Thomas almost cooks his goose!
 

Thomas Cook driver gets his numbers in a twist!

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All weights/speeds etc should be crosschecked by both pilots - whilst the Captain has ultimate responsibility you cannot pin all the blame on him/her.

cracking journalism as usual...
 

I'd blame the yokes - as clearly visible in the cockpit photo in the article.

Those must have been pretty confusing for a 'bus crew, and probably got in the way of reading the paperwork. Wouldn't have happened with a sidestick... :E

I'm surprised they didn't "barely miss knutsford primary school and scrape the roof of the local convent":mad::mad:

Infrequent
You mean reading the paper? :}

er....TOGA...!

even with TOGA you don't have the correct speed (if you didn't have them before)...

Please explain why not?

TOGA sets the thrust
correct speed needs change in thrust or pitch or both, and it takes time :bored:

Don't be so picky you lot. TOGA would be an excellent call and one hopes it was made. They were far more likely to get 'the correct speed' that way than staying at over-optimistic reduced thrust.

AAIB Report
 

AAIB - A321 - MAN - 2011 04 - Serious Incident

Erroneous Vr was 20kt below ... Too bad they don't mention the pitch which was achieved during rotation ?

Seeing as they departed of 05L that would have been a great feat of airmanship but then again this was the Daily Mail!!:ugh:

Doesn't look like they used TOGA, just lowered the nose to let the speed build. Better a balls up like that off 05L at MAN than coming back from Greece, I suppose.

Obviously both pilots made a mistake but the PF did not force the rotation and avoided a tailstrike to happen. Very good.

Pprune, such topic belongs to Tech log forum, not here.

Not the first, and won't be the last-unfortunately

Simple thought...
 

The FMS knows where the plane is headed, yes? The FMS knows where the plane is taking off from? Not sure if it has a passenger number entered into it (to get an aaprox weight of them plus luggage, but in the absence of any other info could assume say 90% load?), but even if it assumes an 'average' weather en route, as a minimum the FMS could add an expected fuel load for that sector length (plus allowing for divert etc) to the known (?) empty weight of the plane to at least sense check the weight that is being entered into the FMS. Ok, it might not calculate to perfect accuracy, but suspect it could have flagged up an error here. Not saying this should be the only way the weight is calculated, but simply as a basis of a sense check that can at least question the amount entered by humans?

In fact, don't the fuel guages have electronic readouts that could also pass information to this?

Might even have been accurate enough to flag a similar problem that very nearly caused a much bigger one in Melbourne a couple of years ago (EK A340 - suspect 14hrs worth of fuel plus empty weight plus quite a few passengers could been approximated to a lot more than the weight that was keyed in on that occasion).

Not suggesting that pilots should absolve responsibility, nor should they be unaware of the weight of the thing they are about to fly, and yes, it should be flagged in a slightly more urgent manner than the "are you sure?" message we all get when we use any Microsoft software if there is perceived to be a discrepancy. (Realise this is not as simple - For example, it could be a positional flight with few or zero passengers so my 90% load suggested could be way off, but this could be overridden if appropriate).

Despite not being an engineer or pilot, I wonder if these simple additions to every FMS ever fitted would have cost less than the reported $100m or so it cost to fix that A340, and it might one day save some lives.

i fail to see the incident. the pilot made wrong data input but corrected this at TO and nothing happened.

last 28 days 13hrs flying - first trip after leave?

321 / 320
 

Interesting to note that the Commander was more often working on the smaller 320 and the weight of 70T he selected for his performance data is pretty close to a heavy 320 ...

- as said, not the first and no-one is really immune - if a BA Fleet Chief Pilot can do it..........................

The 'incident' should serve to remind all of the importance of not allowing ourselves to be rushed/distracted/interrupted etc where VITAL DATA (appropriately named?) is concerned. Had the runway been more limiting.............................'TO' as you put it might well not have happened.