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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

#391
post #82

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 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…

Out of interest, which British carriers? Am British so would like to know so I can avoid.

I thought Ryanair were Irish?

Also, why are Ryanair et al doing this? I mean, obviously Ryanair have a bit of a reputation.

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

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

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

#393
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…

Reminds me of a pistol class I once took. The instructor said he didn't believe in using the physical safety, because people tended to use it as a crutch to ignore other safety measures.

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

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I can't say I have much of an idea of what goes on in a cockpit but presumably not everything is related to something a computer knows, or can change. Clean windscreens, functioning levers, coffee cup filled ;-)

Also having to poke the computer also helps check that the computer isn't obviously broken.

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

#395

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…

> It's unbelievable

This applies to most catastrophic failures, not just in aviation but in any other place that puts reasonable effort into preventing them. Usually there are plenty of safeguards, which means that most of the times, when something goes wrong, one of the safeguards prevents a catastrophic outcome and you don't hear about it.

But when you do hear about it (due to the catastrophic outcome or a very near miss), it'll usually be a tale of many mistakes, very egregious misbehavior, multiple failures etc. - because it generally has to be to cause a bad outcome or even get close to it.

Keep in mind that despite this, nothing seriously bad actually happened here. It was a near miss that needs to be addressed, of course, but nobody died, there likely was no serious equipment damage, etc. Ultimately, the system worked.

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

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And as we just learned, people make mistakes or skip steps when following those, so maybe the button would be better.

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

#397

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…

> How you get to this level of incompetence flying a 777 is far beyond my understanding.

I don't fly, but what I hear from my commercial pilot friends is that many carriers are emphasizing pilots to run on auto-everything so their actual fly-the-plane skills deteriorate. And much worse, the newer generation of pilots never acquired those skills to begin with. due to relying on automation.

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

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You’re arguing for vastly more complexity in the flight director

The airplane should already have a terrain database in the ground proximity warning system, so triggering a warning in this case doesn't seem entirely unreasonable, should have very low false positives, and could improve flight safety.

Should it be necessary? Theoretically not, but pilots are human, and we have to choose whether we want to be smug about their stupidity while piecing together 300+ charred corpses, or account for humans doing human things.

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

#399

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…

> You don't fly the flight director command bars when they are telling you to stay on the ground and you're doing 215 knots.

This reminds me of the (in)famous "take a right" sketch from The Office [1]. Granted, that was a TV show and they were "piloting" a car, not a 777.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOW_kPzY_JY

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