dutchroll

Yeah I don't think the aircraft joining mid-field crosswind as I was taking off for departure quite expected me to pass underneath him on my upwind leg, level at circuit altitude a few months back! I had him sighted at all times but I could almost see him going "what the.......?"

I have to admit I've been a bit confused by the options and pricing too! Eg "pro" and "premium" when describing a package imply virtually the same thing to me. Yet they're obviously pretty different. Optional extras multiply the cost quite a bit.

Also if you're having trouble with landings, have a think about how you're setting yourself up on final approach and make sure you're getting that right. Instructors can often predict how a landing is going to turn out well before you arrive at the runway. This is not because instructors have magical powers. This is because they can see your approach path is too high or too low, your aimpoint is wandering up and down the runway, your speed is high or low, etc. (Sorry instructors......didn't mean to shatter the magical aura!)

I don't think they had any indication of altitude after it went outside radar and VHF coverage (I can't see how they'd get one if they weren't datalinked by satcom). 2000 ft above optimum cruise = 2.5% penalty 1000 ft below optimum cruise = 1.5% penalty 4000 ft below optimum cruise = 5% penalty That's in an Airbus. I don't have a B777 FCOM but it gives an indication of what sort of penalties you're looking at.

Landing is a funny thing. The B767 was notoriously hard to touch down smoothly and one day I did two greasers in a row as we alternated the flying. The other guy said "how do you accomplish such great landings like that?" to which I replied "I have no idea!" The next day I did a shocker, so we were all cool. There was no magic after all. The Pitts is a fraction of the size but can be equally hard to land consistently well. The principles I was taught for landing when I did RAAF pilot training were: 1) it's your peripheral "picture" which is most vital to achieving the right flare height 2) when you're sitting there about to takeoff, note what your peripheral picture looks like. That's about what you want for touchdown - flare when you think you're approaching that picture. 3) when you do flare and pull the power off, you're looking right down the end of the runway and holding that attitude. Don't let the nose drop. But as Nev was alluding to, it's not an exact science and takes practice. If you bugger it up, go around (and I have done that in the Pitts - it was a god-awful approach and landing in good conditions). You don't salvage pride trying to recover what you've already screwed up. You salvage pride by trying it again and making it right.

Yeah I think they're probably looking in the wrong area and there is some error in the estimated endurance. It's just that I don't have the faintest clue where the right area is! It is a "needle in a haystack" search though. With Air France they knew exactly what its planned route was and had a lot more to go on, including the time stamping of the barrage of automated ACARS messages they received when it had the air data computer problems. Still took them a year to find it (and I sure am glad they did because the airline industry learned some enormous lessons from that investigation).

....I don't find that surprising at all! But that's just a real bummer for the "kept flying for 7 hours after a catastrophic fire" theorists!

The more I click on the links to the other MH370 theories out there (I seriously need to stop doing that), the more dumbfounded I get. I'm starting to understand why most current commercial airline pilots who fly Boeing and Airbus jets are not commenting in any great numbers. You can't fight them. Even if you say "the system doesn't actually work that way" or "that's not how we operate the aircraft", the theory doesn't really change but just gets squished and stretched to a slightly different shape. Like the oxy bottle failure theory. It totally ignores the fact we get a prominent warning on main display screens of any flight crew oxygen system failure, including a readout of the current oxygen system pressure which is displayed at all times. And it ignores the fact that if that we also have portable, self contained oxygen bottles the same as the ones in the cabin, but with an attachment on the bottle to directly plug our cockpit oxygen masks into. The jet appears to have been programmed to take it on a course to where, once it ran out of fuel, it would be most difficult to ever find (though I bet they never imagined how successful they'd be). No terrorist organisation ever claimed responsibility. So someone wanted to die and they didn't care that everyone else would too. I seriously doubt anyone was alive on it for most of that flight.

.....not to mention that you're supposed to check the runway in front of you is clear before you takeoff. I always have a good look down the runway as I'm lining up. If for some reason at an uncontrolled airfield I'm lined up and have been sitting there a short while, I'll taxi forward a few metres while doing a quick zig-zag to check it's still clear before opening the throttle. It's just basic bloody airmanship. That, and proper communication and organisation, was totally lacking here.

It's not possible to give an exact answer to that. Pilot oxygen mask regulators in all Boeing and Airbus aircraft are "on demand" regulators, not fixed flow regulators like the passenger ones. The FAR requirement is for a 10 minute minimum crew oxygen supply (I think). It's really only supposed to get you down to a breathable altitude. I would suggest about 15 minutes max would be a reasonable guess, unless you switched it off 100%. But with varying respiratory rates and workload, who knows what it will last? Probably not a heck of a lot longer than that at a typical cruise altitude, judging on how it drops during the preflight check. The cockpit also has portable oxygen bottles which we can plug into. We also get an alert if the flight crew oxygen pressure gets too low.

The crux of the problem here was not the fact that the aircraft which ran into him was a taildragger.

Yes.....and?

