Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

Historical reasons mostly. For the same reason that various units are used in all sorts of different industries. And guess what? If you changed you'd probably end up with some accidents in the transition as a result.

Re: Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

#7

Post by jcrawfordor » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 9:16 PM UTC

The article made me wonder if weather could have been a factor (although this seems sort of far fetched anyway). NCEI's archive is, well, 503ing, but Iowa State has a METAR archive and it shows good VFR conditions for the whole day of the flight with only moderate winds at most.

Re: Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

#8

Post by realityking » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 9:16 PM UTC

Daishiman wrote: post #2

Why are knots used in aviation over kph?

Both aviation and marine navigation generally use nautical miles for as it‘s a little easier to use for long distance travel (plus tradition and inertia). Measuring speed in knots make things like dead heading calculations a lot easier.

Re: Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

#9

Post by nradov » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 9:17 PM UTC

Daishiman wrote: post #2

Why are knots used in aviation over kph?

Using knots made navigation calculations easier with paper maps marked in degrees and minutes. A nautical mile is the same as a minute of latitude, and a knot is one nautical mile per hour. Now with electronic navigation systems kph would be just as easy, but aviators are all used to thinking in knots so changing would be difficult.

Re: Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

#10

Post by sokoloff » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 9:18 PM UTC

Pilot (piston engine, with only around 20 hours of light jet dual). As a pax on this flight, I might not have noticed much unless I was looking out the window.

This seems like a fault of the crew (obviously), but probably more on the PNF (pilot not flying) than the PF (pilot flying). Article says 4 pilots were on board, but fails to mention that 2 of them (relief pilots) were likely not in the cockpit on the departure.

It’s hard for me to imagine that a qualified crew would fly such a non-standard departure with “we were following the flight director” as an excuse. There’s nothing above you to hit on departure; get away from terrain! Fly the calculated airspeeds. Where was the Vr callout?! That rotation to a pitch angle is what takes you off the runway, not the FD command bars.

Once they made the mistake and corrected it, I don’t have much concern with the continuation. 262 knots indicated isn’t that big of a deal that I’d worry about shedding parts from departure flaps and leading edge devices or stressing the gear (they likely pulled the gear up well before breaking 250 KIAS anyway). I’d be more concerned with the safety of an overweight landing than continuing. (A 777 can dump fuel, but the crew that just moments ago couldn’t fly an entirely routine departure isn’t the crew that I want to be calling an audible and figuring out how to safely dump fuel at night and return for a max weight landing. How would they program the FD for that?! ;) )

My prediction is that almost every pax had no idea how close to dying they came until they read about it later.

I catch heat every time I mention that air crew training and certification standards are not uniform across the globe and that I am reluctant to fly on many foreign-flag carriers. (However, Emirates and most EU-flag carriers are ones that I would not hesitate to fly on.)