Pulaski

Here's a great mini-documentary about the 747 firefighting tanker - the pilot is very knowlesgable and easy to listen to.

audio

Agreed

scrubbedexpat091

Alaska Airlines in the early 2000's sent a flight from Vancouver, Canada to Orange County, except at the time Orange County Airport was not able to accept arrivals from Canada. Alaska Airlines thought because YVR has clearance for US immigration and customs they could fly into any airport in the US, but at that time that wasn't true. Now Orange County can accept flights from Canada but back then that airport couldn't. Not the pilots fault of course. but someone at the airline dropped the ball on that one.

The flight if I recall diverted to LAX and the route was cancelled the next day.

Biggest pilot screw up I encountered on the ground was when I was pushing a CRJ-900 off the gate, the pilot forgot to disengage the steering, all was well while I pushing straight, but as soon as I started to turn the aircraft, snap, pop, shake. Nothing I could have done to prevent it, there is nothing on the ramp side that indicates steering is disengaged on the CRJ-900, we rely totally 100% on the pilot.

I like the E-170 and presumably other models where there is toggle switch ramp side we flip on and off, or the old fashioned way of steering bypass pin on the nose wheel.


If I recall untrained/unlicensed/pilot issues in Pakistan have been a somewhat ongoing issue.

audio

Are you sure about that?

The nosewheel steering is usually disconnected by the ground engineer in charge of start and pushback, I have never known of any pilot disconnect switch on a hundred or so different types. The pilot relies on confirmation from the ground control that this has been done.

scrubbedexpat091

Yes I am sure about it I only pushed hundreds of them without incident over the years, probably more than hundreds, but I didn't keep track.

There is no external switch on the CRJ-700/900 for ground crew at least at the airlines I was handling who flew this aircraft and no bypass pin. The push back driver relies on the pilot on the CRJ 700/900 to tell them its been done, so presumably its something inside the flight deck.

The E-170 has an external switch we flip located in the panel with GPU plug in.

737/A320/319 we use bypass pins, no switches.

The MD-90 was a bypass pin

757 was bypass pin.

We didn't push back Q-400's they parked in a way they could taxi out since they didn't use jet-ways.

CRJ 200 we had to disconnect the "scissors" on the nose wheel, but this was not the procedure on the CRJ 700/900.






No idea what a ground engineer is, not a term used here.

markonline1

No pin on the 700’s or 900’s as confirmed by American (it’s still pretty quiet here at work LOL).

whilst we’re on the subject of incompetence, I mentioned the lack of checking NOTAMs earlier. The airport I work at closes nightly for work at the moment. As soon as I hit that submit button, I’ll stand by for the influx of calls saying your closing the airport from 0430 to 1230?!?!?! WTF? Yes sir, 0430 to 1230 ZULU!!!!!!!!!!!

zzrmark

Could the criticism be something to do with the number of passengers not belted in, I seem to recall reading something about the bank manager who survived being one of the few passengers still belted in. Not that it seems to make much difference how vigilant cabin crew are as I've noticed there seem to be a number of passengers on a flight infringing the belt/technology regs on take off and landing, even if crew have already made the rounds and put them to rights.

audio

I haven’t read about that but maybe, you have a good point.

Imagine the panic on board after the touch (scrape) and go, so perhaps there were a few pax unlawfully banging on the flight deck door. I don’t think the CC could control that in the short time they had left.

Steerpike

Alt-Print Screen is your friend ... (as opposed to just "print Screen" which copies everything including task bar at the bottom, etc. Alt-Print-Scrn copies only the active window. And if you make the active window less than full-screen, even better ...

vespucci

Some news about the cause of the crash discussed earlier in the thread:"The pilots of a Pakistani airliner that crashed last month in Karachi were busy talking about the coronavirus and repeatedly ignored directions from air traffic controllers before their plane went down, killing 98 people, Pakistan’s aviation minister said Wednesday.

The Pakistan International Airlines pilots also ignored automated warnings in the cockpit and failed to lower the landing gear, causing the plane’s engines to hit the runway, according to a preliminary report on the crash.

The aviation minister, Ghulam Sarwar Khan, said air traffic controllers warned three times that the plane was flying too high on its approach to the runway at Karachi’s airport and directed it not to land.

“But the pilot ignored these warnings,” he said."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/w...ronavirus.html

Pulaski

Or run it all through MS Paint and tidy it up properly!

Steerpike

When I was still a poor university student, I went to Thailand with a few friends. We got the cheapest ticket we could find, and that was with Bangladesh Biman Airlines. An added 'Bonus' of this cheap ticket was an unscheduled overnight stay in Dacca, the capital of Bangladesh. We never fully understood why this happened, but we heard a rumor that there weren't enough people on the scheduled flight to London so they wanted to make us wait for the next day's flight to London. The airport was surreal, and then the van-ride from the airport to the hotel was even more surreal ... and then finally the hotel was the icing on the cake ... we couldn't even count the number of roaches in the room we were given (one might imagine that the airline would put you up in one of the 'better' hotels, so I wondered what the cheaper ones were like!). I sat up all night desperately trying to avoid falling asleep (and being devoured by hungry roaches, in my imagination!). Made me think twice about choosing the cheapest ticket in the future . I suspect I'll give PIA a miss in the future!

civilservant

I still don't understand how you can ignore the master caution warning. Even trying to talk over it is pretty hard.

You have both the config warning AND the Ground Proximity alarm blaring at you, your supposed to be sterile since you're below 10,000ft, and yet you don't realize the gear is up until you literally HIT the runway?

It beggars belief.

audio

Yes, but the initial report indicates it did happen



For my 2 cents they were trying to lose height by doing an emergency descent (full speedbrake at max velocity) from about 10,000ft; but in so doing, it all became too much to realise what was going on when they crossed the threshold at Vref+ way too much.

civilservant

Right, and I'm not suggesting otherwise, but it makes me think what were these people doing.

Drunk? HIgh? I guess the autopsy would have mentioned that if it were the case.

I agree with Pulaski, if it's not a US, Canada, UK, Germany, France or Australia flagged aircraft, I'm not sure I want to fly on it.