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Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

• shsbdncudx 5y ago
  Turn it off and on again. Shouldn’t these things have a standard baseline that they reset to? I would have thought you’d reset everything after a flight / first thing you do when you get in the pilot seat . The plane shouldn’t have memory or the previous flight.
• Daishiman 5y ago
  Why are knots used in aviation over kph?
  • cmurf 5y ago
    From nautical roots, hence aeronautical. Quite a lot is borrowed by aviation from maritime.
  • NikolaeVarius 5y ago
    Convention, smaller numbers, everyone that it matters to knows it
    • pc86 5y ago
      I can't imagine "smaller numbers" plays any role at all.
  • ghaff 5y ago
    Historical reasons mostly. For the same reason that various units are used in all sorts of different industries. And guess what? If you changed you'd probably end up with some accidents in the transition as a result.
  • realityking 5y ago
    Both aviation and marine navigation generally use nautical miles for as it‘s a little easier to use for long distance travel (plus tradition and inertia). Measuring speed in knots make things like dead heading calculations a lot easier.
  • nradov 5y ago
    Using knots made navigation calculations easier with paper maps marked in degrees and minutes. A nautical mile is the same as a minute of latitude, and a knot is one nautical mile per hour. Now with electronic navigation systems kph would be just as easy, but aviators are all used to thinking in knots so changing would be difficult.
    • jillesvangurp 5y ago
      It's partly true. However, a lot of planes outside of the US would have used kilometers per hour historically. For example German WW II planes did that. Likewise a lot of Russian cold war era planes did the same. And lots of modern planes (e.g. French ones) still do. And some planes in the US actually use miles per hour instead of knots; especially in general aviation. It's just that post war, the US aviation industry was very dominant and the metric system never was popular there. For the same reason feet are used instead of meters for measuring altitude. And unlike with nautical miles, there's not much of an advantage for that. However, the units for altimeter settings are metric (i.e. millibar instead of inches of mercury) in much of the world except in the US. For flight controllers and procedures they had to pick a unit for flight levels that everybody understands in the same way and since the US aviation industry after WW II pretty much dominated, a lot of planes would have used feet. Internationally, flight levels are used everywhere above certain altitudes. Those are basically feet divided by 1000 (kilo feet?, LOL). So, FL 29 would be 29000 feet at 29.92 inches of mercury in the US and 1013.2 millibars in the rest of the world. The Russians actually used meters until very recently apparently and only switched to feet a few years ago after of course first supporting flight levels. And apparently, the Chinese still use meters: https://ivao.aero/flightops/divprocedures.php?id=CN https://ivao.aero/flightops/divprocedures.php?id=CN and planes must actually be capable to switch their altimeters to using meters to fly in China. Likewise, North Korea uses meters apparently.
  • supernewton 5y ago
    A nautical mile is equal to (about) one minute of latitude, which probably made calculations easier back in the day, with the tradition carrying forward.
  • jleahy 5y ago
    History is surely one thing, but another key point is that these speeds are always KIAS (indicated air speed). This is a measurement that doesn’t correspond to either true ground speed or true air speed (but is far more useful for flying than either of these). Certainly I would find kph/mph slightly confusing as you might expect it to correspond to some actual velocity, rather than something to do with air pressure. Maybe we should measure airspeed in mbar instead? (ofc navigation is a different matter, and there just history prevails)
  • jcrawfordor 5y ago
    Other commenters say it's historical are, well, mostly right, but there is a distinct advantage to knots: a knot is 1 NM per hour, and 1 NM was historically defined as one arc minute latitude. So if you are looking at a chart and doing calculations by hand or in your head, NM and kts are very convenient. It lets you mostly do chart -> distance -> time and fuel measurements/calculations in your head. Of course this is not perfectly accurate in several ways but given chart projections it's usually Close Enough. The speeds given in the article are a little ambiguous in the details, the number given in the text is probably KIAS (but maybe not?) and the numbers from FlightAware will be ground speed.
  • thinkingkong 5y ago
    When you translate maps with vast distances down to units, a nautical mile equals a minute of latitude. With long distances, you refer to lat/long over following a road.
  • Someone1234 5y ago
    From my understanding there are two advantages: - So that when kph/mph is heard a pilot knows they're referencing ground speed, whereas knots is air speed. - Pilots use latitude/longitude, and a knot is "exactly equal to 1/60th of a degree of latitude. A 1/60th of a degree of latitude is known as a minute of latitude. Therefore, a knot is equal to one minute of distance. There are 90 degrees from the equator to the pole." But reality is that changing international standards is very hard, and nobody wants to have the battle when knots works "well enough." It likely started because existing nautical maps were used for over-ocean flight planning and stuck.
    • mulmen 5y ago
      Knots is used for ground speed as well I thought?
