AA takes off without flaps!!!

[Huck]

At ASA about ~10 years ago, a friend of mine was captain on an ATR coming up from Ft. Walton to ATL.

The f/o was a weak sister who has since left the business. She shot the ILS in ATL since the ceiling was about 600 overcast. The ATR at heavy weights will not slow down clean on the glideslope, i.e. you can pull it to idle and it won't slow down - a mess if you are above max flap extension speed.

Bottom line: the captain didn't care for her much, let her go too far and they ended up having to go around.

Next week we got a call - a military guy in back wrote the airline, complaining that they went around because the crew forgot the gear, and that since they broke out just before they went around, he figured the tower must have warned them. He said, and I quote, "I have almost 1000 hours of flight time"....

 

[PastV1]

instructordude,

After I lose 2 motors and am down to 1 I'll call the private pilot up and hand it over to him. Wait, we don't have pax. Guess I'm screwed then! No one qualified to fly single engine. :0

 

[Beanie]

Unless you know the procedures for a specific aircraft, I say that private pilot needed to shut his man-pleaser. It would be different if that were a typed Airbus pilot sitting back there, who saw an obvious safety of flight issue that was going against the tech order...

Man-pleaser! I laughed so hard Dr. Pepper flew out of my nostrils...

 

[embpic1]

In the nine years I hauled people I had maybe 5 GA pilots express a concern at the end of the flight. So what. A short explanation and they were on their way. Now if this was happening every week it might become a pain in the rear, but there is really nothing any of us can do about it. Today's plane crashes are picked apart by the media. When the results of a crash is determined to be mostly the crews fault, people get anxious. If they see that those 'flap things' are not out for takeoff (which is not the norm for most jets) they might be inclined to speak up knowing that this has caused accidents in the past.

The bottom line is this.
- Yes it annoys us when passengers start critiquing us.
- Can we do anything about it... No.

Think of it this way. It provides us some entertainment in the crew lounge (or FlightInfo) lol

I especially like the story about the guy with the altimeter watch complaining about their cruise altitude. Classic.

 

[Gorilla]

You guys are almost all misssing the point. It's good he spoke up. Who knows he could have saved the day. He didn't but you never know. Kudos for speaking up!

I wouldn't rip on a guy with only a private. He's got some experience and it might just help.

Guat: You ARE a tool. This post's title was inflammatory, and you already knew the answer.

Anyone who creates unnecessary panic is off my airplane. If I flew a jet that regularly took off flaps up, I'd be sure all the FA's knew so they could squash incidents like this.

Two pax "tool-like" episodes - Anyone who flies a wide body (B-777) with an airshow (moving map GPS) display in the cabin can relate to someone freaking out because

"OMG THE AIRPLANE IS FLYING TOWARDS ALASKA! JAPAN IS THE OTHER WAY!!!!"

or even worse if you have to do major deviations or a divert, some moron staring at the airshow for 12 hours is bound to pipe up.

Greatest cabin tool award goes to: A guy I had in the MD-80 before 9-11. He had a laptop, a GPS, and believe it or not, he had written his own moving map software. He had all this crap laid out on the tray table in cruise, and every 5 minutes we'd get a cocktail napkin with a note like so:

1) What is your exact position? Heading, airspeed, winds aloft? I need to calibrate my system.
2) Are you sure? I show groundspeed of 450. Is it really 452 knots?
3) Why are we heading 124 degrees when 110 is a better heading to Newark?

etc etc. Finally we began to toy with him. We'd write back

1) Our GS is 693 knots. Wind 200 degrees, 266 knots.
2) "MAJOR wx system over West Virginia!! Deviating for a level 13 storm!!"

Stuff like that. I guess in retrospect he was more of a geek than a tool, but it did get annoying when we were trying to read the newspaper.

 

[rcbullock]

We should all start, like, a pilot's fight club in some basement.

Yeah, we'll call it *fight*info club. And we already covered the first rule.

Time to go make soap again....

 

[metrodriver]

Years ago a pax on the Concorde in Paris saw quite a lot of liquid coming out of a wing, told a f/a about it and she told the crew. Turned out to be a fuel leak big enough that they would not have made the other side of the pond

A few weeks back I saw the ground crew at JFK pull the engine of a DL 757 into a bagage cart. They pushed the plane back a little, manhandled the cart (with square tires, I'm not kidding) out of the way and continued the pull to the gate. I told El Capitan about it. According to most on this thread I should have kept my mouth shut. Guess what? You miss it on the post flight, next crew finds it and you are out of a job (at a lot of outfits that's the case).
Those stupid passengers...... what do they know?

 

[VMA214]

Flaps 0 (is not the term "trailing edge flaps" redundant) take-offs in the A-300 although not exactly "routine" are done occasionally during high OAT when terrain is a consideration. It is done for Climb limited TOW improvement.

Although I agree that paxs offering flying lessons is a pain in the butt it is a byproduct of the job...

 

[Gorilla]

Flaps 0 (is not the term "trailing edge flaps" redundant)

Many jets have leading edge flaps to differentiate them from LE slats. They are different.

 

[VMA214]

"Many jets have leading edge flaps to differentiate them from LE slats. They are different."

No sooner had I posted that than I thought "the bus does have Kreuger and Notch "flaps" both of which are on the front of the wing." Good catch.