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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

#321

Post by t0mas88 »

nilsbunger wrote: post #255
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…

The "black hole effect" is one mitigating factor - if you take off on a moonless night, it is surprisingly disorienting, and can become debilitating. These pilots missed a bunch of very basic things like rotating at V1. Maybe they got totally disoriented and it incapacitated them? Good training is supposed to prevent that. This wasn't a "missed an item on a checklist" story.

The black hole effect applies to visual flight, mostly the landing part. Not accelerating on a runway with runway lights and completely forgetting to look at the basic instruments.

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

#322

Post by t0mas88 »

selectodude wrote: post #91
csunbird wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: My experience in piloting is just a couple of hours flying planes in kerbal space program. Wouldn't that much speed cause the plane to ascent naturally, even with zero pitch, just by the body lift? (Although, it is quite possible that real life planes have negative body lift, I have no idea)

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.

Pilot here. This is completely wrong, nobody ever gives altitude instructions above ground level. That doesn't exist in ATC terms.

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

#323

Post by ecshafer »

Pasorrijer wrote: post #303
deepGem wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I wouldn't doubt one of the best airlines on the planet. However, the article claims that they hire pilots with lower flying hours as they cannot find experienced pilots like American or United does. I fail to understand this. Can't they just hire experienced pilots from other airlines instead of hiring the inexperienced ones ?

Comes down to a few things. First, money. Second, location. Third, skill. The Middle East doesn't have nearly the pool of pilots to start with compared to North America, and even NA is suffering from an extreme shortage of pilots. (Wonder why the airlines no longer fly to your small town? Probably because of a shortage of pilots)

Is there actually a pilot shortage, or is there a pay shortage? Most of the people I know who wanted to be pilots bounced off of the extremely low salary for a very long time. Unless someone does military and gets a lot of hours, and even then not always, they are stuck paying for their own license then making a bit above minimum wage flying between cleveland to nashville or something like that. If the airlines paid more money I think the shortage would probably disappear quickly.

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

#324

Post by vultour »

krisoft wrote: post #257
argvargc wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems a very important question, and I'm not finding answers to it satisfactory. To elaborate, why isn't an autopilot "aware" of whether the aircraft is taking-off/landing or in-flight? It seems completely mad that an automated flying mode could be engaged in such an obviously suicidal way on a modern bulk carrier aircraft, without so much as a blaring warning and red flashing lights.

> It seems completely mad that an automated flying mode could be engaged in such an obviously suicidal way on a modern bulk carrier aircraft, without so much as a blaring warning and red flashing lights. You are assuming that there weren't blaring warnings and red flashing lights. Probably there were many. > To elaborate, why isn't an autopilot "aware" of whether the aircraft is taking-off/landing or in-flight? Autop…

You're talking about a GA aircraft autopilot, modern airliners go way beyond that. I don't know about the 777 but I believe all newer Boeings are FBW. Airbus has been FBW since forever. I'm mostly familiar with the A320 but that things is pretty much impossible to stall under normal operation no matter how much you misconfigure the autopilot.

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

#325

Post by throwawaygh »

ecshafer wrote: post #323
Pasorrijer wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comes down to a few things. First, money. Second, location. Third, skill. The Middle East doesn't have nearly the pool of pilots to start with compared to North America, and even NA is suffering from an extreme shortage of pilots. (Wonder why the airlines no longer fly to your small town? Probably because of a shortage of pilots)

Is there actually a pilot shortage, or is there a pay shortage? Most of the people I know who wanted to be pilots bounced off of the extremely low salary for a very long time. Unless someone does military and gets a lot of hours, and even then not always, they are stuck paying for their own license then making a bit above minimum wage flying between cleveland to nashville or something like that. If the airlines paid…

Pilots for large airlines are paid very well (100k-200k+). The training is expensive and time-consuming, but not that expensive or that time-consuming, if we compare to e.g. medicine or science.

There is a low-paid and debt-heavy portion of the career. However, Medical students aren't paid and even the lowest-paid pilot is making more than the average phd candidate.

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

#326

Post by Havoc »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #292

USA is one of Emirates key markets, I wonder why they didn’t mandate higher quality pilots for the routes. I’ve flown quite a few times and remember hearing American-sounding pilot names on several occasions so I know they have them on staff.

How do you know these weren’t American pilots?

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

#327

Post by PKop »

nickjj wrote: post #219
EMM_386 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Pilots are getting far too comfortable flying what the computer is telling them instead of flying the actual aircraft. I'm not a pilot but this stuff does concern me. If you Google around for GPS related accidents with cars the results are pretty mind boggling. There's a number of cases of folks driving straight into a lake because GPS told them to go that way. This plane incident reminds me of that.

This is exactly why the mass delusion propagated by Elon that Tesla's have full self driving is terrifying, and why "self driving" in general is a sinister lie that endangers the public.

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

#328

Post by kortilla »

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.

There are all kinds of airports at altitude 0. You’re arguing for vastly more complexity in the flight director for it to know what altitudes are valid for particular locations.

> It shouldn't be that easy to almost total the airplane.

It’s not, the pilots are complete fucking morons who ignored multiple checklists and basic knowledge about flying (210 knots on the ground is insane).

This wasn’t autopilot or anything like that. It’s just hints for an already manual operation.

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

#329

Post by omegant »

emptybottle wrote: post #215
omegant wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When you say an airline like Emirates, what do you mean? Are they in a certain category of airline? I’m wondering how to avoid flying on airlines who have bad practices but at present I’m not sure how to tell.

Yes Gulf carriers, but not all of them, Emirates and Qatar are the most important.

They really have high standard and try their best to have the best safety standars. Is not for lack of trying. Is that their system has gome far too much in one direction that is now backfiring.

Absolutely you may have an airline that allows too much manual flying and too low procedure standars (it is what happened at first in commercial aviation). There is a sweet spot between standart procedure and manual proficiency, and some airlines have been going way beyond that spot for some time.

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

#330

Post by kortilla »

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…

This wasn’t an autopilot problem. The problem occurred while still in takeoff roll.
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