I don't understand either.....unless he (whoever "he" was) was unconscious or dead for the last 6 of them, after the course was set. They do know that satellite handshakes ceased after fuel exhaustion would've occurred. So it did fly for that long. Why would he bother sitting up there alive for so long when he knew what the end result was going to be?

It is accessible from outside the cockpit. That's pretty much a Boeing thing.

Yeah totally agree. I mean, if they find the wreckage and it becomes obvious that it was accidental and not deliberate, I will be the first to say "holy cow! I just did not expect that!" However there are several precedents for pilot murder-suicide in commercial jets: Germanwings, Silk Air, and probably the Saudi Air one too. For it to lose comms like it did but fly on for 7 hours on a totally different course which just happened to take it into the middle of the deepest part of a big ocean and disappear almost without trace.......well that is just bizarre. To have that happen simply due to an emergency - even a major one - requires a very complicated chain of events. Fires in aircraft for example generally go one of two ways: they either self-extinguish or get put out quickly, or they self-sustain past that point and quickly cause the total loss of the aircraft. I don't like Sampson's theory because it cobbles together some very tenuous explanations for things, eg a hostie coming into the cockpit reaching right across the charred pedestal and panels to turn the heading knob to alter course (if it's even in the heading mode which they wouldn't know how to do). That and a number of his other conjectures make no sense to me at all.

I believe that no matter which theory of how it got over the deepest part of the Indian Ocean and who set it on that course you prefer, it was most likely deliberate. That would effectively make it a premeditated murder-suicide. How do you protect against becoming the victim of a murder-suicide? Well how do you protect against being a murder victim? You pretty much can't. If someone really and truly wants to take you out tomorrow, they probably can, especially with a bit of forethought. There are mitigating factors like annual medical checks (fell through the cracks in the Germanwings case but overall they offer a chance to pickup mental health issues), flying with another pilot who might get suspicious and ask questions, etc. However by and large, you can be quietly confident that we don't have many murderous b*stard pilots among us. I've occasionally flown with angry ones, and sad ones just like most people have probably experienced when working with others, but they've never taken it out on bystanders (eg, passengers). So I wouldn't fret over it. There's far more chance you'll be run over by a taxi as you exit the terminal, than be deliberately killed by the pilot!

Here's some more from my reading of Mr Sampson's oxygen fire theory: Why would such an oxygen flare fire occur just when it did? We can imagine the following credible scenario: a. Top of Climb (or just after, and settled down in the cruise in friendly weather) is a non-busy time for the captain to go down the back for a toilet or rest break. There are few distractions or ATC concerns once in the cruise phase. This personal routine could be individually confirmed as being the MH370 captain's typical modus operandi by querying other first officers with whom he'd flown the Beijing (and other) routes. Rubbish. In over 16 years with the airlines I reckon I've seen the other pilot get out of the seat to go down "the back" (ie, just outside the cockpit door) for a toiler break or stretch at or shortly after top of climb about twice. It is most certainly not "routine" for anyone I have ever met. b. Having made his final call to Kuala Lumpur, the captain would push his seat back, unstrap and announce to the first officer that he was going aft. The F/O would acknowledge and take his oxygen mask out of its housing and don it as the captain proceeded aft, closing the flight-deck door behind him. Why would the F/O don his mask? That is Standard Operating Procedure globally whenever one pilot is left on the flight deck alone.... for obvious reasons. No, donning an oxygen mask when alone on the flight deck is not SOP globally. We have never done it. What's the point? Firstly, depending on the length and frequency of breaks, you'd simply be wasting valuable flight deck oxygen for a very low probability scenario. What happens when you get a depressurisation at the end of an 8 hour cruise and you've only got half your pilot oxygen left because you've had toilet breaks and been out for a stretch? Secondly, pilots are trained to instinctively reach for their oxygen masks and don them if a depressurisation occurs. Thirdly, even if all the planets aligned and there was only one pilot in the cockpit, and he didn't have his mask on, and the aircraft suffered a sudden depressurisation, and he failed to get his mask on in time, and went unconscious, the pilot outside has the emergency door access code. Once he was on a portable oxygen bottle, he would be able to access the cockpit and perform the descent. Flight attendants delivering food to the flight-deck would've been familiar with seeing the knob that pilots would rotate to make a heading alteration. Huh? How does he reach that conclusion? Does he think we get food sent up every 5 minutes, especially when under radar vectors or something? Does he seriously believe the flight attendants actually care what a knob on the Mode Control Panel does and stand there intently staring at it while they pass you your coffee? By the way, the pilot oxygen masks are tested by the pilots during every single preflight check, on every Boeing or Airbus type I've ever flown. The mask diluter lever selections are permanently left in the "100% oxygen, emergency" position. The EROS flight crew oxygen mask common to all modern Boeing and Airbus aircraft takes about 3-4 seconds to don. Here is a video showing a B777 depressurisation scenario. they descend before going on oxygen because it is not a "rapid depressurisation" initially and the cabin altitude does not yet exceed 10,000ft. The situation deteriorates and then they go into the rapid depressurisation memory items.

