Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by landemva » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 1:08 AM UTC

bronco21016 wrote: post #147

bambax wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to get senior management to engage. If it's just a botched order they let the cowboys be cowboys and consider it a cost of business. Rigorous process requires too much painful self-reflection, so it only happens maybe after they get sued. Even in hospitals, death from improper dosing is surprisingly high.

Regulators play an important role in life safety situations. Beware of regulatory capture (737MAX not getting new type certification).

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

#232

Post by josephcsible » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 1:10 AM UTC

errcorrectcode wrote: post #186

You put your life in many other people's hands every time you step into an airport. If you use Chickens, Goats, and Passengers Airlines, expect not to make it to your destination in one piece. 737 NG (-6xx (736), -7xx, -8xx (738), -9xx (739)), MAX, and 787 are reasons not to fly on Boeing equipment. They have both obscure (Ducommun) and well-known history of cutting corners in design, testing, manufacturing, and who…

Even the fastest passenger trains are quite slow compared to average airliners, and there's a lot of places connected by air that don't have train tracks between them. Air travel should stay dominant until both of those things change.

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

#233

Post by belter » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 1:10 AM UTC

kens wrote: post #157

> While it would be standard to return to the airport to assess damage when something like this happens, the pilots made the decision to continue to Washington That reminds me of Air India Express Flight 611, where the plane hit the antenna at the end of the runway and the brick perimeter wall(!) Even though ATC notified the pilots that they hit something, the pilots decided to keep flying for 4 hours. On landing, th…

No, the point of this one is that pilots can hit something during takeoff, be told about it, and decide to continue and climb only to be forced to land at the request of their own airline company! What is wrong with people?:-)

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

#234

Post by tshaddox » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 1:11 AM UTC

op00to wrote: post #170

tshaddox wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, but what I mean is that it shouldn’t be possible to skip those steps and have things coincidentally work because of the state the plane was left in. I’m not a pilot or even much of an aviation geek, so maybe I’m misunderstanding the description of this incident, but it sounds to me like this crew did what they always do, and that normally works fine, but this time it didn’t.

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

#235

Post by lmilcin » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 1:11 AM UTC

I am not a pilot, but here some very fundamental rules of flying a plane have been broken and from my point of view I can't classify this as a simple error.

The crucial job of the crew planning/taking off is to

a) calculate the decision points (speeds, distances) at which they have to decide to take off or not

b) monitor speed and progress along the runway

c) abort if they can't take off safely before the decision point

What they did suggests to me a complete breakdown of discipline and process in the cockpit.

The autopilot settings have absolutely nothing to do with it.

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

#236

Post by josephcsible » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 1:13 AM UTC

errcorrectcode wrote: post #226

thethimble wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with so many things in this post… 1. Commercial airline travel is significantly safer than driving on a per mile or per hour basis 2. This flight was from Dubai to Washington. I don’t think there’s any train routes between these two cities.

Then you're making a strawman just to be disagreeable without adding anything constructive: 1. I never recommended driving. It's awful for the environment and extremely unsafe. 2. Transoceanic train lines. Hyperloop or similar. Do you have anything else to add?

> Transoceanic train lines

These don't exist, and probably won't for the foreseeable future. What should we all do until then?

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

#237

Post by CamperBob2 » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 1:16 AM UTC

nexuist wrote: post #180

jacquesm wrote: post #145

On another note: I think that having Boeing 777 in the title here is a bit misleading, this was an Emirates aircraft and Boeing had nothing to do with this incident. Suggest replacing 'Boeing 777' in the title with 'Emirates aircraft'

I'll play devil's advocate and suggest that it is a systems error that the 777 accepted an altitude of 0 without sounding an alarm or at least requiring prior confirmation. It shouldn't be that easy to almost total the airplane.

I don't understand why the automation feature in question is even available during takeoff. What would be a situation in which use of the FD at this point in the flight would be a preferable option?

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

#238

Post by lisper » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 1:17 AM UTC

encoderer wrote: post #172

throwanem wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The takeoff isn't directly automated, but there's a system called the "flight director" [1] that provides indicators on the pilot flying's display that correspond with a configured trajectory. In this case, it sounds like the flight director was badly misconfigured and the pilots not only omitted to reconfigure it, but followed the erroneous indication far past any point at which it was remotely reasonable (or remote…

So this is the airline equivalent of Michael Scott following his gps into the lake? Insane

Private pilot here. Yes, that is exactly right.

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

#239

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 1:18 AM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #234

op00to wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Right, but what I mean is that it shouldn’t be possible to skip those steps and have things coincidentally work because of the state the plane was left in. I’m not a pilot or even much of an aviation geek, so maybe I’m misunderstanding the description of this incident, but it sounds to me like this crew did what they always do, and that normally works fine, but this time it didn’t.

[deleted]

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

#240

Post by jackweirdy » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 1:18 AM UTC

csunbird wrote: post #113

selectodude wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably were given a command to stay at 4000 above ground (AGL) level after takeoff. The plane was to level off until further instructions from ATC. Since the plane was set to sea level on takeoff, the plane tried to level off at 4000 ft above sea level which…is not good. The plane was pitched down to descend.

Oh no. So, the computer was actually trying to keep the plane pitched down to avoid ascending naturally and keep the altitude stable. This is really, really bad.

Well, the autopilot was disabled, and the flight director (which at a 1 sentence level is a visual indication of what the autopilot would do) was trying to keep the plane level at the configured altitude

The flight director did the right thing — displayed how it would manage level flight

The pilot did the wrong thing - copied the misconfigured flight director instead of flying the plane