Details about the near-crash in Germany

[Cardinal]

Why the hell does the bus have all that goofy stuff? I'm sorry, I prefer Boeing's philosophy. The gizmo's on modern airplanes should be there to support the pilot, not try to outsmart him and give him something he doesn't want, need, or expect.

Designed by idiots for the use of geniuses, or something like that. Anyway, I was enjoying the blonde bashing.

Oh, and Pocono Pilot, if only you were in the right seat for "Hamburg Drift." That would have made my weekend.

 

[Jmoney]

English?

There is no substitute for hands of gold.:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh:

Well, you have a lot of experience....what happen to you?

Dude, are you sure you ae not learning-disabled?
-Really?

 

[instructordude]

Dude, are you sure you ae not learning-disabled?
-Really?

Hardly learning bisadled. B+ in College Algebra.

 

[ableone]

Considering Instructordude is an fo maybe Lear70 has a point after all.

 

[UALjan15]

Jeez, this thread really does have legs....way to many threads to reply to, so some random thoughts instead.

• I'm not giving gender much weight here. I will note that Lufthansa has a very strict and organized program where they start their pilots from pretty much day 1 of flying. Not noted anywhere on this thread is that they do all of their primary flying training in Eloy, AZ where the skies are blue and the winds are usually quite light.
• I'm not a big fan of teaching F/Os basic skills on revenue flights. In my bus training, we did quite a lot of high crosswind training, up to and sometimes over the airplane's limits. The sim wasn't perfect, but it did give me enough basics and confidence to be safe on the line and refine my skills. Maxi J needed to be challenged in the sim, not on this approach. It's a tough call for the Capt to make...as an F/O I want to inspire confidence, challenge myself, and practice my skills, but sometimes it is just time for the skipper to fly.
• Some of you seem to have forgotten basic aero or never took it. If an airplane is crabbing 10 degrees (my eyeball estimate) into the crosswind, those are some strong winds. If your landing technique is just to apply rudder to align the jet with the centerline (and forget the aileron or count on Fifi to apply it), it won't take a "freak or heavy gust" as suggested to roll the airplane like you saw-just the strong crosswind that was already there. The technique I saw on the video amounted to the first 1/8 of a rudder roll, interrupted by ground contact and PIC input.
• I don't know if it will ever feel natural or comfortable to land Fifi in strong crosswinds. Like the one guy implied, there are just too many computers trying to second guess what you are trying to do, and the result feels like a mild fight for the controls.

 

[BLing]

For you guys that think this FO is hot... Think again! Have you ever been to Germany? Have you had the privilege of dating German chicks? For German standards, she is a dog! Regardless, I say She's about 3 Erdingers!

 

[waveflyer]

The bus is a great hand-flying airplane- as soon as you stop trying to make it fly like a Boeing. Or any other normal airplane for that matter. IMO there are a lot of pilots in training who gloss over what the controls are doing in different modes and revert back to their primary training when the ******************** hits the fan.

Btw- you all noticed, but noone's stressed that it was the downwind wingtip that was clipped...

There are also way too many of us who don't hand fly enough- Fedex is implementing evaluations of hand flying ability to try and get a handle on their hard landings. Had an instructor who taught the class to hand fly a leg a trip from the descent check into the hub where you get hdg/as/level offs/config changes- too many of us only handfly on the initial climb and disconnect at less than a 1000'- that gives you just a minute to get a feel for flying and that airplane- it's not always enough. Fifi doesn't need the practice, we do. IMO i have better landings on the legs i do this.

 

[PCL_128]

Why the hell does the bus have all that goofy stuff? I'm sorry, I prefer Boeing's philosophy. The gizmo's on modern airplanes should be there to support the pilot, not try to outsmart him and give him something he doesn't want, need, or expect.

Amen! Those Airbii just give me the willies. All the "laws" and "modes" trying to second guess everything the pilot does. You guys can have it. I'll stick with my decades-old cable and pulley DC-9 controls.

 

[regionaltard]

Most FOs can fly as well as the captain.

That may very well be true in your case. My experience has been different.

 

[GuppyPuppy]

Please post relevant accidents to avoid looking like an idiot.

Specifically, post an accident where the weather was the primary cause of the accident, the F/O should not have been flying the leg, and the CA for some unknown reason elected to let the F/O fly the leg in the face of all good judgment.

That's what I thought.

Idiot.

In regards to the Lufthansa incident you implied that this wouldn't have happened if it were an all-male crew.

The list of accidents that I provided were all examples of poor judgement by an all-male crew. The Lufthansa incident also seems to be an example of poor judgment. That's the connection I made.

I think we are in agreement that if indeed the F/O was flying, this was a poor decision by the captain.

I guess I just don't understand what you mean when you say that you can't imagine this happening with an all-male crew.

GP

 

[whymeworry?]

First of all, the captain obviously exercised far worse airmanship than the FO since he was the one that let her fly the approach. So much for blaming the "inexperienced FO."

Yep. Gotta' agree. The inexperienced FO ought to have been watched more closely. One can't fault the low-time pilot for trying something she's never done before, yet barely pulling it off. Rather, the PIC should've used his judgement to take that landing. Then again, maybe the PIC is an former ab-initio wonderboy himself, and therefore lacked the experience himself to reference for judgement in this situation.

