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Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

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

#101

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 departur…

> 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.) Has anyone made some sort of a rough list of which carriers one can feel safe on?

My personal list is Tier 1 US, Canadian, British and German carriers as well as Qantas. Probably throw Air France and KLM in too. In Africa, Ethiopian would be the only airline I would fly if I had to fly an African airline.

I probably would have had a middle eastern airline on the list before I did a project with them last year. After that, I learned a lot that made me stick to the list above.

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

#102
post #82

The memo from Emirates about not setting altitude in system to airport altitude is so weird. I really hope that's not the actual message Emirates is putting out there. It doesn't matter was in system. You run your checklists and configure for your own flight / your own departure etc. Memo should be to training / recruitment - where did you find these pilots to fly a 777? So they obviously didn't pre-flight the flight…

It goes way beyond checklist stuff. 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 mo…

Good point about the tire v-max, that wasn't mentioned elsewhere as far as I've read on this.

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

#103
post #22

"The thing that stands out here the most is the complete lack of control that the crew had over the plane. The crew was managing the computers rather than flying the aircraft ." Perhaps they are "Children of the Magenta": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESJH1NLMLs ... and I cannot recommend this video enough. I am not a pilot and I have no interest in flying nor any particular interest in aviation, generally ... and…

Wow, that is a great video thank you for sharing!

Still watching it but wanted to comment.

So taking this away from aviation,the reactions and issues he shares are exactly my concerns with self driving cars.

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

#104
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really hope that's not the actual message Emirates is putting out there. 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…

You'd hope a regulator would turn their wandering eye to this airline, both from a hiring, operations and management perspective. There are errors on all of those.

Emirates is a Flag Carrier for UAE, apparently owned by Dubai's government via 'Investment Corporation of Dubai.' There is, therefore, no meaningful distinction between it and its regulator, so don't hold your breath on that hope either. The FAA will demur; bet the rent money on that. We're talking UAE money here, and that means most of the US Senate is on speed dial. No FAA functionaries will be troubling UAE over this.

The only hope one may legitimately cling to is that the problem space is mostly solved by the automation and the autopilot operators occupying the cockpits of these aircraft continue to not interfere with it too much.

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

#105
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of bad UX choices, the FAA is constantly dropping one or two or more digits from numbers like altitudes, runway lengths, heading, timestamps, etc. For example, "the runway from 180° is 5200 feet long" becomes "RWY18 52" which I suppose you get used to, but it's just begging for mixups.

As a student pilot, this drives me nuts. The volume of abbreviations, especially in NOTAMS, METARs, etc, is a bit obscene. What’s wonderful too is that the abbreviations are often based on non English words as well, so they aren’t intuitive. As an example, instead of typing “mist” in a METAR it is “BR” based on the French word brume.

And yet, on a general interest site you write in acronyms only pilots and aviation buffs will understand.

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

#106
post #82

The memo from Emirates about not setting altitude in system to airport altitude is so weird. I really hope that's not the actual message Emirates is putting out there. It doesn't matter was in system. You run your checklists and configure for your own flight / your own departure etc. Memo should be to training / recruitment - where did you find these pilots to fly a 777? So they obviously didn't pre-flight the flight…

It goes way beyond checklist stuff. 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 mo…

Some good lessons there for automated driving; or any skills that once acquired, are lost when taken for granted and not actively cultivated.

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

#107
Turn it off and on again. Shouldn’t these things have a standard baseline that they reset to? I would have thought you’d reset everything after a flight / first thing you do when you get in the pilot seat . The plane shouldn’t have memory or the previous flight.

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

#108
post #82

The memo from Emirates about not setting altitude in system to airport altitude is so weird. I really hope that's not the actual message Emirates is putting out there. It doesn't matter was in system. You run your checklists and configure for your own flight / your own departure etc. Memo should be to training / recruitment - where did you find these pilots to fly a 777? So they obviously didn't pre-flight the flight…

It goes way beyond checklist stuff. 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 mo…

Testimony given during the Asiana NTSB Sunshine hearing is probably a good place to start, for anyone who wants more detail on your comment here.

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

#109

Setting autopilot immediately on takeoff is very tempting because it massively reduces workload vs hand flying during a critical flight stage (high workload). So there’s a strong temptation to do this. But if you miss a few checklist items and don’t fully understand the systems, this is the result. The numbers seem to indicate they didn’t immediately recover the situation either I.e immediately switch to hand flying…

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