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Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

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141–150 of 580 posts

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

#141
Is this a cultural problem where some areas of the world tend to defer to authority even in the face of obvious error on the part of the authority? In this case the flight computer?

I thought this was solved by training none-western pilots, in particular co-pilots, to be empowered to challenge decisions by another pilot instead of just doing nothing.

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

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my understanding there are two advantages: - So that when kph/mph is heard a pilot knows they're referencing ground speed, whereas knots is air speed. - Pilots use latitude/longitude, and a knot is "exactly equal to 1/60th of a degree of latitude. A 1/60th of a degree of latitude is known as a minute of latitude. Therefore, a knot is equal to one minute of distance. There are 90 degrees from the equator to the p…

seems slightly odd to use an angular unit for airspeed; the linear equivalent would technically depend on altitude. I guess airplanes don't actually fly high enough for that to matter.

What seemed odder to me is GP's talking about speed as if it's the same as distance:

> a knot is "exactly equal to 1/60th of a degree of latitude. ...Therefore, a knot is equal to one minute of distance."

I'm not sure what that quote is from, but it's is akin to saying "A metre per second is equal to one metre." Um, no. The units don't match.

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

#143

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…

I have an autopilot in my small single-engine GA aircraft and don’t even think about touching it until long after takeoff when I’m comfortably at pattern altitude. The reason being I’ve read way too many NTSB reports when the pilot engages the thing 50ft after takeoff, it has a mind of its own and the plane goes careening into the ground. There are “failsafes” built in, for example you can easily overpower it with control forces or disengage it, but that’s one more problem you don’t want to deal with during a critical phase of flight.

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

#144

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's unbelievable that the pilot's didn't realize they were doing 215 knots while still ON THE GROUND and only decided to pull back on the yoke once they were nearing the end of the runway. They should have at least seen the end of the runway coming up and wondered why they weren't airborne yet. The ends are colored in amber and red as it gets closer to the end, it should be pretty obvious something is wrong. Pull ba…

I thought all takeoffs were manual. Is auto-takeoff out of testing already?

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

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I've heard Royal Air Maroc is pretty good when it comes to African carriers but I'm not sure. I know they have (or at least used to have) experienced crews and good airframes, but I don't know anything about their maintenance standards

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

#147
post #72
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…

Great video, thanks. I find it weird that we learn so little about aviation when the industry has so much to teach us. The checklist manifesto was a great attempt to try to implement checklists in the hospital and other places, but from CRM to workload management there is so much to benefit from what the airline industry has pioneered.

As someone who works in the airline industry I find it infuriating when other industries don’t match my expectations. I saw behind the curtain at a couple of medium sized online retailers. The lack of process and procedure was just astounding to me. I know some airline pilots have had success in consulting in hospitals but maybe there exists a broader market for that service.

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

#148
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This rings true. I live in Doha and a very good family friend is an instructor in the local flag carrier's training program. He was recently bemoaning the following situation: 1. There was a go-around on some flight or other (for good reason!) 2. Management interpreted this as a failure, and announced that every go-around will now have a full post-mortem with involved pilots requiring more sim time. 3. Pilots now thi…

Ooh, it’s like internally reporting security vulnerabilities!

The parallels are legion (unfortunately).

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

#149
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…

There's another version of the video here with restored audio:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WITLR_qSPXk

Might be easier to watch for anyone using a device with crappy speakers.

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

#150

At least this sounds like pure human error, failure to follow pre-flight checklists, and not a Boeing engineering/mechanical problem.

But engineering/mechanical problems can be identified, analyzed, and eliminated (or mitigated). Human error still finds a way around our many attempts (training, checklists, standardized procedures, etc) to prevent it.

> engineering/mechanical problems

These problems are often due to human problems or errors.

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