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Emirates incident @ Melbourne?

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F/O

Smells like....
Joined
Mar 7, 2002
Posts
485
If I could deal with the drama I'd go over to Prune....but for now does anyone know anything about the Emirates incident at Melbourne? Looks like the pilots' jobs are toast.

==========

An Emirates Airlines flight departing Melbourne's International Airport for Dubai last month came close to tragedy, authorities revealed Saturday. Investigators upgraded the classification of what happened from an "incident" to an "accident."

Preliminary investigation details published by The Melbourne Herald Sun said that on March 20, a heavily laden Airbus A340-500 (type shown above) operating as Emirates Flight EK407 barely made it off the ground. The plane carried a load of 225 passengers and about 350,000 pounds of jet fuel.
The A340 pilots apparently used all 11,500 feet of the runway before rotating at an estimated 175 mph. The plane's tail scraped the runway due to excessive upward pitch, producing a shower of sparks and smoke in the cabin.
The plane staggered into the air, wiping out a 70 cm tall (2 foot, 3.5 inch) strobe light that was 170 meters (557 feet) off the end of the runway, and barely cleared a 2.5 meter (8 foot) perimeter fence half a kilometer (1640 feet) from the runway's end.
The report added the airliner took out an antenna and narrowly missed a small building before eventually gaining more altitude. It then flew over Port Phillip Bay and dumped some of its fuel load, before returning to land at the airport over a half hour later.
Neville Blyth, a senior transportation safety investigator with the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, said the aircraft suffered heavy damage in the accident. "It can't be flown again without repairs," he said. The ATSB has released the plane to Emirates, but it remains in a cargo hold at Melbourne Airport.
Blythe added, "It's a serious investigation. There are a fair bit of resources being put into this one." ATSB investigators have already examined the aircraft's flight data recorders and interviewed the crew. The pilots have since resigned.
Australian aviation expert Dick Smith said, "It's the closest thing to a major aviation accident in Australia for years. The people (passengers) are incredibly lucky, it was an overrun where the plane didn't get airborne." Despite the close call, no injuries were reported.
An Emirates spokesman said, "The report from the ATSB has not yet been finalized, and as such it would be inappropriate for Emirates to make any comment at this point in time."
 
Nope, a well-covered up SQ (Singapore Airlines) B744 in Auckland, New Zealand. The tail strike was so bad that the APU almost fell out...

The crew transposed ZFW and GW in the FMC (out by 100t) and failed to recognise the massive shortfall in V2 (out by 30kts or so).

Ever heard of it? Didn't think so - the SQ spin machine is very, very good...
 
Heard something about an FMC input error (similar to the SQ incident above) resulted in an inappropriate TO thrust setting.
 
Heard something about an FMC input error (similar to the SQ incident above) resulted in an inappropriate TO thrust setting.


So what's wrong with pushing the T/L forward??? hard t believe the pilots haven't thought about that...It looks more like a Performance calculation error to me :rolleyes:
 
Emirates is going to repair what they can in MEL then ferry the A/C to Toluse, France where the remaining work will be compleated by Airbus. EK has never had a hull loss and will not see this one be the first. They will throw all the money they can at this issue to prevent this 340 from being written off. Its the EK way of doing biz-nas.
 
Just need to rewire whatever necessary, fly unpressurized (ETOPS could be a problem though to find islands to hop across all the way from Melbourne to Toluse:), ops check ok!
 
People make mistakes. Isn't there some kind of a rule of thumb so you can see you haven't made a gross error? In the 727 it's half the weight over 100K for V1, plus 12 knots for V2 (or something like that.) In the Airbus, if you put the power levers all the way forward, will it override the autothrottles and give you all available thrust?

And another thing- how do you know if the aircraft is not accelerating fast enough, other than by gut instinct?
 
The aircraft was an A340-500. Having flown the A330, A340-300 and A340-600 (PIC) - yes there are some numbers that should have stuck and they (the operating crew) probably knew them. They were exhausted. Normal TEM strategies didn't work or weren't recognised because they were knackered - A common state for EK crew?

It's a business and EK want to make money. Reducing layovers is not just an EK issue, its' worldwide. IFALPA need to address the issue as a matte of urgency or the next crew won't be so lucky.

Yes, firewalling the thrust levers in a bus will give you TOGA, but when you do that is a tricky issue - were they using FLEX (assumed temp) or DERATE (where Vmca issues rear their head)? Firewalling the thrust levers in a DERATE T/O compromises controllability in the event of an engine failure.

Long range Airbi don't have stellar take off performance anyway. The A343 is a dog. A heavy A345 is almost as bad.

A FLEX T/O will often give you "marginal" take off performance and "guaging" acceleration isn't easy. Try and youtube or google an A343 getting airborne out of JNB or LPB for example. Perhaps the next generation of aircraft (787?) will incorporate some sort of "how goes it" indication in the EFIS...
 
People make mistakes. Isn't there some kind of a rule of thumb so you can see you haven't made a gross error? In the 727 it's half the weight over 100K for V1, plus 12 knots for V2 (or something like that.)

I'm not saying this happened here, but people are getting completely reliant on the FMS these days, just like they are completely reliant on the autothrust and autopilot. Rules of thumb have gone out the window for some people. I've seen people 20 miles from a crossing restriction reach down to put it in the box...like they've forgotten about the 3/1 rule or something.

That goes for the initial programming, too. Some people think that if the box gives you a number, then that's the number, and they don't think about the entries they made that could have caused that number. Garbage in, garbage out.
 
There are a lot of factors involved in this accident. Not the least of which is that Emirates pilots fly the A330-200, A340-300, and A340-500 as a single type. Three completely different models with completely different weights and speeds. It's not unusual for a crew to fly the A340-500 only once every three months. If they are used to the lower weights of the A330-200 and A340-300 then there isn't really a mental trigger to back them up with the weight, flap, and speed setting on a heavy weight A340-500 take-off.

It's a business and EK want to make money. Reducing layovers is not just an EK issue, its' worldwide. IFALPA need to address the issue as a matte of urgency or the next crew won't be so lucky.


Amen !!



Typhoonpilot
 
Yes, firewalling the thrust levers in a bus will give you TOGA, but when you do that is a tricky issue - were they using FLEX (assumed temp) or DERATE (where Vmca issues rear their head)? Firewalling the thrust levers in a DERATE T/O compromises controllability in the event of an engine failure.

Long range Airbi don't have stellar take off performance anyway. The A343 is a dog. A heavy A345 is almost as bad.

Emirates does not allow DERATE take offs on the Airbus, only D1/D2 climb thrust.
 
There are a lot of factors involved in this accident. Not the least of which is that Emirates pilots fly the A330-200, A340-300, and A340-500 as a single type. Three completely different models with completely different weights and speeds. It's not unusual for a crew to fly the A340-500 only once every three months. If they are used to the lower weights of the A330-200 and A340-300 then there isn't really a mental trigger to back them up with the weight, flap, and speed setting on a heavy weight A340-500 take-off.

As different as the contrast, on any given large type aircraft, between high, hot, max gross weight takeoff versus empty, low fuel-load, ferry leg?
 
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