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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

#161

Post by cybertronic »

rectang wrote: post #30
onphonenow wrote: post #16

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…

From a top comment on the article by "Mark D": > I’m a captain at a U.S. major airline with a lot of time in 777s. [...] Also, this is something that SHOULD have been caught by at least two separate checklists, which they obviously didn’t do.

Adding at the end: " ... So, these pilots were ill trained and negligent. Don’t fly on these types of carriers. I don’t."

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

#163

Post by ytdytvhxgydvhh »

cybertronic wrote: post #161
rectang wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a top comment on the article by "Mark D": > I’m a captain at a U.S. major airline with a lot of time in 777s. [...] Also, this is something that SHOULD have been caught by at least two separate checklists, which they obviously didn’t do.

Adding at the end: " ... So, these pilots were ill trained and negligent. Don’t fly on these types of carriers. I don’t."

I wonder what “these types of carriers” means here. I know there are low-cost carriers and I wouldn’t be surprised if they had less-experienced pilots, etc. But to me Emirates strikes me as a well-funded, reputable operation. Does he mean Middle Eastern carriers?

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

#164

Post by throwawayboise »

nomel wrote: post #124
wpearse wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The checklists bring the aircraft back to a known state. One 777 pilot commented to say that this issue should have been caught by at least two checklists, implying that neither checklists had been followed. Tangentially: if my 2006 Mercedes is reset (battery disconnected) it needs to idle for 20 minutes to re-learn the idle pattern. The vehicle then needs to be driven around for a bit to re-learn driving patterns. I…

> The checklists bring the aircraft back to a known state. No, it doesn't, clearly. It provides a procedure that can be followed to put it to a known state, but its existence does not put it into a known state, with certainty. A reset puts it into a known state, with certainty. That known reset state probable wouldn't be useful, but can be set to be least-damaging, where a checklist can then be used to then put it in…

> My assumption is that many planes don't allow a reset to be trivial, since levers and whatnot are involved.

I think you are correct -- not everything is a software setting. There are physical switches and dials and other mechanical controls involved.

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

#165

Post by mmaunder »

oceanplexian wrote: post #143
mmaunder wrote: post #40

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 co…

Yeah I got into that nasty habit in sims using pilotedge because it’s easier to switch to departure/approach on the climb. Had to break that for real life. (I’m also a GA PPL)

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

#166

Post by yosito »

onphonenow wrote: post #16

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…

> What was pilot monitoring doing during all this?

Wouldn't there also be a copilot who is double checking this stuff?

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

#167

Post by thewarrior »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #49
onphonenow wrote: post #16

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 doesn't matter was in system. You run your checklists and configure for your own flight / your own departure etc. I am not a pilot, but that's exactly what I thought when I read the memo too. They should be putting responsibility for the next flight on the next flight's crew, not the prior flight's crew. Train each crew to assume the plane they're prepping for their next flight is FUBAR in every way, checklist e…

I know nothing about aviation but it seems to me like the auto pilot software could use a lot of improvement.

Why on earth would you give the pilot an instruction that would almost certainly lead to a crash ? It seems like there aren’t enough sanity checks. Any such dodgy situation should trigger an alarm and disengage the auto pilot imo.

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

#168

Post by supernova87a »

I am reminded for some reason about an Air Asia (?) flight a few years ago that departed SYD/MEL for KUL (?) where by some fat finger accident one of the pilots initialized the plane's location (while on the ground), skipping or misplacing one decimal point in the lat/long somewhere.

He had to do it manually because some FD/GPS system was not correctly functioning or was inop, and then after doing this there was no warning that the plane's current position was suddenly registered as several hundred miles away from its last position. (correction, there were some warnings that were noticed but disregarded as they were very short and disappeared momentarily)

On takeoff, the autopilot was engaged and dutifully turned its heading to the course believed to be from the current (erroneous) position to the first desired waypoint -- throwing the plane into an unexpected large turn in a low altitude risky phase of takeoff. The pilots correctly saw some problem, but incorrectly then carried out a series of mistaken recovery steps leading to full disengagement of the plane's normal coordinated flight controls ("normal law", etc) to try and get it to behave. Apparently, everything except just shutting A/P off.

Well, one thing cascaded on another, the plane couldn't be reset back into normal flight control mode, there was fog, etc. and they couldn't land back in MEL and had to divert several hundred miles to SYD or wherever and a whole incident. It could have been even worse.

Seems that complicated systems... can get complicated easily if you overlook or start off unsure of what has gone wrong.

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

#169

Post by _s »

Someone1234 wrote: post #17
Daishiman wrote: post #2

Why are knots used in aviation over kph?

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…

Pilot here, all distance and speeds are in nautical miles / hours. Mach numbers are also used often for faster / higher aircraft.

Weight / volume changes from gallons to litres to cubic meters to cubic feet depending on US/RoW.

Height is always in feet.

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

#170

Post by op00to »

tshaddox wrote: post #139
SkyMarshal wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't matter was in system. You run your checklists and configure for your own flight / your own departure etc. I am not a pilot, but that's exactly what I thought when I read the memo too. They should be putting responsibility for the next flight on the next flight's crew, not the prior flight's crew. Train each crew to assume the plane they're prepping for their next flight is FUBAR in every way, checklist e…

I’m not a pilot either but I am shocked that there’s not some standard “reset” procedure so that each flight starts with the plane in a consistent clean slate. It seems bizarre for any process to rely on the previous flight coincidentally leaving the plane in a certain state.

It doesn’t. The pilots didn’t do their preflight checklist which would have caught a poorly set up flight computer.
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