TERROR OUT OF TAMPA: British Airways jet seconds from disaster in 'near collision'...

[radarlove]

I've never been particularly impressed with the Speedbird guys, first flying all the way from LAX to England after an engine detonated on takeoff, now they injure a whole bunch of people because they don't know how to fly a resolution alert.

What a bunch of chumps.

 

[scoreboard]

Clown Act

So, injured crewmemebers, in essence resulting in to few crewmembers to perform required duties yet they drive on for 7 to 9 hours to Gatwick? YGBSM.

Oh, yeah, someones gonna be standing tall for that one.:erm:

 

[legalalien]

So, injured crewmemebers, in essence resulting in to few crewmembers to perform required duties yet they drive on for 7 to 9 hours to Gatwick? YGBSM.

Oh, yeah, someones gonna be standing tall for that one.:erm:

Given all of the extra FA's for Business and First class i don't think that they would have had too few for the "required duties".

Bumps and bruises doesn't sound like a reason to dump fuel and go back to Tampa. If the paramedic onboard said it was OK for them to continue seems like the correct call!

 

[Charlie Brown]

Kinda funny the pic in the article shows a 145. Didn't know they used those in the US market

 

[radarlove]

I just keep thinking "idiot" when the pilot reefed on the airplane hard enough to hurt that many people. Resolution alerts do not have to be drastic, you just meet the climb or descent requirements.

These guys are a bunch of yahoos.

 

[firstthird]

Without being in the cockpit, I'd be careful at saying those 'guys are a bunch of yahoos.' For all we know, they got a last minute 'descend, descent' while climbing at 3000 fpm or something. You've gotta at least meet the RA requirement and if the FAs are up, some might get hurt. Much better than seeing what happens when a loaded 777 hits a King Air.

And about continuing with hurt people, I can see a situation where everyone in the back told the pilots up front that, "oh no, we're all good, just a little surprised" while the affects of adrenaline are still fresh and then realizing a few hours later while half way across the pond that their 'neck hurts' or a little bump was more serious than expected. Looks like they did have a paramedic on board and most of that report was of the "a passenger said" variety.

The British press seems to get more excited about this stuff than the American press, if you can believe that. Wasn't a 747 "moments from disaster" last week when their autopilot failed on final approach? My bad, it was "tragedy averted."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/5386992.stm

 

[poppi]

I flew in the Uk for 4 years and they Brits were one of the most professional crewmembers I ever flew with. It is quite competitive to get your Jaa license and ratings and few if any "idiots" make it. Ie.. the 14 written exams for the ATPL takes a few years to pass and no one gives you the answers. I have flown with many UK pilots and have been very impressed with their knowledge and professionalism.

 

[radarlove]

I, too have flown with a bunch of those guys, yes they can define the physics behind the camber of the wing, ad nauseum, and yes, they took checkrides in their 172 with three examiners, but many of them lack day to day practical experience.

An RA resolution does not require a violent maneuver--unless you're not used to it and are taken by surprise and overreact, like these guys did.

Go over to the rumor network, guys working the flight described a requested level-off with 200 feet to go, then an RA. No visual contact, so certainly no need for a violent maneuver.

I don't have as particulalrly high a respect for the ATPL guys that you do. Back and forth across the pond with 200 mile descents and ILSs at both ends doesn't make for the most proficient pilots. I'd take a US RJ captain over a Speedbird 747 captain if I needed stick and rudder (and judgement) skills any day.

 

[thruthemurk]

-----

 

[thruthemurk]

I just keep thinking "idiot" when the pilot reefed on the airplane hard enough to hurt that many people. Resolution alerts do not have to be drastic, you just meet the climb or descent requirements.

These guys are a bunch of yahoos.

Weakd!ck pilots are always looking for a reason to tear down other pilot(s) because they somehow feel that this will elevate them and their perceived skills to a higher level.

Anyone who makes broadbush teardowns about another pilot or in this case an entire nation's group of pilots based on an article in the Daily Mail doesn't deserve to wear stripes of any number.

PS I have no love for the English - just depise tools.