      • adamm255 5y ago
        I’ve never heard Knots used on land. Sea and Air yes!
        • V-eHGsd_ 5y ago
          the ground speed of an aircraft is reported in kts.
        • anamexis 5y ago
          Knots are indeed used when taxiing at airports.
        • mulmen 5y ago
          Ground speed is speed over the ground. This includes when the aircraft is in the air. Airspeed is the speed of the plane through the air. These are not the same thing. Both are reported in knots.
      • jcrawfordor 5y ago
        Really depends on the context. Usually things that were designed for pilots to use will display ground speed in knots since it's likely the pilot will be comparing against calculations done in knots. Things that were designed for the general public usually show mph since most people don't have a good sense of how fast a knot is. Taxi speeds are always written in knots, so I suppose you could say it is "official" (in terms of aircraft handbooks, airfield directories, etc) to use knots for ground speed. Of course the situation of an aircraft's ground speed while on the ground is sort of an edge case. On the topic of odd units, the operating handbooks for jet aircraft often use mach number for limits, which has some of the same properties as KIAS as far as being density dependent but is a little more precisely defined.
  • chrisseaton 5y ago
    Because the Earth is a non-Euclidean surface, and knots make more sense for navigating a sphere.
  • mulmen 5y ago
    Maritime navigation techniques were adapted to aviation. For a similar reason airplanes have captains. A few decades ago they also had navigators. With a dedicated position in the cockpit. It’s also customary to measure altitude in feet. Except in China (except Hong Kong), Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Mongolia. Russia is actually moving to feet at some altitudes. Turkmenistan similarly uses feet or meters depending on altitude. The units themselves are irrelevant as long as everyone uses the same ones. Switching costs are significant both in terms of training and equipment.
  • inglor_cz 5y ago
    At the very beginning, aviation had to solve the very same problems that sailors used to encounter at sea (navigation, precise position), so they naturally used the same algorithms and equipment. That is how naval terminology entered the lexicon. By now, it is so deeply ingrained that switching the entire world (well, there are exceptions) to the metric standard would likely cause some preventable loss of life. At least the knot/mile system is fairly internally regular. We tolerate a much less regular one, with a lot of weird exceptions (the Gregorian calendar) out of inertia.
• cmurf 5y ago
  https://avherald.com/h?article=4f24b2d7&opt=0 https://avherald.com/h?article=4f24b2d7&opt=0
  • mempko 5y ago
    So there was some damage from that departure. Yikes.
    • lisper 5y ago
      Double yikes: "The aircraft performed the return flight EK-232 on schedule"
  • usr1106 5y ago
    This! While the maintainer of the site is a "strong character", I would trust him for timeliness of updates and correctness of the information provided.
    • vultour 5y ago
      How is he a strong character? The only strong characters I've ever seen were other people in the comments, and I'm surprised he hasn't disabled them years ago.
      • usr1106 5y ago
        The style of the web site has not changed for 20 years, insisting on his conventions of writing airline names (France instead of Air France), not allowing links in comments. The list goes on, but I haven't followed the site for a while so I don't remeber the details. Not that I would have a problem with that. It's his site, I have not paid, so he can do things his style. It must be an unbelievable effort to gather all the information.
    • twistedpair 5y ago
      <3 to Simon Hradecky for all his hard work over the years. Such a great AV safety resource.
• blinkingled 5y ago
  TL;DR - Don't screw with the defaults (MCP) after landing, especially when it's unnecessary and when the next takeoff crew likely will not remember to set it to proper value before takeoff. I wonder if this is not a detectable condition for the flight software - maybe in some cases you want the MCP to be set to low? Otherwise autopilot could either auto correct it or issue a warning?
  • AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    > the next takeoff crew likely will not remember to set it to proper value before takeoff. If the takeoff depends on it, the next takeoff crew had better remember to set it. What's more, there better be at least one checklist that requires them to set it. And they had better follow the checklists.
    • sokoloff 5y ago
      Standard takeoff procedures would have them rotating at a calculated airspeed and pitching for a climb target before transitioning to follow the FD. This crew’s issues went way past a pre-select mistake.
  • ohazi 5y ago
    This was 100% pilot error. You don't ever "follow the flight director" to determine when to rotate, you use the airspeed indicator.
    • blinkingled 5y ago
      Sure, but the TL;DR was the approach Emirates took - they literally communicated that to the crew and I can't say I disagree with it - why add to process/work if you can leave it at a sane default? (Unless I misunderstand - which is why my question.)
• jcrawfordor 5y ago
  The article made me wonder if weather could have been a factor (although this seems sort of far fetched anyway). NCEI's archive is, well, 503ing, but Iowa State has a METAR archive and it shows good VFR conditions for the whole day of the flight with only moderate winds at most.
