"minimums ...... continue" question (MD-11)
 

Be gentle with me. I am not a pilot.

I am very curious about something. I have an excrutiatingly specific question that has been bugging me for a while.

I spent quite a while in South America in late 1990s and many Varig Vasp and KLM MD-11 flights (as an item of self loading cargo). I have used Quito, the old city airport, on MD-11s. Hence the Pilotseye TV DVD of a Lufthansa Cargo MD-11 including Quito is of great interest and acquired one many moons ago
https://pilotseye.tv/en/route/luftha...-md11-english/

I know [in laymans terms] what 'minimums' are. On each approach you hear the automated voice ("bitching Betty" I think they name it) call out 'minimums' and each occasion the human response is 'continue'. This is my question - about the response. The way in which the crew each time speak the response 'continue' seems to me to be a very robotic standardised voice that does not occur elsewhere anywhere in the DVD, so is there some kind of voice recognition system here listening for the 'continue' response spoken in a certain way ? If yes, is this an MD-11 thing or more common ? If not, maybe is it just the accent of the crew leading me to think too deeply here ?

This bugs me every time I play this DVD as one of my first ever engineering jobs involved voice recognition responses - actually on computer controlled machine tools where the machine operator could be too busy for a more conventional response.

I think an extract from the DVD approach to Quito might be on YouTube somewhere I'll need go look for a link though.

Hope this is not too amateurish a question for this learned forum.

Thanks if you've got this far ! :)

Never heard of such a thing albeit on later gen aircraft. Without having seen or heard the call you describe, perhaps given that it’s a LH propaganda piece with one of the desk pilots is could be dubbed over? Might be that the sop is to call it but they didn’t bother or it was inaudible and they wanted to present it by the book. Would be very surprised if any voice recognition system existed on the basis you speculate given the potential for unwanted interference in critical situations or indeed, if you just haven’t said it - the other pilot will be monitoring for incapacitation etc.

Yep. :ok:

The Boeing 717, which had basically the same cockpit setup as the MD-11, had no such voice recognition system.

Neither did/does the MD-11 itself.

Part of the answer could be that 99% of the time, the response is almost an automatic one.
Basically, by that time, crew has the runway in sight for quite a while, know if all conditions are ok for landing (to continue), so the response has to be made, but is almost an annoyance at that point.
Combined with being the same standard word every time might make it sound robotic.

If you're talking about the "continue" call from the captain at 14:15 in this youtube vid (search via google: 2gnSWCfPF3k as I'm not allowed to post links) it's just an enthusiastic german pronounciation of the word during a probably demanding approach, that's all. No voice recognition installed ;)

Sounds right. Captain Jurgen Raps of Lufthansa who features in a few videos can be seen and heard responding in an identical manner in this video: - fast forward to 10:53 or thereabouts if you want to find it quickly.

THanks for all the replies.

Maybe it was the influence of being involved with voice recognition in the past that made me think of it.

Hope not too dumb a question for this forum !

Oh gosh, no, yours is one of much less dumb questions we have seen.

I never took that the response was aimed at the software. It was meant for the other person in the cockpit to let them know the person flying knew the situation.

The alternative response to the "minimums" call is "Go Around" if conditions aren't suitable for a landing. That tends to be said with more emotion! Some airlines used to say "Landing" but that was changed a few years ago to "continue" as, of course, it is possible to go around below minimums (assuming you continued because the weather is okay) if there is an aircraft on the runway for example.