Ask The Pilot

[moa999]

Standard practice AFAIK, have seen it many times on Aus Domestics.
I presume its more to prevent pax following pilot back to coughpit

 

[artemis]

Standard practice AFAIK, have seen it many times on Aus Domestics.
I presume its more to prevent pax following pilot back to coughpit

Thanks - I've obviously been engrossed in my laptop and never paid attention!

 

[QF029]

Standard practice AFAIK, have seen it many times on Aus Domestics.
I presume its more to prevent pax following pilot back to coughpit

I haven't noticed it in Australia but it occurs on every flight in the US. They also seem to send a Flight Attendant into the coughpit while a pilot is out.

 

[JMFK]

Standard practice AFAIK, have seen it many times on Aus Domestics.
I presume its more to prevent pax following pilot back to coughpit

I've never been physically barricaded with an object, but have been asked to 'step back' on more than one occasion on Aus Dom.

 

[mikenz]

If a pilot/other crew get sick while on a stopover would the company leave them there to get better or fly them back?

 

[jb747]

If a pilot/other crew get sick while on a stopover would the company leave them there to get better or fly them back?

They'll stay wherever until a doctor considers they can fly, and then brought home. The sensible people take advantage of travel insurance offers that covers our specific type of work travel.

 

[jb747]

Thanks JB for answering.

Perhaps I could impinge on your time a little more with respect to entry to the coughpit...

I was on a UA flight a few weeks ago, sitting in first. My friend wanted to go to the bathroom, but found that there was a steward barricading the galley/entry area to the bathroom with a trolley as one of the pilots was going to the bathroom. I understand the need to protect the coughpit from unwanted entry (especially with transcon UA flights!) but was a little bemused to see the physical barricade between a passenger and a pilot roaming in the galley/bathroom.

Even if some crazy passenger was to attack a pilot, would that really endanger the whole plane?

I appreciate that you may not want to answer that question for security reasons, but I have never seen actions taken to protect the flight crew like that before (perhaps I've simply been engrossed in other things...) Is this standard practice? My friend was quite surprised and he travels US dom a lot...

It's quite normal to make access to the coughpit as hard as possible for those moments that the door will be open.

 

[artemis]

It's quite normal to make access to the coughpit as hard as possible for those moments that the door will be open.

Ah i see. I never really thought about it like that - makes sense! Surely the vigilance gets to be wearing?

 

[Tortuga]

LiveLeak.com - Near-disaster captured on video as pilot aborts landing to avoid accident

Any thoughts JB or is it hard to know without hearing traffic control log?? Is that type of separation acceptable, I understand the POV of the film probably makes it seem worse than it was?

 

[harvyk]

Hi JB,

How much freight can you actually take if doing a long haul flight (eg SYD-LAX) which is pretty much fully sold?
I was doing some sums last night as part of my 747 project and once I had loaded 350 pax with baggage and full fuel, I was only getting space for perhaps 2 to 3 half size containers (I believe LD3 is the half size?) once pax bags where loaded (which took around 10 to 11 LD3's to load all pax bags).
Would this be accurate or have I missed something in my / PMDG's sums?

 

[jb747]

Hi JB,

How much freight can you actually take if doing a long haul flight (eg SYD-LAX) which is pretty much fully sold?
I was doing some sums last night as part of my 747 project and once I had loaded 350 pax with baggage and full fuel, I was only getting space for perhaps 2 to 3 half size containers (I believe LD3 is the half size?) once pax bags where loaded (which took around 10 to 11 LD3's to load all pax bags).
Would this be accurate or have I missed something in my / PMDG's sums?

I guess that's why freighters exist.

Going to the east weight isn't too much of an issue, as you normally take off with about 20 tonnes to spare. Fuel load is appreciably heavier the other way.

I had cause to offload some cargo recently, and I think there was about 10 tonnes available to me (to bump).

 

[jb747]

LiveLeak.com - Near-disaster captured on video as pilot aborts landing to avoid accident

Any thoughts JB or is it hard to know without hearing traffic control log?? Is that type of separation acceptable, I understand the POV of the film probably makes it seem worse than it was?

Interesting video....

I think there's a fair bit of foreshortening happening, so the 340 is not quite as close to the 767 as it appears, but nevertheless, the 767 is very low and the 340 should not be crossing in front of him.

I'd love to hear the tape. First thought would be to wonder if he even had a clearance to cross the runway. That would explain his apparent failure to look out too.

Looking at the Google image of Barcelona, I can't place the position on the airport.

 

[jb747]

Ok..a bit of a look on the net, and at the chart, and I think I've worked out where they were. Staggeringly, I would seem that the taxi route crosses the active runway THREE times. This should make the crew hyper wary, but it also has the opposite effect, and apparently this particular runway has a long history of incursions.

Crossing runways at an angle, it can be very hard to look back and see if you are clear. Vision to the rear in most aircraft is non existent, and even seeing wingtips/outboard engines is impossible. Of course, if you weren't aware you were about to cross a runway, you wouldn't look anyway....

