but this event took place in January 2011, when Venus was rising in the East ahead of the Sun in the morning.

Dreaming with a foot in the real world.
 

Ok, so, this pilots sleeps as he is permitted to, but have you never experienced dreaming about things that happens around you? Audition is the sense that used to wake us up over the presence of a predator. In emergency first aid, they tell us to yell loud a victim's name in order to try to bring back an unconscious patient. (along with other measures including inflicting pain) It is understood that audition is the last sense to switch off when you sleep and when you sink into a coma.

AC SOPs indeed says a pilot can't touch the controls 15 minutes after waking up from a sleep period. Could this pilot have heard the com chat in its integrality or just his co-worker answering control about the incoming plane? I can almost then get into his dream (like in the movie Inception) that he is at the controls and for reasons that only happens in nightmares, he can't get out of its way. The plane either doesn't answer his commands or the other plane matches his every moves. He wakes up, still somewhat dreaming (hence the rule) and instinctively, for self preservation, he takes controls to continue trying to avoid the non-incoming plane. Can we even call that some form of somnambulism here?

Anyway. To me, this incident illustrates more the indiscipline of passengers when you tell 'em to buckle up. As a SLF too, the thing I fear most when I fly, is getting a 90Kg person in my face.

Exactly so! The incident happened "mid-Atlantic", roughly eastbound, at about 0200 EST, which I'd approximate as - say - 0530 local. That's just before local sunrise, with Venus somewhat East of South, and heading "southwards". The planet, at that time, was also fairly low in the sky. So the FO was looking into the rising sun, with Venus fading both in terms of relative brightness, and sinking away slightly to his right.

Years ago I had a Spanish crew refuse takeoff clearance until the "one on final has landed" .

Bit of a wait as it was Venus.......in fairness it was pre tcas and the object was awfully bright!:ok:

Just can't figure out why people don't leave their seatbelt fastened while in their seats, even a loosely fastened one would keep you from banging off the ceiling as some of those pax claim.

Injured?
 

Any speculation as the the extent of the "injuries" on board?
With a VS of 400fpm up, then down, surely a few of the SLF'ers are just after a payout or wanting to sue AC for the said acquired injuries?

My 2c

It's not the amount of the excursion; it's more to do with the rate.
With the forces quoted below, this is more than enough to throw an unsecured object (or person) fairly gently at the ceiling, then violently at the floor.

I would have no idea how many, if any, would be exaggerating the severity of their injuries for a better payout.

what's the problem ? he didn't hit it..

Tarq57 - fair point regarding the rate 2.0g's.....

Im surprised no one has admitted avoiding uranus yet

Once going into KLAX after a long flight from Europe my copilot and I saw what appeared to be an aircraft converging with us rapidly. We could see the green nav light on one side and the red on the other, but they were reversed from the norm.

We were close to taking evasive action when we realized it was two aircraft diverging in the distance rather than one aircraft getting closer. We laughed about it and carried on, but to both of us it looked like a converging aircraft until we recognized it was not - then we couldn't see how we thought it was converging.

I doubt we would've had that problem if we weren't coming off of a 14 hour duty day.

My concern is that the pilot in charge did not obey the rules of the air. In that he chose to push the controls forward instead of instigating a right turn as laid down in the rules of the air. Unless airline pilots have different rules to us private pilots.

I also applaud the other poster, who stated to the effect, that the Pax who were injured were not strapped in as per the illuminated sign and no doubt the accompany announcement. Maybe a time to put a note, to remind people to strap in, and its effects, gibving examples in the duty free magazine, company in flight magazine and Sky Mall ! reminding them of there obligations.:=

Lets assume that the initial dive was gentle and you floated up to the ceiling a height of say 2.5m max above the floor. Your relative velocity is zero, then the plane hits 2g. How fast do you hit the floor, the arm of a chair etc..

v^2 = u^ + 2as

Assume:
u^2=0
a = 2g

V= SQRT(4gs)
so
V= SQRT (2 * 2 * 9.8 * 2.5)
V= 10 meters per second.

Thats 22mph into the relatively solid floor or the arm of a seat etc. That's going to cause injuries.

http://www.ite.org/technical/Interse...edestrians.pdf

"The fatality rate for a pedestrian hit by a car at 20 mph is 5 percent."

While this event was not in response to a TCAS TA or RA as commercial pilots we receive a considerable amount of training in collision avoidance. The focus is in the vertical. Primarily because TCAS doesn't , as yet, coordinate turning manuevers.

It is also worthy of note that the turning radius while in the cruise phase is measured in nautical miles.

Hopefully, that will give some explanation as to why we dont simply break right.

Island-Flyer,

I had the same thing happen to me in the hold @ LHR (Pre-TCAS days too) but involving two landing lights of separate aircraft.
We weren't fatigued, but we were indeed a whole lot more awake afterwards.
Although it was merely an optical illusion, it was a wholly convincing one, & very alarming at the time. :eek:

Here's a true tale. When I worked a abroad a biz jet with a British crew was flying at high level eastbound one evening above a layer of CS. A fairly scared voice announced that they had a UFO in sight! My supervisor, an ex-Canberra Nav, reached for the nautical almanac and checked the times for the moon... Yes, they'd seen just the top arc above the cirrus!!

PTR 175

As Flex33 said, while the rules of the air are the same, I think two things should be considered:

1) As with Flex's post, all TCAS avoidance manoeuvres are in the vertical plane, therefore it would not be difficult for it to become counter intuitive to bank in order to avoid traffic (although I would like to think that I would, irrelevant of the axis, always take the most appropriate avoidance action in a situation, you never know). Rules of the air are one thing but it IS hard to revert to type, especially if this poor (and embarassed) guy has spent at least the last 14 years climbing and descending in the sim to avoid traffic during TCAS training!

2) I think there is an element of sleep stupor here. Especially if you wake up, see Venus in front of you and are told that there's closing traffic. Not difficult to suffer from a bit of confirmation bias and see nothing but this enormously bright light straight ahead of you! It may become difficult, in this situation, to analyze the situation properly and apply any proper the rules of the air, or indeed training and revert to human survival technique number one - duck!

Chatting to my skipper last night he mentioned that a similar illusion had happened to one of our crews over the North Atlantic some years ago. I must say that I can imagine it's easier than people might think to do this.

There but for the grace of God fellas...

You are joking...right? Very funny, if you are.

Hope he doesn't wake up at cruise altitude to see a head-on aircraft climbing through his level :E

Are you Sirius? Obviously you don't fly for a living.

Time for a break :
Many moons ago when Crossair was still putting normal fuel loads in its Saabs2000, and the USAF were flying non stop to Ramstein with their C5s galaxies to prepare the first invasion of Iraq, I had one a Saab cruising at FL280 and an inbound C5 stopped at 290 waiting for lower, the tracks were exactly opposite , night time, little to do so I pass on naively traffic info on both. Apparently the C5 guy waited until the last moment to put all the landing lights on. All I heard was " :mad: " and saw the mode C of the Saab going down 300ft . The next comment from the Saab was : " This is like Star wars ! "
Not sure how the pax behind appreciated, never heard anything back .

End of the historical minute.