• sokoloff 5y ago
  Pilot (piston engine, with only around 20 hours of light jet dual). As a pax on this flight, I might not have noticed much unless I was looking out the window. This seems like a fault of the crew (obviously), but probably more on the PNF (pilot not flying) than the PF (pilot flying). Article says 4 pilots were on board, but fails to mention that 2 of them (relief pilots) were likely not in the cockpit on the departure. It’s hard for me to imagine that a qualified crew would fly such a non-standard departure with “we were following the flight director” as an excuse. There’s nothing above you to hit on departure; get away from terrain! Fly the calculated airspeeds. Where was the Vr callout?! That rotation to a pitch angle is what takes you off the runway, not the FD command bars. Once they made the mistake and corrected it, I don’t have much concern with the continuation. 262 knots indicated isn’t that big of a deal that I’d worry about shedding parts from departure flaps and leading edge devices or stressing the gear (they likely pulled the gear up well before breaking 250 KIAS anyway). I’d be more concerned with the safety of an overweight landing than continuing. (A 777 can dump fuel, but the crew that just moments ago couldn’t fly an entirely routine departure isn’t the crew that I want to be calling an audible and figuring out how to safely dump fuel at night and return for a max weight landing. How would they program the FD for that?! ;) ) My prediction is that almost every pax had no idea how close to dying they came until they read about it later. I catch heat every time I mention that air crew training and certification standards are not uniform across the globe and that I am reluctant to fly on many foreign-flag carriers. (However, Emirates and most EU-flag carriers are ones that I would not hesitate to fly on.)
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • hindsightbias 5y ago
    Maximum Flap (Placard) Speeds for 777-300 Flaps KIAS 1 255 5 235 15 215 20 200 25 190 30 180 262 is way high for 30 degrees with slats.
    • HeavenFox 5y ago
      You don't take off with 30 degrees of flaps though, fortunately.
• speedgoose 5y ago
  75 feets is 22.8 meters. 234 knots is 433km/h.
  • pc86 5y ago
    Which is irrelevant, given this is about aviation where feet and knots are standardized in all but a few former Soviet block countries.
    • chki 5y ago
      As somebody who doesn't regularly interact with aviation I don't have an intuitive understanding of knots and feet so to me it is helpful to have these translated to units that I "understand".
    • ycIsGarbage 5y ago
      Still, helpful for the large majority of people who are not pilots.
    • punarinta 5y ago
      I’m flying an ultralight in Europe and my IAS is in km/h. And to be frank, probably all UL and PPL aircraft I’ve seen nearby use km/h, not knots. Not sure why it is so, but it’s definitely easier for my brain. :)
    • argvargc 5y ago
      Entire countries-worth of aviators are irrelevant?
    • anaganisk 5y ago
      And we’re talking about it Hackernews not on Avsim or aviation herald. People here would better understand in a language they know.
  • avhon1 5y ago
    234 knots is also equal to 269 miles per hour.
• onphonenow 5y ago
  The memo from Emirates about not setting altitude in system to airport altitude is so weird. I really hope that's not the actual message Emirates is putting out there. It doesn't matter was in system. You run your checklists and configure for your own flight / your own departure etc. Memo should be to training / recruitment - where did you find these pilots to fly a 777? So they obviously didn't pre-flight the flight. And they don't seem to have used their takeoff checklist either? That should get them through flap retract and 2,000 feet or so. Takeoff checklist might have rotate at 160 or so. Then you get to positive climb and V2. You then clean up the plane (flaps / gear etc), maybe hit 2,000 feet / 210kts? This is all checklist stuff. I've no idea what's Emirates has as checklists, but this is like 101 entry level flying stuff. What was pilot monitoring doing during all this? They still on ground at 215 kts? 262 kts at 175 feet?!
  • rectang 5y ago
    From a top comment on the article by "Mark D": > I’m a captain at a U.S. major airline with a lot of time in 777s. [...] Also, this is something that SHOULD have been caught by at least two separate checklists, which they obviously didn’t do.
    • cybertronic 5y ago
      Adding at the end: " ... So, these pilots were ill trained and negligent. Don’t fly on these types of carriers. I don’t."
      • ytdytvhxgydvhh 5y ago
        I wonder what “these types of carriers” means here. I know there are low-cost carriers and I wouldn’t be surprised if they had less-experienced pilots, etc. But to me Emirates strikes me as a well-funded, reputable operation. Does he mean Middle Eastern carriers?
        • quacked 5y ago
          If the country you're in: - Prioritizes "face" or "reputation" above literal accuracy - Has lower-level officials that accept bribes - Has had airlines and planes for fewer than 5 decades Assume any complex high-risk engineering system run by that culture will occasionally fail in major ways.
