777 Co-Pilot being hammered in the UK press. . .

[oracle1]

First rule of flying is maintain airspeed. No excuse for this in a multi crew environment, who cares what the auto throttle did or didn't do.

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

I read they were initially too high and lateral alignment was also off, if so I doubt the auto throttle contributed much to that...

 

 

[ozbear]

GG, an approach without VASIS or Glideslope indication is not considered normal for regular Jet services. Nev.

Nev even though VFR conditions were declared arent all comercial passenger flights IFR ?

 

 

[facthunter]

Doesn't matter. The requirement to be stabilised quite high( 400'+) exists so speed, slope and power set to get the right height over the threshold. There is also a max sink rate allowed and always power above idle below a certain height. The judgement is too critical to not provide an aid on scheduled jet services. The VASIS is for VFR, but some other lights go RED if you are too low.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

[facthunter]

GG you are on the money. Many airlines do not train for a pure visual approach. How they would handle a fire where getting back on the ground quickly is essential is a good question. We used to do bad weather (compact) circuits at 600 feet with no aids as if there was minimum circling visibility and height.. It's fairly spectacular to watch. (And do). You get a good chance to chuck the plane around, and there is not much room for error..Nev

 

 

[Zibi]

GG you are on the money. Many airlines do not train for a pure visual approach. How they would handle a fire where getting back on the ground quickly is essential is a good question. We used to do bad weather (compact) circuits at 600 feet with no aids as if there was minimum circling visibility and height.. It's fairly spectacular to watch. (And do). You get a good chance to chuck the plane around, and there is not much room for error..Nev

One thing you have to take into account is that flying commercial airliner is slightly different than a little RAAus machine.

 

For example have a look at the Gimli glider - no other pilot apparently was able to recover a total loss of power on all engines, simply because they don't practice glide approaches or side slips in commercial planes.

 

If you look at the Air crash investigator show about that incident they make it like it's some really extraordinary maneuver, that only selected pilots are able to perform (I am aware that they exaggerate) whereas I can see at least one plane a week doing that at Caboolture.

 

Same situation may apply in here, where something that is common for recreational may not be even taught in airliner simply because you just don't do it.

 

 

[facthunter]

I AM talking about Jet Airliners Zibi. Nev

 

 

[TK58]

let the lawyers settle this one. Boeing has too many friends in the NTSB to get too much scrutiny.

Call me cynical but it seems to me the fact they're suing Boeing and not Asiana could be because Boeing is a US corporation (no question of jurisdiction of US courts over foreign corporations) and likely has much deeper pockets than Asiana.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

I believe there is a court case against Asiana as well but only 2 passengers.

 

 

[facthunter]

Certain nationalities have limited their liability by statutes. Since the accident occurred in the USA The legals may assert it comes under another set of rules.( More generous outcomes.) Lawyers follow the money.. Nev

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

The Gimli Glider story is a good illustration of the value of your airline pilot having experience of piloting a wide variety of aircraft types.

 

As our education and training system gets ever more specialised, there is a matching narrowing of the curriculum. What's that old saying about specialisation?

 

We learn more and more about less and less, until eventually we know everything about nothing.

 

 

[dazza 38]

Are passengers that dumb (probably) that they think that nothing ever fails on a aircraft and goes U/S during flight. I am not saying that anything is faulty on this aircraft, sounds more to me that there has been finger trouble as well as the pilots being blind. They are wasting their time suing Boeing. If every airline got sued when a system became faulty during flight. Nobody would be in the business of making airliners.

 

Anyway, IF the Auto throttles malfunctioned. Who cares? The aircrew should have picked that up and gone back to manual. There are NO excuse for them to get 35 knots below their target speed on approach. Auto throttles or not.

 

 

[facthunter]

Aircraft have lots of redundancies. They have allowable deficiencies/ permissible unserviceabilities. While the "normal" operation is in the automatic mode manual operation is sometimes necessary and is perfectly safe provided the crew are competent and not fatigued.

 

You can fly a commercial jet at cruise level manually but it is not easy requiring a lot of concentration. The ATC have to be notified and more vertical separation allowed. You wouldn't want a 14 hour leg. Nev

 

 

[facthunter]

I checked up a few facts with a mate of mine who is still current with these and the throttles should always be engaged for line operations ( airborne? ) It is possible to turn them off but not done as protection (Alpha floor?) not available. The throttles close themselves at flare height (based on radio altimeter reading and I don't know how that works off a water surface) It's not a very high height and it would seem that the speeds got slow well above that height so something odd was happening. (I don't agree with speculation so I won't)'

 

Regarding the Asiana 747 that did the U turn and collected the other aircraft at the finger, another friend of mine had just arrived there in his Grumman as it was happening. ( and he dropped in here the day before) Small world isn't it? Nev