Piloting

[FA@AC]

Curious to hear comment from our pilot members on this incident.

https://onemileatatime.com/news/qatar-airways-pilot-loses-situational-awareness/

[Kip Powick]

6 hours ago, FA@AC said:

Curious to hear comment from our pilot members on this incident.

https://onemileatatime.com/news/qatar-airways-pilot-loses-situational-awareness/

Situational  awareness ?? Not sure but I guess that word can blend with  another aspect of flying that most pilots have, or will experience, at one time or another and that is "vertigo". 

I have had on two ocassions that I can remember.......starting what is called a "penetration turn , (jet-let down from high altitude as Number two in a formation), and just as we started the turn we entered a cloud layer. My brain said we were in a turn for too long but my only reference was the lead aircraft"s wing which my eyesight was glued on.....When we popped out of the cloud at a lower altitude we were level but my brain kept saying we were in a turn ......until my eyes caught the horizon.

This linked incident reminds me of a night training mission in a C-130  where shortly after T/O we were to commence a climbing left turn. It was not an entirely clear night  so in and out of cloud patches, stars above and ground lights below. There are almost floor level windows in the cockpit  and between seeing the stars above and ground lights below, the student's mind  did not "know " if we were climbing or descending........ I realized we were  in a very slight nose low attitude, continuing the left turn and missed the roll out heading ...I took control and  got him to "get on the dials" and he recovered to the correct attitude.........situational awareness...or vertigo?.

[Seeker]

7 hours ago, FA@AC said:

Curious to hear comment from our pilot members on this incident.

https://onemileatatime.com/news/qatar-airways-pilot-loses-situational-awareness/

Sounds like a somatogravic illusion.  Here is an article that describes it:

https://www.skybrary.aero/articles/somatogravic-and-somatogyral-illusions

I can tell you that the sensations and illusions that can be induced on the body by accelerations in 3 dimensions coupled with head movements and unusual visual data can be intense.  The general rule is that the pilots always follow the direction of their instruments.  In the event that the sensations the pilot is feeling do not agree with the instruments - you still follow the instruments.  This is because the instruments are usually correct and the pilot sensations are usually wrong.  This can be extremely difficult to do.

Once, in a Dash-8 I had an AHRS failure (attitude, heading reference system).  The aircraft was telling me that I was turning and climbing when I really wasn't.  Even though I was in visual conditions it was challenging due to terrain that was higher on on side than the other which made it hard to reconcile what I was seeing, what I was feeling and what the instruments were telling me.  If I was in cloud when it happened, well, you might have read about in the papers.  

Another time I was taking off at night into a blackhole with a lightly loaded aircraft.  I was using full power because of the threat of windshear.  This lead to much higher acceleration than I was used to seeing/feeling.  Shortly after takeoff I had an (almost) overpowering sensation the the nose was pitching up.  I felt that I needed to push forward HARD.  Everything in my body wanted to descend right now, push forward.  The instruments were telling me that, in fact, I needed to do the exact opposite - my higher thrust and lighter weight meant I was accelerating above the climb speed and I needed to pitch up  - this lead to an even stronger sensation to descend.  My instruments were telling me to climb, climb more, while my body was screaming descend right now!  I reverted to my training and followed the instrument while simultaneously remembering the time that the instruments failed and my body sensations were correct!  I suspect this is very similar to the situation described in your article.

A CF-18 crashed on take-off in Summerside and, as I recall, it was due to the same situation.

With all that being said I would place the 787 near the top of the list of aircraft least likely to experience this.  Modern, redundant, systems and a heads-up display along with, typically, stronger SOPs and higher use of the autopilot being the reasons.  Another reason is that the 787 is usually following some complicated SID which is really best done with the automation turned on.  The article says the pilot was hand flying without the flight director.  This is quite unusual and would not be allowed at most airlines.  I certainly don't know any pilot that would do it even if allowed - it's something for the SIM.  

The cause of the sensations the pilot felt are well-known and the way to avoid it is also well-known;  use the flight director, heads-up display and autopilot.  Of course some will say (and I've said it myself) that we should encourage hand-flying for competency.  This is true but, if a pilot wants to do this, they must backstop it with techniques to mitigate the threats.  When my partner says, "I'm going to hand fly for a while" I stop everything else I'm doing that is non-essential and closely watch the instruments to easier catch the incipient stage of the situations described above rather than pulling out the logbook and doing paperwork or looking at the charts.

 

[Vsplat]

The events subsequent to the descent input are what get my attention.

24 seconds sounds quick but it would be an eternity in that situation.  Did the skipper intervene immediately and pull out smoothly, or did they wait till the speed excedence?

Why did the crew not report?  if the flaps were oversped, this is more than just wounded ego.  Allowing an aircraft to continue in service with an open maintenance item breaks a long list of ethical and regulatory rules.  I have to ask what is wrong with the safety reporting culture that this incident was not reported.  Did the pilot fear discipline from a voluntary report?