• rsync 5y ago
  "The thing that stands out here the most is the complete lack of control that the crew had over the plane. The crew was managing the computers rather than flying the aircraft." Perhaps they are "Children of the Magenta": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESJH1NLMLs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESJH1NLMLs ... and I cannot recommend this video enough. I am not a pilot and I have no interest in flying nor any particular interest in aviation, generally ... and I find this talk to be fascinating. EDIT: you can jump to 3:35 where he gives a specific example of a situation where pilots need to choose between automation dependency and dropping down a level of automation. He's a really good speaker and you can tell the audience is very engaged.
  • bambax 5y ago
    Great video, thanks. I find it weird that we learn so little about aviation when the industry has so much to teach us. The checklist manifesto was a great attempt to try to implement checklists in the hospital and other places, but from CRM to workload management there is so much to benefit from what the airline industry has pioneered.
    • bronco21016 5y ago
      As someone who works in the airline industry I find it infuriating when other industries don’t match my expectations. I saw behind the curtain at a couple of medium sized online retailers. The lack of process and procedure was just astounding to me. I know some airline pilots have had success in consulting in hospitals but maybe there exists a broader market for that service.
      • dehrmann 5y ago
        You can get a way with a lot when accidents don't cost a billion dollars.
      • landemva 5y ago
        Unfortunately, it is difficult to get senior management to engage. If it's just a botched order they let the cowboys be cowboys and consider it a cost of business. Rigorous process requires too much painful self-reflection, so it only happens maybe after they get sued. Even in hospitals, death from improper dosing is surprisingly high. Regulators play an important role in life safety situations. Beware of regulatory capture (737MAX not getting new type certification).
• jacquesm 5y ago
  So instead of telling the next crew to configure the system properly they are instructing the previous crew not to set it wrong? I really can't follow that. Of course it should be checked, every time.
  • lvs 5y ago
    I think there's currently a pilot shortage, and that leads to scary thoughts...
  • FabHK 5y ago
    But the next crew has been told to configure the system properly many many many times (training, checklists, recurrent training). Telling them once more won’t achieve anything. On the other hand, telling previous crews not to set it wrong might achieve something, removing one failure mode and adding another level of redundancy. The ghastly Helios accident [1] was also triggered by a misconfiguration (by maintenance staff). Sure, you’ll tell the pilots again to actually run their checklists, but you’ll also tell the maintenance crew not to screw up the standard settings. Counterpoint: if you have a checklist item, and it is always in the desired/expected configuration already, you might start to skip it (with the concomitant consequences if one day it isn’t). Maybe flight crews/maintenance staff should configure the machine randomly after a flight/maintenance, so as to force the next crew to actually run the checklist carefully? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522
    • zarzavat 5y ago
      Is there no functionality to reset the computer between flights? It seems insane that the first item in the checklist isn't "press the reset button". And the computer shouldn't let the aircraft take off if some required setting hasn't been set. Imagine if you were on an e-commerce website and you had to delete the previous customer's billing details before checking out!
      • wiedehopf 5y ago
        There are checklists for configuring everything as required.
• ashtonkem 5y ago
  I cannot imagine how unbelievably loud and damaging having a 777 fly 75 feet above my house would be.
  • jakub_g 5y ago
    I live on the coast, 15km from major airport and sometimes in the summer planes fly directly over my apartment, including really huge ones, just a few storeys above (I'd say 100-150 ft, maybe more). With open windows, it's madly loud. With closed windows it's a loud but somehow tolerable.
    • Toutouxc 5y ago
      Perhaps an order of magnitude more? You'd expect an airliner at about 4000 ft at 15 km from the airport, assuming it's trying to land. It's also illegal to fly lower than 1000 ft above inhabited areas in most of the world.
      • jakub_g 5y ago
        The airport is sea level, I live on a little hill in a 3-floor building and the airplanes cruise over my head at what feels like 15th-20th floor max.
      • ashtonkem 5y ago
        Typically sound follows the inverse square rule, so the difference between the same plane at 1000 feet should be a 1/169th (1/13^2) of the noise at 75 feet. So two orders of magnitude.
  • ghaff 5y ago
    Planes taking off from Boston Logan can fly as low as 300 feet over the neighboring town of Winthrop--and average about 700. I've kayaked in the area and you basically have to stop talking every few minutes when a plane takes off. Arriving flights are even a bit lower (although not as loud).
    • 5y ago
• munchler 5y ago
  Why is it even possible to enter a desired altitude of 0 feet into an automatic pilot? As a layman, it’s hard for me to imagine why anyone flying a 777 would want to maintain an altitude of zero at full speed for more than a few seconds (if that).
  • bener 5y ago
    Just a guess, is that the target altitude? Meaning they set it to zero during landing approach?
    • jacquesm 5y ago
      If true that would get you a hell of a surprise when trying to land at Schiphol.
