Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

Imagine having an intermediate system in your Tesla, one between fully manual and the autopilot. This system uses the navigation capabilities of the autopilot to draw in the big screen some squares that guide you to your destination without the need to look outside. Something you may find in a videogame. This system is helpfull and easy to use, and allows you to pay attention to more important matters.

Well, now imagine getting so used to this system that you forget how to drive without the squares telling you what to do every single moment. So used that if the squares guide you to drive straight to a wall at 100mph you do it without hesitation.

This is what supposedly happened in this case. The flight director is there to help you, but you are supposed to know how to fly without it.

When you rotate an airliner the initial pitch is around 15 degrees nose up, that way your rate of climb and the optimal climb speed is maintained.

They kept the nose almost horizontal, against any natural instinct for a pilot. They almost overrun the runway without rotating, and they barely rotated just enough to be able to keep the flight director centered in their screen.

It seems that the speed went beyond the structural limit of the tyres (around 200 kts) and if they didn’t retract the flaps, beyond their structural limit too. And then they proceeded to fly almost scratching the obstacles in their path.

Why does something like this happpens? Because in an airline like Emirates actual piloting skills are actively punished!. You are not allowed to fly the plane manually, nor disconect automatic systems if they are available.

They expect robot like precission applying procedures, modern airliners log dozens of instruments and have automatic reports when procedure limitation are exceeding (is a big brother like work environment). This may seem a good philosophy, but it actually creates an situation where pilots loose necessary skills, and when computers or procedures fail, as they often do in airplanes, pilots are not able to react properly anymore.

I’m sure Emirates will punish the pilots and will set new procedures over the current ones, to try to avoid this kind of situations in the future. They will solve nothing, they will only make it worse. Is a culture of fear and punishment. This also happens in other middle east airlines like Qatar. Airlines in Asia are making this mistake too.

In contrast airlines in the US and Europe (except Ryanair and some other British carriers) give pilots much more freedom regarding manual flight, which helps them to keep their skills honed.

Hope this gives a different perspective on the problem. The wrong altitude selection is the minor of the problems in this case IMHO.

I am an Airline captain with 22 years of experience (737, MD88, A320, A330 and A340) and more than 14k flight hours.

Edit, some typos and making a couple of sentences more clear.

Why imagine there is hope of that? Is there some question as to the credibility of the reporting here? If this memo claim were fake I imagine Emirates would deny the report and initiate some lawsuits. The story linked here is based on the reporting[1] of one Gilbert Ott of godsavethepoints.com over five days ago which includes a image of the 'memo' Emirates issued, so someone has actually put their name on this story, including the report about the memo.

Blatant dysfunction should not be discounted through false hopes. This airline is clearly operated by incompetents, both in the cockpit and among its management. Someone will doubtless feel compelled to cite some safety record or another; this carries no weight if you cannot eliminate the contribution of aircraft designers and the automation they've provided. And you can't.

[1] https://www.godsavethepoints.com/emirates-flight-231-takeoff...

I believe that while smaller planes will naturally pitch up as speed increases, jumbo jets are much more lumpant even with the correct flaps. That's the terrifying thing in my understanding: the plane basically had no manual pitch due to incorrect config values, and were barely gliding off the ground from minimal natural lift. Meanwhile the two potatoes at the helm were fiddling with the config values instead of pulling on the yoke.