dutchroll

Try suggesting to the crew who were on the QF72 in an A330 enroute to Perth a few years back that pilotless aircraft would be a good idea!

You take the human out of the equation in the air and you'll still have to deal with the human in the equation on the ground.....even more so.

I was once upon a time informed this is an insurance/risk management issue. I'm not certain how true that is though. F/Os are trained to the full aircraft limits in the sim.

Yeah the Boeings are a bit easier (in my opinion) under these conditions. On the A330 I wouldn't like to accept 30-35 kts gusty crosswind unless there was just no other choice (eg, rwy 27 unavailable due works or whatever). It only takes one go-round for you to develop an aversion to accepting max crosswinds when a much more suitable runway is available! Having said that I don't know what other factors may have influenced the decision so I guess I should give him the benefit of the doubt. Not for QF. QF have in recent years developed a culture where go-arounds are encouraged through a "no blame" policy. Long or short landings, or other situations which bust various limitations during touchdown due to "pressing on" under bad conditions are strongly discouraged and are likely to earn a tea & bikkies session with the Chief Pilot or Training Manager. Go-arounds in QF are rarely investigated as they are considered good airmanship to avoid a bad situation developing. In QF, a PA to the passengers from the Captain after a go-around is a requirement if time permits - usually after the aircraft is cleaned up or in whatever configuration you want it for the tracking around to the next approach. A very brief explanation including the fact that a go-around is considered a "normal" manoeuvre is given. It's brief because the crew are very busy after a go-around. A phone call to the company on the ground is required outlining what happened, to allow them to head off any media sensationalism or other issues before too many Chinese whispers spread. Lol! Poetic licence on my part! No, we politely decline (usually) on the radio and state our operational requirement. On rare occasions if the situation is just ridiculous we may decline, and ask for an explanation of why they're doing whatever they're doing, but that's very rare. What we say privately to each other in the cockpit can be more blunt though!

From the video it looks simply like the approach became unstable very close to the ground. That's a mandatory go-round in QF (anything breaching the stability criteria below 500'). Could've been a gust, or he may simply have had difficulty handling it. When the crosswind is just barely scraping within the aircraft limits, it's pretty hard work! The Capt would've been flying that approach. 30+ kts is well outside the First Officer crosswind limitation (which is 20 kts across the mainline jet fleet). I don't know what he was thinking accepting 34 under those conditions. It's not unusual for ATC to sequence us onto runways with crosswinds - or even tailwinds (!) - close to aircraft limits (welcome to noise abatement in Australia) when another runway would be far better, but most guys I know tell them to bash it, responding with a requirement for a more suitable runway. Then ATC have no choice but to concede.

"Ganging up" can often misleadingly be used to describe a situation where one person's opinion appears somewhat out of left field and everyone else's is relatively normal on the spectrum. The mere fact that one points this out then becomes a delicate balancing act between trying not to be deliberately insulting and simply expressing one's view of reality.

Lol! I had that exact same thought! What on earth is a fundamental atheist?

Yeah Gnarly, if you're going to throw internet links around with gay abandon to support your argument, it would pay to read the whole link first. ;)

Ergo you're arguing that if you don't like it, you shouldn't pay for it? Life isn't quite that simple. In a Democracy, 80% of people might vote that they want Government taxes to pay for something. By definition this means the other 20% have to suck it up and get over it.

I didn't say I agreed ABC and SBS were biased against the LNP. I think the ABC (with a few exceptions) does a reasonable job. The SBS is by definition more inclined to reflect non-white Australian cultural views of our immigrant population as that is the whole reason it was originally founded. If you're a big fan of the traditional Anglo-Saxon Australian Christian viewpoint on life, you're hardly going to get any satisfaction from SBS. That's not why it's there. When these outfits report that the current PM has made some incredibly dopey BS statement or done something unbelievably stupid (like knighting Prince Phillip), they're usually just stating a fairly obvious fact. Strangely, 50% of the population jumps up and down about it. You want them to sugar coat Government idiocy just because they're taxpayer funded? They have certainly been critical of Labor on many occasions. Perhaps you didn't bother watching.

So what? The Australian has an editorial and opinion column team so far to the right that it makes former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney look like a left wing dope smoking hippie. They (and most other News Ltd papers) may as well set up their offices in the LNP headquarters and be done with the charade that they "just report the news". No-one seems to complain about that.

You're not very familiar with what actually happened during the airline pilot's dispute of 1989, are you?

Given that my opinion is that there is no such deity to hate, I'm pretty confident that no Hell awaits me. Although if your deity does exist, I do take objection to him/her threatening my life if I don't do exactly as they say. They can sod off if that's their attitude.

Well that's just plain disturbing.

I don't see an issue so long as you are trained to use it, as you should be with every piece of equipment in your plane. My VFR aircraft has a small backup attitude display. But I also have thousands of hours instrument time. I'm extremely respectful of, but not afraid of cloud. Naturally I have no plans whatsoever to even attempt to fly this aircraft in it (it lacks several IFR requirements and is not designed for that anyway). However not being afraid of cloud is a double-edged sword, in that I'm quite happy to fly on cloudy days so long as I can maintain VFR conditions without too many issues. In the event I ever make a serious error of judgement on one of those cloudy days (touch wood), I want to at least be able smack a cricket bat over my own head when I get home so I'll remember what not to do again, and maybe even let someone else benefit from my story.