 

[radarlove]

So, how many flight attendants have you tossed against the ceiling? That's admirable in your eyes?

 

[aussiefly]

Weakd!ck pilots are always looking for a reason to tear down other pilot(s) because they somehow feel that this will elevate them and their perceived skills to a higher level.

Anyone who makes broadbush teardowns about another pilot or in this case an entire nation's group of pilots based on an article in the Daily Mail doesn't deserve to wear stripes of any number.

PS I have no love for the English - just depise tools.

Good points! and also any tool that says Heavy International flying is easy hasnt done any.

 

[DrewBlows]

No visual contact, so certainly no need for a violent maneuver.

No visual contact makes a Resolution Advisory manditory. I don't know the situation, but if they were climbing at 3000 fpm and the computer told them to descend, stuff is going to hit the ceiling.

 

[firstthird]

Both places I fly an RA is mandatory, visual contact or not. The concern is having 'the traffic' visually but in fact there are two other airplanes and you are looking at the wrong one.

TCAS II only works if both aircraft comply with what the box tells you; relearned over Austria/Switzerland a few years ago when one aircraft followed TCAS and the other followed the too late ATC call.

I'd submit that if you had complete situational awareness and the traffic visually, you should never have gotten the RA. Absent complete and true SA (which is pretty impossible much by definition, ask Einstein), you need to follow the box. Maybe other airlines are different. I think it was a shift in thinking a few years ago after a close call or two when some guys used their 'visual' out to ignore an RA that they shouldn't have.

 

[elag777]

The stricken BA plane left Tampa, Florida at 6.30pm on Tuesday October 10 and landed at Gatwick at 8am on Wednesday October 11th.

" What a crock of Poo! nothing Srticken about this a/c. No one was there except those involved, and to "monday morning" this incident is like saying you or I could come up with the equation that saved 3 mile island. Managing a 747 400 is not as easy as those that went to Riddle may think. Situational awareness "this!" and get a life. Be thankful that the result was not a smoldering mess and a search for DNA.

 

[elag777]

No visual contact makes a Resolution Advisory manditory. I don't know the situation, but if they were climbing at 3000 fpm and the computer told them to descend, stuff is going to hit the ceiling.

"Hear Hear!"
Ra's are madatory period, TA's are the exception, maybe they never saw the conflict. An RA is still a mandatory reaction even if the traffic is in sight as it may not be the traffic the TCAS II or III has tee'd up on the VSI. Try a 1 G push over and see how many happy people you have out of the people expecting it.

 

[radarlove]

My point was that a violent maneuver would be mandatory if you SAW an imminent conflict, but simply getting an RA does not require a violent maneuver.

Obviously, you shouldn't see a conflict that isn't already being taken care of by an RA, but think about the Brazilian incident--a quick yank on the controls could have saved those guys, if they saw the conflict, since the RA wasn't working, for whatever reason.

I have never had an RA that required violent action. You simply smoothly change you flight path to match the vertical climb/descent guidance. The boxes are SET UP so that NO violent maneuvers are necessary, they warn far enough in advance to smoothly perform the maneuver. If you've ever watched an RA visually, you'll see that the airplane is far, far away when it tells you to start changing attitude. Lots of time to miss.

No reason to do it violently, unless as I mentioned, you are unused to them and overreact out of surprise.

 

[BigMotorToter]

If I remember correctly, an R.A. is set up to only require a max of 1G to comply. I am not certain of that though. When I was in Japan going through the most insane training of my life, we practiced R.A. maneuvers over and over again. They had a G meter in the sim. If you pulled or pushed more than 1.25 G's then it was not successfull, meaning you reacted to harshly. The point they were trying to make is that you don't have to "yank and bank" just to comply with an R.A.

One of the examples they gave us was when you are doing Mach .80, all you need is to increase your pitch 1 degree to get a 800' foot per minute climb. The same goes for Mach .90/, 900' feet/minute. The idea is to show pilots that a very subtle increase in pitch will put you in the green arc on the IVSI. Remember, the green arc is where you want to put the airplane to "escape" from the conflict.