  • kerneloftruth 5y ago
    I'm guessing it's done on approach so that the autopilot won't keep the plane from landing -- which would beg the question of why the autopilot would even be on during takeoff or landing. As one would guess, it shouldn't have been on. Insight comes from a comment in TFA: "I’m a captain at a U.S. major airline with a lot of time in 777s. Something this doesn’t mention is the that even if ground level was set into the mode control panel, the aircraft wouldn’t have descended if it was being hand flown. That means that the flying pilot here selected the autopilot on immediately after takeoff. This is unusual at Western carriers as we like to hand fly. To me this indicates a lack of experience or confidence or both."
    • young_unixer 5y ago
      Lots of landings are done on autopilot.
  • argvargc 5y ago
    This seems a very important question, and I'm not finding answers to it satisfactory. To elaborate, why isn't an autopilot "aware" of whether the aircraft is taking-off/landing or in-flight? It seems completely mad that an automated flying mode could be engaged in such an obviously suicidal way on a modern bulk carrier aircraft, without so much as a blaring warning and red flashing lights.
• belter 5y ago
  Read what is the current top comment in the article linked above, from a U.S. captain also flying 777's, for the list of checks the crew apparently missed. Biggest flag is flying pilot apparently selecting autopilot on immediately after takeoff. Emirates note to their crews,is even more bizarre. Like an hospital reminding Anesthesiologists to check if patients are fully knocked out before operations. Incident still under investigation but it looks bad.
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    More like a hospital telling anesthesiologists not to disconnect their lines because the next anesthesiologist might be an incompetent.
    • mmaunder 5y ago
      Exactly.
• diebeforei485 5y ago
  > suggesting [...]the previous flight crew had left the altitude setting at [...] 00000 feet Does the system really display as "00000"? That seems like an odd design choice, I'd have thought just a single "0" would be far more legible in this scenario, especially if it's on a 7-segment display. I don't think passengers would have noticed this as anything other than a regular takeoff, because ATC does request slow climbs (ie. slower rate of ascent) every now and then.
  • pdonis 5y ago
    > I don't think passengers would have noticed this as anything other than a regular takeoff It looks like the aircraft didn't leave the runway until the runway safety area at the end. That is something any passenger looking out the window could notice. A normal takeoff has the aircraft leaving the runway well before the end.
    • diebeforei485 5y ago
      > That is something any passenger looking out the window could notice. I don't think so, because the departure was at 3:10AM local time (23:10Z). It would have been too dark to perceive.
      • pdonis 5y ago
        The runway lights and taxiway lights would be on. Sure, you wouldn't be able to see the ground itself outside the range of the lights, but you would be able to see enough to tell that the plane had not taken off at the end of the runway.
      • ipython 5y ago
        You can see the lighted markers along the side of the runway indicating the number of thousand feet of runway remaining. I’d definitely be concerned as we pass by 2…1…and still not rotated.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
• mmaunder 5y ago
  Setting autopilot immediately on takeoff is very tempting because it massively reduces workload vs hand flying during a critical flight stage (high workload). So there’s a strong temptation to do this. But if you miss a few checklist items and don’t fully understand the systems, this is the result. The numbers seem to indicate they didn’t immediately recover the situation either I.e immediately switch to hand flying and adjust throttle. At 1000 ft they’re still 80 knots too fast. I also wonder about the decision to continue on after overspeeding the flaps. Takeoff flaps with full load on the 777-300ER is 15 degrees. Max airspeed with that setting is 215. They hit 260 at 175ft.
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    All hail engineering safety margins I guess. Hope they check out that plane, especially anything related to flap mounting and actuating as well as the flaps themselves. That's a lot of force. edit: omegant points out that the tires have been over-speed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29763515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29763515
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • oceanplexian 5y ago
    I have an autopilot in my small single-engine GA aircraft and don’t even think about touching it until long after takeoff when I’m comfortably at pattern altitude. The reason being I’ve read way too many NTSB reports when the pilot engages the thing 50ft after takeoff, it has a mind of its own and the plane goes careening into the ground. There are “failsafes” built in, for example you can easily overpower it with control forces or disengage it, but that’s one more problem you don’t want to deal with during a critical phase of flight.
    • mmaunder 5y ago
      Yeah I got into that nasty habit in sims using pilotedge because it’s easier to switch to departure/approach on the climb. Had to break that for real life. (I’m also a GA PPL)
• throwawayboise 5y ago
  More discussion (ostensibly by pilots) here: https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/644395-ek-231-20-december-dxb-iad-near-crash.html https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/644395-ek-231-20-decembe...
• markdown 5y ago
  I wonder if a contributing factor is that they have local noobs flying. I know quite a few very highly experienced pilots (15+yrs at Emirates) were sent home due to the pandemic. The only pilots in the middle east with absolute job security are the locals, and they get away with shit that would see any expat fired on the spot. You can hear stories about this from all the airlines in the region... Emirates, Qatar, Oman, etc.