Black night, turning departure in a climb, sure, it can screw anyone up and onboard systems don't always fully mitigate the body's sensory conflict.  But when things go bad, speaking up keeps things from getting worse.

[J.O.]

Company culture? In some places, admitting such an error can be grounds for a one-way ticket back to one's home country.

[Vsplat]

1 hour ago, J.O. said:

Company culture? In some places, admitting such an error can be grounds for a one-way ticket back to one's home country.

Absolutely.  Some majors from overseas actively bury safety concerns this way, until the day they can't.  Pilots who are raised in those cultures and then float within the temporary foreign worker program come to Canada with that bias.  

The bizarre effect is that the transparent, safety minded carriers come out looking worse (for a while) than the opaque bandits.

Maybe more should be said to the passenger population about this. Often the conversation doesn't get past ticket price and routing.

[IFG]

Couple of issues in discussion here.

Punitive/non-punitive safety culture - couldn't agree more with comments above. Many overseas domains are in the dark ages on this, but even here, retributive policies aren't totally banished at every airline (well ... my seat's been in the bleachers for a few years, maybe better now?). An adversarial civil litigation system also weighs in. The real benefits of open and honest safety reporting (with the necessary protections), and the threats to it, are not sufficiently apparent to the public, so the struggle continues.

 

15 hours ago, Seeker said:

.... The cause of the sensations the pilot felt are well-known and the way to avoid it is also well-known;  use the flight director, heads-up display and autopilot.  Of course some will say (and I've said it myself) that we should encourage hand-flying for competency.  This is true but, if a pilot wants to do this, they must backstop it with techniques to mitigate the threats.  When my partner says, "I'm going to hand fly for a while" I stop everything else I'm doing that is non-essential and closely watch the instruments to easier catch the incipient stage of the situations described above rather than pulling out the logbook and doing paperwork or looking at the charts.

 Given the accident/incident record involving basic flying skills, your caution seems well-founded, Seeker, but this gives me the willies. It's not a new concern, in fact has been discussed at safety forums for at least a couple of decades. The ability of airline pilots to handle basic maneuvers ought to be a bedrock assumption (and one surely crucial to the arguments against replacing us all with automatics).

One does not like to sound like those tiresome educators bemoaning the abandonment of teaching cursive writing (lest such an inapt analogy seem applicable), but amid all the advancements and improvements in airline training, it seems the basic skills don 't carry the importance they should, smothered in emphasis on the PFM as they are, & that's not a healthy trend.

Just my $0.02 - IFG 

Edited February 9, 2023 by IFG

[Moon The Loon]

In mathematics, two negatives equal a positive. Not so in our business. What on earth was this PIC thinking letting a negative situation go so long before recognizing the PF's actions?  To me, this is a symptom of what we will be experiencing in the coming years. Sorry to sound so negative but the new generation....

 

[W5]

United dive after Maui departure adds to list of industry close calls

A United Airlines Boeing 777-200 came within around 800 feet of impacting the Pacific Ocean off the north coast of Maui shortly after takeoff on December 18. The occurrence, not previously reported, adds to a series of extremely serious safety incidents and major operational disruptions within the U.S. aviation system in recent weeks.

Flight 1722 from Maui to San Francisco left Kahului Airport at 2:49 PM Hawaiian time in stormy weather and initially appeared to climb normally. Granular data analyzed with Flightradar24 showed the aircraft reached roughly 2,200 feet before beginning a steep dive that, according to the tracking telemetry, reached a descent rate of nearly 8,600 feet per minute. 

The aircraft quickly recovered, but not before descending below 775 feet. Two people familiar with the incident said the climb produced forces of nearly 2.7 times the force of gravity on the aircraft and its occupants as that steep descent transitioned to an 8,600 foot per minute climb. The entire incident appears to have stretched no more than 45 seconds and in between radio calls with air traffic controllers in Maui, according to LiveATC recordings reviewed by The Air Current.

The aircraft subsequently climbed to 33,000 feet and landed in California 27 minutes early after the 4-hour and 15-minute Pacific crossing. The Boeing widebody configured with 364 seats was quickly turned around at SFO and departed to Chicago on its next flight about two and a half hours later.

 

From The Air Current

 

[Kip Powick]

Pilots wrote a report after landing at SFO. Investigation ensued. Findings published were that the two pilots required further training.

Total flying time of the two pilots was 25,000 hours. Nowhere does any present data  say who was the PF.

[Moon The Loon]

On 2/12/2023 at 6:07 PM, Kip Powick said:

Pilots wrote a report after landing at SFO. Investigation ensued. Findings published were that the two pilots required further training.

Total flying time of the two pilots was 25,000 hours. Nowhere does any present data  say who was the PF.

Almost sounds like a premature flap retraction might have lead to the loss of altitude...

[J.O.]

6 hours ago, Moon The Loon said:

Almost sounds like a premature flap retraction might have lead to the loss of altitude...

Ah yes, the old dreaded premature deflapulation.

[Vsplat]

6 hours ago, J.O. said:

Ah yes, the old dreaded premature deflapulation.

The ACPA negotiating strategy is on another thread....