 

[Dmac6345]

That is why this thread is so good.
We ask the questions, and we get the right answers/responses.

Thanks jb

 

[Awesom Andy]

I guess that's why freighters exist.

Going to the east weight isn't too much of an issue, as you normally take off with about 20 tonnes to spare. Fuel load is appreciably heavier the other way.

I had cause to offload some cargo recently, and I think there was about 10 tonnes available to me (to bump).

Adding to this, EK has stated that they aren't really interested in an 11-across configuration for the A380, as, for the long-haul flights, they claimed that they won't be able to fit all the pax bags into the hold with the increased number of pax.

 

[Himeno]

I'm guessing you used to go to NRT when you were on the 747?
What do you think of the cut short runways and "bent" taxiways thanks to plots of land within the airport which the land owners refused to sell? Did they ever cause any problems?

 

[jb747]

I'm guessing you used to go to NRT when you were on the 747?
What do you think of the cut short runways and "bent" taxiways thanks to plots of land within the airport which the land owners refused to sell? Did they ever cause any problems?

I haven't been there since 767 days, so about 10 years now. The short runway, and lack of crossing runways, always struck me as accidents waiting to happen. Taxying around the place was a bit of a horror...it was a sea of blue lights at night, and little better by day. I'm told that the plots of land have now been resumed. I can understand the issue, but it should have been sorted out when the place was being built.

 

[jb747]

Adding to this, EK has stated that they aren't really interested in an 11-across configuration for the A380, as, for the long-haul flights, they claimed that they won't be able to fit all the pax bags into the hold with the increased number of pax.

The 7 or 8 tonnes of extra passengers might be an issue too. I suspect it would be such a horror seating configuration that it would end up empty most of the time anyway.

 

[Cheatah]

JB - I was recently reading about the QF2 flight which lost electrical power on approach into Bangkok.

The issue was traced to a leak from the First Class galley and due to the setup of the galley & associated pipes the leak would only occur on decent. Thankfully this flight was close to an airport but what would have happened if this occurred when you did a decent mid Pacific(ie to avoid turbulence), or worse, if you were on a sightseeing flight over Antarctica?

They only had 30 mins of power available from the main battery - if a flight was over the Antarctic and you had to fly it back to Australia is that realistic? Could it be done with no instruments, Autopilot, Nav aids, Comms?

Engines were apparently operating normally although instrumentation would have been lost once the battery was exhausted.

Is it feasible? How would you have handled this? Two things strike me - how would you have climbed back to a cruising altitude for the flight back to Australia and how would you track your heading?

 

[jb747]

JB - I was recently reading about the QF2 flight which lost electrical power on approach into Bangkok.

The issue was traced to a leak from the First Class galley and due to the setup of the galley & associated pipes the leak would only occur on decent. Thankfully this flight was close to an airport but what would have happened if this occurred when you did a decent mid Pacific(ie to avoid turbulence), or worse, if you were on a sightseeing flight over Antarctica?

They only had 30 mins of power available from the main battery - if a flight was over the Antarctic and you had to fly it back to Australia is that realistic? Could it be done with no instruments, Autopilot, Nav aids, Comms?

Engines were apparently operating normally although instrumentation would have been lost once the battery was exhausted.

Is it feasible? How would you have handled this? Two things strike me - how would you have climbed back to a cruising altitude for the flight back to Australia and how would you track your heading?

Heading doesn't matter much if you don't have an attitude display.

Later aircraft have power for longer after a total electrics failure, but it would be very messy/difficult in any aircraft. Even in the 380, with its RAT providing power, the loss of the fuel pumps means that no fuel transfers can take place, and after about 4 hours the CofG is likely to be too far aft.

I think the original design theory was that 30 minutes of power would be enough to get something else back on line. There's no intention to take the aircraft on extended flight in that configuration. Even on the 2, one generator (#4) was still on line (it just wasn't feeding the instrument busses). It's possible that #3 could have been brought back too.

This incident, my oxygen bottle, and the QF72 flight control computer malfunction are three reasons why any aircraft maker that comes up with anything based upon the principle of 'it will not happen' is speaking through their nether regions. If it can be thought of, then it will happen...and that still leaves plenty of room for what wasn't thought of. The current stupidity from makers would have to be Airbus and their remote coughpit (with no windows) idea. That won't go wrong.

Incidents like these throw up lots of interesting considerations. As water leaks will always go down, why place any important electrics at low levels? Explosion of oxygen bottles had never been considered, otherwise I'm sure they'd not have placed bottles in such a way that one could set off another, nor would running flight controls just above them have seemed such a good idea. Having a generator that can't feed the instrument buss probably didn't seem an issue with three others than can. And what about an APU with two generators of its own...that you can't start in flight. Autothrottles that don't wake up probably falls into the same category.

But, at the end of the day, there's only so much redundancy that makes sense. I'm sure 400 ejections seats would be a good last ditch, but, it's unlikely to fly.