  • 2143 5y ago
    > local noobs What's that supposed to mean? UAE doesn't have a high local population to begin with. Majority of people living there are expats. And among that low population only a few choose to become pilots. You know, from the rest of the world American pilots flying in America also look like "local noobs". Let's wait until the relevant authorities release their final report. Maybe those particular pilots are questionable, but I don't think it's fair to blame the entire carrier. Emirates is very responsible and it's definitely in their interests to run a safe airline. ---- (I'm probably going to get flagged but I don't care) I've seen it again and again in HN. Whenever something goes wrong in Asia or Africa everyone's like "the noobs over the don't know what they're doing".
    • markdown 5y ago
      > I've seen it again and again in HN. I can't speak to other cases you've seen. > "the noobs over the don't know what they're doing". I've heard from 3 different pilots from three different ME airlines, that the locals are untouchable, and get away with all sorts of bullshit that expats would get fired in an instant for. There are two or three pilots in every cockpit. If two or three pilots miss something that checklists should have picked up, that suggests it's not the individuals, but the airline and it's processes that are at fault.
      • 2143 5y ago
        > I've heard from 3 different pilots from three different ME airlines Oh really????? I find that hard to believe. Anyway, I'll assume you aren't lying. If you have conclusive evidence, why don't you do us all a favour and give it to the FAA and try to ensure those middle eastern airlines stay grounded or atleast out of American skies? (If you aren't from America, do the above with the aviation authority in your country, and maybe FAA as well anyway) If you're gonna say FAA is in the arabs' payroll and the whole system is rigged, then you're screwed regardless of whether the ME "local noobs" are bad. > that suggests it's not the individuals, but the airline and it's processes that are at fault No it does not necessarily. If this kind of incident regularly happens, then yes the entire airline might be flawed. But at this point there is no evidence to believe so. > the locals are untouchable, and get away with all sorts of bullshit First up, why don't you ask your ME pilot friends the ratio of local and expat pilots in those airlines? What makes you think the local pilots there are into "bullshit"? Those middle eastern airlines aren't any worse than any other major airline from anywhere else. If you can prove otherwise, contact FAA.
• SkyMarshal 5y ago
  At least this sounds like pure human error, failure to follow pre-flight checklists, and not a Boeing engineering/mechanical problem.
  • throwawayboise 5y ago
    But engineering/mechanical problems can be identified, analyzed, and eliminated (or mitigated). Human error still finds a way around our many attempts (training, checklists, standardized procedures, etc) to prevent it.
    • inglor_cz 5y ago
      Indeed. You can design some mechanisms as failsafe, but there aren't any failsafe pilots.
    • bmitc 5y ago
      > engineering/mechanical problems These problems are often due to human problems or errors.
• alkonaut 5y ago
  Why did it take so long to correct? The computers must have been beeping and screaming about “overspeed” and all kinds of warnings. Sensory overload?
  • throwawayboise 5y ago
    Some warnings are inhibited below a certain altitude or on the ground. I don't know if "overspeed" is one of them, though.
  • anaganisk 5y ago
    I don’t think you get an overspeed warning on ground. Also by the time pilot realised he was already over-speeding, there is no way he is going to bring back the throttle, once he is up and climbing, until he crosses the transition.
• johnnymonster 5y ago
  Watched a caribe engine explode a few days ago in Saint Marteen. Was a lot more crazy than this one! Didn’t seem to make national news either.
  • anaganisk 5y ago
    Its a Boeing and a major airline. Thats what matters for media.
• dehrmann 5y ago
  I'm surprised commercial planes don't do full software reset before each flight, and especially before a new crew takes over. Checklists only get you so much.
  • wpearse 5y ago
    The checklists bring the aircraft back to a known state. One 777 pilot commented to say that this issue should have been caught by at least two checklists, implying that neither checklists had been followed. Tangentially: if my 2006 Mercedes is reset (battery disconnected) it needs to idle for 20 minutes to re-learn the idle pattern. The vehicle then needs to be driven around for a bit to re-learn driving patterns. I wonder if there are similar settings on a 777 that would need to be preserved between 'resets'.
    • nomel 5y ago
      > The checklists bring the aircraft back to a known state. No, it doesn't, clearly. It provides a procedure that can be followed to put it to a known state, but its existence does not put it into a known state, with certainty. A reset puts it into a known state, with certainty. That known reset state probable wouldn't be useful, but can be set to be least-damaging, where a checklist can then be used to then put it into a "good" state. My assumption is that many planes don't allow a reset to be trivial, since levers and whatnot are involved. I also assume the FAA/military has done research into this and, probably, found that requiring a manual checklist resulted in stricter adherence to the checklist.