TCAS won't wait untill the last second to give you a warning, I forget the times, but it's something like 40 seconds for a T.A. and 20 seconds for an R.A. ( My Japaneese instructer would be ashamed that I forgot, and I would have to kill myself).

I have never had this demo'ed to me here in the states, maybe the brits havn't either. Unless you have seen this demo, and how truely gentle a maneuver it is, we all will have the instinct to react to agressively. I know I did until I went through JAL's training.

 

[Gorilla]

Very true, an RA DOES NOT have to be abrupt to be successful. AP off, follow the guidance. Whoop-dee-doo.

Here's what I find interesting, beyond the standard media knee-jerk, buzzword-filled "terror in the skies" reporting...

Has anyone else noticed the tendency of flight attendants to exaggerate IOD (injury on duty)? Lets say a can of coke falls on their foot. Suddenly it's "er, ow... OW! IOD! IOD! I want a few weeks off with pay! My foot, uh, HURTS. Yeah, the bones in my foot REALLY, REALLY hurt."

I'm not saying real IOD's don't happen. Of course they do. But a lot of them are playing the IOD card to get some free time.

No doubt I'll take some heat for this, but I think it happens far too often.

 

[firstthird]

I agree that at FL410 the RA would not be aggressive. And, you are supposed to have the 40 sec/20 sec warning. But, sometimes in real life stuff doesn't happen that way. Maybe the king air's transponder was intermittent, who knows, just speculating. Also, an RA at 15000 in the climb would be vastly different than one at cruise in the flight levels. And it very likely could be that the crew ham-handed it and over-reacted. I still say that is better than not meeting the RA criteria. Only crew was supposed to be up/unbuckled and the chance of injuring crew is real and important, but getting in the green arc is much more so. The odds of surviving any kind of midair are slim (ask the B737-800 in Brazil, although the Legacy did somehow) but the odds of the entire planeload of passengers or even more than a few getting injured during an abrupt manuever are more acceptable.

Basic risk assement.
what happens if I don't meet the RA requirement? Well, 50% chance the plane crashes will all onboard.
What happens if I am too aggressive in the RA maneuver? Well, 50% chance that some crew gets injuries.

Obviously, the BEST answer is to meet the RA requirements with the minimum manuevering required and you keep everyone safe. That may not always be possible. I'd hate to be in the back if a pilot who was trained to never exceed 1 g's tried to do an RA that required it.

I had 2 RA's in about 30 seconds over new england due to some A-10s that were manuevering and not called out by ATC. My fault for not seeing them since I was on a visual high downwind for the field. But, it would have been easier to acquire them if ATC had even mentioned they were there. One of those RA's required me to go from a 1500 fpm descent to a 3000 fpm climb (or so it seemed at the time) very quickly. I suspect I did more than 1 g. Got lucky and the attendants were down and no one got hurt. But, I'm here to tell you I'd do the same thing again. I cannont overemphasize, if you get an RA, COMPLY with the green arc. In my incident was NOT anything close to 40 or 20 sec warning because the A-10s were maneuvering and probably had us visual and may not have realized what happens when you get too close to an airliner. The computer couldn't give us 20 sec because there wasn't a problem 20 seconds ago (maybe he was parelleling us and then turned into us, knowing he wasn't going to hit us because of his turn rate, but the RA computer didn't know that he'd keep his turn it, it just saw him convering and gave me a heck of a climb command)

 

[radarlove]

The 20 seconds is not the time between the "traffic traffic", but the time you have to react to the warning, Einstein.

A fully-laden B747 climbing out is not climbing all that fast, either.

The TCAS boxes were designed--specifically--to not require abrupt maneuvers. If you feel you have to move abruptly, you're wrong.

I like the part about a King Air intermittent transponder, fantasies do help the argument when you're wrong. Can you come up with another?

 

[firstthird]

You must be right, you were probably in the cockpit of that British Airways plane so you know exactly what went on. And you are also probably right, TCAS always works exactly like the specs you read. You will always have 20 seconds from an RA to avoid disaster.

Read my post again. TCAS was really designed for CBDR (constant bearing decreasing range) situations not dynamic manuevering ones. Maybe the TCAS you fly with can predict the future maneuvering of targets, but not mine.