Ummmmm.....in the other cases we're talking about events which have a lot of evidence supporting them and in your case you're talking about something which has an absence of evidence supporting it. Either way we're talking about what has evidence, and what doesn't. Regrettably many people in what is a uniquely human trait: A) choose to disregard or ignore plentiful evidence which contradicts their heartfelt view, and/or B) cannot distinguish good quality evidence from bad quality evidence, and/or C) have difficulty realistically interpreting evidence, and/or D) make it up as they go, then offer that as "evidence". This is how conspiracy theories get up and running.

Because there were plenty of people who were there and did see it happen. This is akin to saying "you cannot confirm the truth of anything you haven't directly observed yourself", which of course is nonsensical.

Yeah and you can't even see what the other bloke is doing on the sidestick in an Airbus because yours doesn't move in unison! First time your eyes pop out is when the nose abruptly pitches!

5 days ago the other pilot was having a break while I was in the seat, with a flight attendant in the jumpseat. ATC blurted out a bunch of instructions including a descent to be commenced immediately for a looming traffic conflict, a simultaneous heading change, and a reduction in speed for sequencing. We were heading off in another direction, descending, decelerating, and I had made 4 selections on the autopilot pilot control panel plus a radio reply within about 5-10 seconds and before the flight attendant even knew what was happening. In fact they had continued talking during all of this and I have no idea what they actually said! I think better and smarter access technology to the cockpit will eventually be the answer. I don't believe all the issues and counter-issues can be fixed procedurally. It's just too complicated.

The autopilot doesn't lock the flight path. It just flies the plane according to the instructions the pilot has given it. Lubitz crashed the A320 into the mountainside on autopilot. A TCAS RA requires disconnection of the autopilot and changing the flight path in accordance with the TCAS commands within 5 seconds. A depressurisation is flown on autopilot but requires immediate pilot input (autopilot mode changes). An engine failure in the cruise is also flown on autopilot but requires pilot input (autopilot mode changes) within around 30-60 seconds to avoid excessive speed loss. A severe turbulence encounter requires immediate pilot input and may cause the autopilot to disconnect all by itself. During which 5 minute period are you going to exclude these probabilities?

Some are. Some are not. I'm always very careful to make it clear that I have worked with some very good cabin crew. Regrettably the opposite is true too. The "old salt" Cabin Managers/Pursers will be the first to agree with me. I've had, on a number of occasions, the Cabin Manager (we call them the "CSM") come up to the cockpit and say "I need a sanity break - I'm about to strangle one of our crew". It's just a sign of the times and a very broad selection criteria. And the consequence of this is that instilling common sense and airmanship under certain scenarios gets complicated. That could get interesting if the aircraft gets a TCAS Resolution Advisory while the flight path is locked!

It's both training and selection criteria. The modern selection criteria for a part-time flight attendant (we essentially don't take them full time any more) is, well, "basic" let's say. Training is cut to the bone. This is reality in a commercial airline under certain modern day managerial styles. So yeah it's training, which is considered a "cost" by the bean-counters. And costs must be minimised. I'm serious - this is how they view it! It's also selection criteria, but to tighten the selection criteria is also considered a "cost" because the recruitment pool gets dramatically shallower and higher incentives must be offered to find the right people.

Yes this is quite true. However you'd be shocked to learn how many don't get that concept. Another friend of mine who flies Boeings relayed to me that one of the girls they had up there "minding" him thought that it was her job to takeover control of the plane if he went unconscious. Therein lies the problem. It's bigger than most people think or believe, too, but this is what happens with hasty reactions.

Anecdote: At Oshkosh one year sitting down eating lunch at a big bench, my wife leans over and asks "are you listening to what those guys are saying behind you?" I wasn't, so I tuned in. One guy in particular was waxing lyrical about how whimpish and unskilled airline guys were, because they needed a number of different flight instruments. He stated that you shouldn't need an artificial horizon to fly at night. You should be skilled enough to know by feel what attitude your aircraft was in, and if you couldn't fly night circuits by sense alone, you just lacked skill and training. I just shrugged my shoulders. Another brash, ignorant, temporary (as far as life expectancy goes) pilot. I just hope he never takes his family out at night. Or in instrument conditions. Ever. There's just no point in trying to educate people like that about the gross imperfections in your vestibular system, or optical illusions, or anything much really. You just hope they stay VFR and VMC.

I'm not sure you've considered the safety ramifications of an untrained person thinking they can just reach over and pull on the sidestick of an Airbus which has started descending and where the pilot is unresponsive. Even if everything else is working normally, if they weren't screaming before, they'll certainly start doing so when they pull the sidestick back! With the Germanwings tragedy, I have serious doubts as to whether an untrained person would've achieved anything at all. It is becoming clearer that Lubitz wanted to die and planned well ahead of time to destroy the aircraft and everyone on board. There are any number of ways of doing this, second person in cockpit or not. So this is the sequence: 1. One-in-a-billion odds (whatever number you choose, they're tiny and if you consider them too large, locking yourself in your room is probably warranted) coincide of a murderously suicidal pilot locking out other pilot and destroying aircraft with everyone on board. 2. Very dubious that 2nd person would've prevented it as this pilot had researched and pre-planned his action to guarantee success. 3. Government introduces people into cockpit without training who think they can just yank back control stick of large jet at 35,000-40,000ft if other pilot is unresponsive. On even a basic risk-analysis, this is very unsound.