PIC IS going to take the hit on this one. The FO will just get retrained.

Nothing to do with Male vs female or race. Everything to do with the bar consistently being lowered in this industry for inexperienced exceptions. There are many white pilots at my airline who came aboard with extremely low flt time but got the job because daddy was in mgmt or a sr captain.

 

[GuppyPuppy]

Yep. Gotta' agree. The inexperienced FO ought to have been watched more closely. One can't fault the low-time pilot for trying something she's never done before, yet barely pulling it off. Rather, the PIC should've used his judgement to take that landing. Then again, maybe the PIC is an former ab-initio wonderboy himself, and therefore lacked the experience himself to reference for judgement in this situation.

PIC IS going to take the hit on this one. The FO will just get retrained.

Nothing to do with Male vs female or race. Everything to do with the bar consistently being lowered in this industry for inexperienced exceptions. There are many white pilots at my airline who came aboard with extremely low flt time but got the job because daddy was in mgmt or a sr captain.

Agreed.

GP

 

[nimtz]

Duffing up a xwind landing isn't the end of the world. All right u screwed up, let's go try it again. The problem here is the decision to hit TOGA happened way too late! Hence why the wingtip scrapped.

Capt flat-out boned up in not yelling I GOT IT or GO AROUND when the kick-out went drastically wrong. I have a feeling he'll get sometime off to appreciate that. I can't believe the press is trying to call these two heroes...

 

[sqwkvfr]

• I'm not giving gender much weight here. I will note that Lufthansa has a very strict and organized program where they start their pilots from pretty much day 1 of flying. Not noted anywhere on this thread is that they do all of their primary flying training in Eloy, AZ where the skies are blue and the winds are usually quite light

Eloy? Since when?

When I left work yesterday they were still in Goodyear. They still had the signs up in the building and the flag out front and everything.

 

[Oakum_Boy]

I can't believe the press is trying to call these two heroes...

I'm pretty sure LH is more than happy to fuel the hero story. In fact, there is a picture of both captain and f/o standing together in full uniform smiling, no doubt put in front of the camera by LH management.

The captain is a hero and the poor cute FO who stuffed up the landing are back in flying status along with the airplane.

Can you imagine the negative publicity if they had sacked or demoted the crew and the media picked up on it?

I'm pretty sure LH managers carefully controlled the aftermath with usual German precision leading the ignorant general public to think the day had been saved.

 

[~~~^~~~]

Sim sessions focus on procedures and approaches. As avgas makes getting real world VISUAL approaches more and more expensive we can expect to fly with pilots who have poor stick and rudder skills. Most new hires these days really struggle with a simple visual approach. Without the structure of an instrument procedure they can't find a profile or configuration to lock on to.

As a profession, maybe we need to mandate more real flying time, not autopilot, or pilot monitoring time.

 

[~~~^~~~]

I'm pretty sure LH is more than happy to fuel the hero story. In fact, there is a picture of both captain and f/o standing together in full uniform smiling, no doubt put in front of the camera by LH management.

The captain is a hero and the poor cute FO who stuffed up the landing are back in flying status along with the airplane.

Can you imagine the negative publicity if they had sacked or demoted the crew and the media picked up on it?

You are correct and I think it fuels incompetence. The Captain should be demoted and the FO should get no less than another 100 hours of IOE. After training, they both should be able to continue their careers.

The public would be more reassured if steps were taken to ensure only highly qualified professionals were flying them around.

 

[Captzaahlie]

Three words.... MULTI CREW LICENSE!!!

just wait until the FO has 200TT and most of that in a sim!!!!

Welcome to my company! (200TT)

That's just one of many reasons I'm moving on next week to another level of flying. I'm flying with a bunch of nice "kids" that for the most part, have good attitudes and knowledge but their's never a moment to let my guard down. I think I'm more than fair in tolerance and willingness to help"'coach" them on how to fly the line (if they want to learn) but it does get tiresome after a while. The rest of you guys & gals out there crewing with newbies to line flying be careful out there, cause you can't put a price on experience. (management thinks they can but they are way of the mark).

 

[PBRstreetgang]

I think the Captain is just as much to blame as the FO for letting the FO land in those conditions.

The Captain is solely to blame, she did her best, and it wasn't good enough. The Captain did his best(judgment), and that wasn't good enough either.
He deserves to lose his job and she deserves a whole lot of sim time doing crosswind landings. You can fix skills, its a lot harder to fix bad judgment.
PBR

 

[PowerCurve]

Lear70 asked for relevant accident information.

18 Dec. 2003 Fedex Flight 647

entire report can be found: http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/GenPDF.asp?id=DCA04MA011&rpt=fa

About 14 seconds after touchdown (about 1226:07), the FDR data showed a lateral load factor of
about 1.0 G as the right wing suddenly moved about 6 lower. About the same time, the CAWS "landing
gear" alert began to sound, which repeated until the end of the recording. About 1226:25, the
captain stated, "here we go," and the airplane began to veer off the right side of the runway. As
the airplane veered to the right and came to a stop, a fire developed on the right side of the
airplane. About 1226:30, the airplane came to rest in the grass on the right side of the runway.
The accident occurred during the hours of daylight. The CVR recording ended when the pilots shut
down the engines (thus stopping electrical power to the CVR) about 1226:41.