This is some of John Sampson's oxygen fire theory: If the captain had dialled in a heading, then lowered the nose but not manually trimmed nose-down, when he soon passed out due hypoxia and relaxed is nose-down pressure on his yoke, the aircraft at its higher speed would have zoom-climbed up to 40,000 feet then dropped its nose (purely per the aerodynamics of such an event) and eventually regained wings-level flight at some lower altitude (approximating their original cruise altitude). In the P3 Orion John used to fly, sure (though of course you would never make it anywhere near 40,000 ft in a P3). But that's not how it works in a fly-by-wire aircraft. The aircraft would be trimmed for the speed at which he entered the emergency descent and it would remain in that trim as long as he didn't touch the trim switches on the control column. Not only that, he would've been cruising somewhere around Mach 0.84 plus or minus a bit, and if he had accelerated at that speed it would be a matter of seconds before he was exceeding Mmo (Mach max operating) and getting perilously close to the high speed buffet boundary. You actually enter an emergency descent from cruise altitude at your current indicated speed.......because you don't really have any other choice! As you descend and the margin to Vmo gets bigger you could choose to accelerate, but in practice that's not what we generally do. The thrust is at idle, normally with the autothrust engaged and pitching the aircraft for the set speed. Or, if autothrust is not engaged, the thrust levers are physically retarded to idle. In any case, with the way it was trimmed for the set speed and at idle thrust, it's not going to suddenly zoom climb to 40,000 ft! "Why would he not have trimmed nose-down? Pilots in modern airliners are used to CWS (and its pitch-axis auto-trim). CWS is "control wheel steering". The manual trim wheel doesn't come naturally to mind for requiring manipulation.... but "stuffing the nose down and getting to an oxygen friendly altitude" is beaten into their brains in simulator sessions as second priority to getting their oxy-masks on. Aviate/ Navigate/Communicate. It's likely that communication was the last thing to come to mind - as hypoxia intervened." Nonsense. the B777 does not have a manual trim wheel. In fact none of the big modern Boeing jets have a trim wheel. Not even the old B767 had a trim wheel. no, "stuffing the nose down" is not beaten into our brains in the simulator. In fact a methodical, controlled entry into the emergency descent with the autopilot engaged is beaten into our brains and if you just stuff the nose down you'll have a senior training Captain having harsh words with you in the debrief. It saves absolutely bugger-all time to rush into the descent, but can lead to disastrous consequences if you screw it up. As explained above, with the speeds we cruise at, a sudden entry into an emergency descent by "stuffing the nose down" can have you going into overspeed territory in seconds, which is the last thing you need when you're already dealing with unknown structural damage. no, communication is not the "last thing to come to mind" simply by virtue of being the 3rd item in "aviate, navigate, communicate". Aviate-navigate-communicate is a motherhood statement about situational awareness (a very good one). If you're immediately happy that the first two are taken care of, you can go straight to number 3. Nor does it necessarily comprise a replacement or substitute for checklist or procedural flow in a situation, which includes notifying ATC. As I said above, the more I read, the more I understand why PPrune just said "enough!" (no I'm not a regular on PPrune - not for 10 to 15 years now). He is absolutely fixated on this theory and he seems, to me at least, to have attempted to manipulate a whole bunch of things to fit into it.

Some of it is nonsensical. It's the first time I've actually read it. No wonder he was banned by PPrune, because it's so speculative and riddled with assumptions (quite a number of them extremely unlikely) that it's actually fairly pointless.

It may or may not activate the ELT. One of the controversial issues with ELTs is their high-ish failure rate in severe impacts. Of course there are much more reliable beacons carried like the Rescue 406 portable beacons, but they require someone to pull them out of the door stowage and activate them. They know how much fuel it took off with, and they know how long it maintained a handshake with the satellite system. So they know it continued flying to the approximate point of fuel exhaustion given a high altitude cruise. There is no way it could've done this with flaps down.

The one lost in turbulence near Mt Fuji was a BOAC B707 in 1966. The B747 which lost its tail due to structural failure from a poor repair over pre-existing damage was a bit north of there at Mt Takamagahara. Both took off from Tokyo Haneda.

I'm bilingual (although formally educated under the metric system) when it comes to measurements too, but in university aerodynamics we had to learn the slug. 1 slug = 32.174 pounds or 14.593 kg. It equates to the mass which will accelerate by 1 ft per second squared when 1 pound force is applied to it. Go figure.......

I think the objection is predominantly the self-serving nature of a lot of what went on afterwards including internal things you'd only know about if you were in the employee loop, perhaps not helped by the odd embellishment or slightly hazy recollection here and there. I realise this is considered part of human nature, but in this case there was only one member of the entire crew who did it. The rest just got on with life.

He has refused to read it, as far as I know.

Not even ACI is guaranteed to be totally free of poetic and dramatic licence. A friend of mine was actually on the flight deck of the QF32 incident. The ACI depiction of the First Officer in their version of it was pretty much of a goggle-eyed pilot anxiously looking to Captain de Crespigny for guidance. My friend's personal eyewitness account was very different. It was of a First Officer totally in control and methodically working through the situation as a team member, as well as actually keeping it on the rails when it looked like getting sidetracked!