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Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

onemileatatime.com

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

#361
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I've just gone from a 2004 Corolla to a 2020 Serrato. It's a low end car but it has lane assist, braking detection when a car slows in front, cruise, speed limiter, etc. Combine all those settings with google maps and it easy for me to see how you could get complacent driving a new car and make mistakes. All these features work well most of the time, but they all notably fail on, still frequent, edge cases.

Yes and as with Tesla "FSD", supposedly the driver is to devote full attention to monitoring the car whenever activated. But this is silly because as these tools get better, the driver will inevitably monitor less. But it won't any time soon (ever?) avoid random errors every now and then. But now these will be catastrophic failures.

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

#362

I'm surprised commercial planes don't do full software reset before each flight, and especially before a new crew takes over. Checklists only get you so much.

It takes too long and would achieve little. Flight turnaround times are very tight. The process for updating software on aircraft is, understandably, tightly controlled and only takes place via physical access. Pilots wouldn't know how.

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

#363
post #287

So instead of telling the next crew to configure the system properly they are instructing the previous crew not to set it wrong? I really can't follow that. Of course it should be checked, every time.

But the next crew has been told to configure the system properly many many many times (training, checklists, recurrent training). Telling them once more won’t achieve anything. On the other hand, telling previous crews not to set it wrong might achieve something, removing one failure mode and adding another level of redundancy. The ghastly Helios accident [1] was also triggered by a misconfiguration (by maintenance s…

Is there no functionality to reset the computer between flights? It seems insane that the first item in the checklist isn't "press the reset button". And the computer shouldn't let the aircraft take off if some required setting hasn't been set. Imagine if you were on an e-commerce website and you had to delete the previous customer's billing details before checking out!

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

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really unexpected failures or do they discuss scenario / do you expect one of a few typical scenarios? Really throwing failures at pilots without them knowing what's going on seems to mean too many fail or rather there is not enough time to train pre-discussed scenarios and do scenarios that aren't announced. I'm not sure it's really what you'd want.

It's exactly what you want, because it simulates reality. Unexpected failures are by definition unexpected.

Yeah i know it is what you want.

I'm just asking if it's really a reality as i previously got the impression airline training wasn't quite at that level. As in mostly you get an engine out because that needs training every time. And if the unexpected scenario is an engine out most of the time ... it's not really unexpected.

I wonder how often stuff like static port blockages and even maybe the flight director being wrong during takeoff are trained in an unexpected fashion. I'd expect quite rarely if at all. That's ok i suppose as it's rare failures, but the descriptions here kinda suggested a level of random scenarios being thrown at pilots ... which isn't quite realistic i think due to limited simulator time alone.

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

#365
post #233
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?:-)

You missed the best part, their own airline asked them to return to Mumbai, probably to avoid bad press from International media, thats the general approach from anything Indian Govt. > Shortly thereafter, the company contacted the flight crew and instructed them to divert to Mumbai, despite the stricken aircraft being much closer to Dubai. AI made it more dangerous and made them fly back another 3 hours.

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

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You, clearly, have never flown EK. I have six flights in EK first class under my belt. I've taken showers on their airplanes. I've enjoyed $1,500 bottles of 1964 port wine and cognac poured generously. I've eaten caviar and socialized at the onboard lounge. Believe me, EK is nothing like a "chicken and goat airline". It's world class all the way.

The fact that their service in first class is luxurious (which nobody is denying) doesn’t necessarily imply that their pilots are good.

What makes you think emirates doesn’t have good pilots? Do you have any source for that? Emirates is not even a budget airline, like RYAN AIR. I mean unless you are the one who trained all emirates pilots, I don’t think you should be calling them a goat airline because an incident happened. If you look deep, every airline and even Airbus had issues.

>The maiden flight of A320 Air France 296: Official reports concluded that the pilots flew too low, too slow, failed to see the forest and accidentally flew into it. The captain, Michel Asseline, disputed the report and claimed an error in the fly-by-wire computer prevented him from applying thrust and pulling up. In the aftermath of the crash, there were allegations that investigators had tampered with evidence, specifically the aircraft's flight recorders ("black boxes").

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

#367

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?

Oh yeah, lets jump the Musk bandwagon, and wait for 100 years before he figures out how impractical it is and then go back to flying again.

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

#368
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the next crew has been told to configure the system properly many many many times (training, checklists, recurrent training). Telling them once more won’t achieve anything. On the other hand, telling previous crews not to set it wrong might achieve something, removing one failure mode and adding another level of redundancy. The ghastly Helios accident [1] was also triggered by a misconfiguration (by maintenance s…

Is there no functionality to reset the computer between flights? It seems insane that the first item in the checklist isn't "press the reset button". And the computer shouldn't let the aircraft take off if some required setting hasn't been set. Imagine if you were on an e-commerce website and you had to delete the previous customer's billing details before checking out!

There are checklists for configuring everything as required.

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

#369

I'm surprised commercial planes don't do full software reset before each flight, and especially before a new crew takes over. Checklists only get you so much.

I'm surprised they don't do a full reset then set every checklist variable to an invalid state, in which the aircraft will not permit starting until all have been set by the flight crew.

I mean if you are able to do that, why to even have a checklist. I mean the computer must be able to complete the checklist, unless specified, no? Or is the checklist important because the pilots must know what they’re dealing with?

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

#370
post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've just gone from a 2004 Corolla to a 2020 Serrato. It's a low end car but it has lane assist, braking detection when a car slows in front, cruise, speed limiter, etc. Combine all those settings with google maps and it easy for me to see how you could get complacent driving a new car and make mistakes. All these features work well most of the time, but they all notably fail on, still frequent, edge cases.

What is a Serrato? I've not heard of this kind of car. If it's a typo or something, apologies, I don't know what it could be. I'm not trying to be snarky, just genuinely curious what it is?

Woops yes a typo on a Kia Cerato. At least that is what it is called here in Australia.

https://www.kia.com/au/cars/cerato/features.html

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