      • throwawayboise 5y ago
        > My assumption is that many planes don't allow a reset to be trivial, since levers and whatnot are involved. I think you are correct -- not everything is a software setting. There are physical switches and dials and other mechanical controls involved.
      • deleted 5y ago
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• zaphirplane 5y ago
  I am assuming pilots have had less flight hours over the last couple of years due to Covid Are pilots making it up in simulators or are they rusty (no offence)
  • anaganisk 5y ago
    I may be wrong but we just don’t forget how to drive or how to code after a vacation? It just takes some time to get used to work again, but that lasts for few days. And we opened back months ago. That was a weird statement to read for me.
• ketanmaheshwari 5y ago
  So if the altitude was set to zero, why did the aircraft even took off at all (I am thankful it did though)?
  • krallja 5y ago
    The plane took off because the pilot pulled back on the stick. There was no automation involved. The flight director is a suggestion, just like GPS navigation in a car. If you can’t turn right because the road is flooded, you go straight, and ignore the GPS which is telling you to go right.
• trhway 5y ago
  >Emirates is telling pilots not to set the altitude to zero on approach, for fear of the next crew not changing that. that sounds like a typical result of Six Sigma/5 Whys/<whatever spawn of the PM/MBA methodology hell they are practicing there>. If one thinks a bit (note: not a part of any such methodology) there is a reason why previous - ie. landing - crew sets the target altitude to that of that target airport... I wonder whether there is a narrow specialization - ie. the managers doing safety analysis of take offs are different from that of landings :)
• zeristor 5y ago
  So does someone monitor each and every flight for anomalies like this? Or is there some software that takes in the data from each flight and spots differences like this, there could be several more instances in the global data if this is a manual process. Could be an interesting little project, although I guess the data isn't publicly available.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • rpeden 5y ago
    That's what FOQA tries to do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_operations_quality_assurance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_operations_quality_assu... https://www.alpa.org/-/media/ALPA/Files/pdfs/news-events/training/rmc-resources/008-rmc-foqa-intro.pdf https://www.alpa.org/-/media/ALPA/Files/pdfs/news-events/tra...
  • jcrawfordor 5y ago
    There aren't any traffic police of the sky per se but at least in the US controllers can and do report unusual and potentially violating events like this, I would assume the UAE has similar provisions. For the most part though commercial pilots are assumed to be adequately supervised by their companies, which have various means of doing so. From a research perspective, the US has a strong model of voluntary reporting of safety events to NASA ASRS which is used by researchers. This is all human-generated rather than automated, but that's probably a good thing since am explicit goal of ASRS is to not be viewed as a punitive or disciplinary system. It has long been found that if people think safety incidents will be used for discipline or evaluation, then they won't report safety incidents - which is the origin of NASA acting as a neutral non-regulatory party to collect this data.
• croisillon 5y ago
  (2021)
• jakub_g 5y ago
  Can someone ELI5 why the plane was not gaining altitude despite higher-than-usual speed? (The physics behind it) The autopilot set to the lower-than-current altitude effectively set the flaps into descent mode so it needed higher speed than usual to start climbing up? Also how come it finally started getting altitude even with destination altitude being zero?
  • jcrawfordor 5y ago
    Roughly speaking, if you push forward hard enough the plane goes down. There are limits to that of course, but in this case the FD wanted to maintain an altitude of 0 so it was "suggesting" a downwards pitch to the pilot, and the pilot was doing as told. The FD is only an advisory system, it basically lets the pilot choose a goal and then it shows on the attitude display where to point the nose to achieve that goal. It helps pilots to be more efficient and precise and, in theory, avoid errors. In this case though it was misleading and apparently the pilot did eventually realize that and stop following it, but very very late, after other indications like high airspeed and the view out the window would have strongly suggested that the climb was not going as intended.
• aronpye 5y ago
  Is this a cultural problem where some areas of the world tend to defer to authority even in the face of obvious error on the part of the authority? In this case the flight computer? I thought this was solved by training none-western pilots, in particular co-pilots, to be empowered to challenge decisions by another pilot instead of just doing nothing.
  • robjan 5y ago
    The pilots haven't been identified so we don't know about their cultural background
• jacquesm 5y ago
  On another note: I think that having Boeing 777 in the title here is a bit misleading, this was an Emirates aircraft and Boeing had nothing to do with this incident. Suggest replacing 'Boeing 777' in the title with 'Emirates aircraft'
  • nexuist 5y ago
    I'll play devil's advocate and suggest that it is a systems error that the 777 accepted an altitude of 0 without sounding an alarm or at least requiring prior confirmation. It shouldn't be that easy to almost total the airplane.
    • CamperBob2 5y ago
      I don't understand why the automation feature in question is even available during takeoff. What would be a situation in which use of the FD at this point in the flight would be a preferable option?