My incident went from white blips to a 1 second TA to a full on RA with 2000 fpm climb (I was in a 1500 fpm descent originally which I had shallowed to 500 fpm but the time of the RA) in about 2 seconds total. Now, it is possible that I had a full 20 seconds to get up to that climb attitude, I don't know. I do know that a target turning into me that was originally flying away from me is not something that TCAS was really designed around. I also know that our TCAS procedures are to disconnect the autopilot and put the pitch in the green band, nothing about how long to do it.

A TCAS RA is supposed to give you 20 seconds until impact in an ideal world. I would posit that it doesn't always since real world targets are not always on airways or have steady vectors.

About the intermittent transponder, that was just speculation and identified as such. I'm sorry that I'm not as ready to second guess other pilots that I've never even met and say they did it wrong and were idiots to do so "because TCAS is designed for 1 g and always gives you at least 20 seconds" blah blah. You can be judge and jury. I'll try to add to the discussion.

Since you asked for another scenario. Explain the one that happened to me. Why a 1 second TA followed by an RA that required 3000 fpm vertical speed change? I'd say because the other target maneuvered at me, changing the situation, thus changing the TCAS abruptly; making any kind of 40 seconds/20 seconds rule invalid.

 

[DrewBlows]

The 20 seconds is not the time between the "traffic traffic", but the time you have to react to the warning, Einstein.

Okay, Copernicus, have you ever had an RA immediatelty after takeoff? If say, a training airplane at DAB, were to blunder in front of you at 1000' while you are climbing at 3000+ fpm your reaction time had better be better than 20 seconds.

A fully-laden B747 climbing out is not climbing all that fast, either.

No, but a B777 would be. Since they happened to be flying a 777 I think this is pertinent information.

Why do you have such a beef with this crew? You know nothing about the situation other than one article from a non-aviation publication that used a picture of a braziliajet to illustrate their article. Admittedly, no one else knows any more about this than you do, but most are not so quick to throw the crew under the bus.

 

[radarlove]

Okay, Copernicus, have you ever had an RA immediatelty after takeoff?

Quick quiz: below what altitude is the RA function disabled?

Why do you have such a beef with this crew? You know nothing about the situation other than one article from a non-aviation publication

Because they took a routine situation and turned it into a self-imposed emergency which included injuries. I think that's worth a comment or two. Most of us will have dozens of RAs over the years and won't hurt a soul.

Plus, the whole three-engine ferry from LAX to England with pax aboard got me thinking about their judgement, this just confirmed that there is a screw loose somewhere.

 

[BigMotorToter]

At JAL we were not trained to exceed 1g. Do what you have to do was taught. The instructor just used 1.25G's as a challenge to us to see if we could keep it under that, and to reinforce that it does'nt take aggressive pulling and pushing to get the pitch in the green arc. That is also why showing us what 1 degree in pitch will do to vertical speed at various airspeeds.

1 degree at M.90=900'/minute
1 degree at M.80=800'/minute
1 degree at M.70=700'/minute

If an R.A. is calling for a 2000'/minute climb from straight and level, and your in a 747 cruising at M.90, then you only need a little over 2 degree pitch up to comply. As we all know pitching up 2 degree's take's very little yoke movement at all, therefore no need to hall back on the yoke, stick whatever to comply.

Having said that, I am open to the idea that TCAS is not programed for every single possible situation that can come around, so maybe the British crew did the right thing. Or maybe not. Thats what FOQA can figure out.

As a side note, the 747 can continue on if one engine fails. It all depends why it failed etc... IF a 2 engine aircraft looses one, well it's obviously a diferent ball game.

 

[radarlove]

As a side note, the 747 can continue on if one engine fails. It all depends why it failed etc... IF a 2 engine aircraft looses one, well it's obviously a diferent ball game.

Well yeah, but "can" and "should continue on" are two different animals. If you lost one on takeoff from LAX, would you continue to England, or land at LAX?

 

[aussiefly]

Radarlove. And how much time in heavy international do you have ????

 

[radarlove]

With one engine out, or with all running?