      • woofcat 5y ago
        IFR?
        • CamperBob2 5y ago
          IFR doesn't mean "Let go of the controls and let HAL sort it out." This equipment seems like it's meant to assist with pilot duties, not dictate to them.
    • jackweirdy 5y ago
      Bear in mind there are airports in the world at less than 0ft sea level. Very complicated to validate what a valid input actually is
      • nexuist 5y ago
        While true, my understanding is that the altimeters automatically calibrate themselves to air pressure as well as use auxiliary readings from the radio altimeter to provide an altitude system where 0ft is sea level, always. However given that the pilots seemingly didn't follow the pre-flight checklist it's possible they did not calibrate the altimeter either.
• kens 5y ago
  > While it would be standard to return to the airport to assess damage when something like this happens, the pilots made the decision to continue to Washington That reminds me of Air India Express Flight 611, where the plane hit the antenna at the end of the runway and the brick perimeter wall(!) Even though ATC notified the pilots that they hit something, the pilots decided to keep flying for 4 hours. On landing, the plane was found to have a bunch of damage including a hole in the underside. (The underlying problem was the captain's seat backrest collapsed during takeoff and he accidentally yanked back on the throttle, reducing their takeoff speed.) The point is that pilots can hit something during takeoff, do severe damage to the plane, and totally not realize it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India_Express_Flight_611 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India_Express_Flight_611 Interesting video on the incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kA6m1U0QUA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kA6m1U0QUA
  • belter 5y ago
    No, the point of this one is that pilots can hit something during takeoff, be told about it, and decide to continue and climb only to be forced to land at the request of their own airline company! What is wrong with people?:-)
    • anaganisk 5y ago
      You missed the best part, their own airline asked them to return to Mumbai, probably to avoid bad press from International media, thats the general approach from anything Indian Govt. > Shortly thereafter, the company contacted the flight crew and instructed them to divert to Mumbai, despite the stricken aircraft being much closer to Dubai. AI made it more dangerous and made them fly back another 3 hours.
• mikotodomo 5y ago
  This is really cool, I've never seen an article (and commenters) go into such detail on a plane incident.
• supernova87a 5y ago
  I am reminded for some reason about an Air Asia (?) flight a few years ago that departed SYD/MEL for KUL (?) where by some fat finger accident one of the pilots initialized the plane's location (while on the ground), skipping or misplacing one decimal point in the lat/long somewhere. He had to do it manually because some FD/GPS system was not correctly functioning or was inop, and then after doing this there was no warning that the plane's current position was suddenly registered as several hundred miles away from its last position. (correction, there were some warnings that were noticed but disregarded as they were very short and disappeared momentarily) On takeoff, the autopilot was engaged and dutifully turned its heading to the course believed to be from the current (erroneous) position to the first desired waypoint -- throwing the plane into an unexpected large turn in a low altitude risky phase of takeoff. The pilots correctly saw some problem, but incorrectly then carried out a series of mistaken recovery steps leading to full disengagement of the plane's normal coordinated flight controls ("normal law", etc) to try and get it to behave. Apparently, everything except just shutting A/P off. Well, one thing cascaded on another, the plane couldn't be reset back into normal flight control mode, there was fog, etc. and they couldn't land back in MEL and had to divert several hundred miles to SYD or wherever and a whole incident. It could have been even worse. Seems that complicated systems... can get complicated easily if you overlook or start off unsure of what has gone wrong.
  • supernova87a 5y ago
    Ah, here it is: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/sep/07/airasia-pilot-flies-melbourne-malaysia-navigation-error https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/sep/07/airas... http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2015/aair/ao-2015-029/ http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/20...
  • twistedpair 5y ago
    Varig Flight 254 was another similar case [1]. Bad FMC data entry during preflight caused pilots to fly west, rather than east, until they were too low on fuel and crashed into the Amazon rainforest. Sun was setting, so cardinal direction was obvious, leading some passengers to ask flight attendants why they were flying the wrong direction, but they were brushed off. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varig_Flight_254 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varig_Flight_254
• fnord77 5y ago
  from the comments > this is something that SHOULD have been caught by at least two separate checklists,
• errcorrectcode 5y ago
  You put your life in many other people's hands every time you step into an airport. If you use Chickens, Goats, and Passengers Airlines, expect not to make it to your destination in one piece. 737 NG (-6xx (736), -7xx, -8xx (738), -9xx (739)), MAX, and 787 are reasons not to fly on Boeing equipment. They have both obscure (Ducommun) and well-known history of cutting corners in design, testing, manufacturing, and who knows where else. Furthermore, Boeing pilots have huge cognitive dissonance issues around these matters because their salaries depend on it (remember Upton Sinclair's quote). They will overconfidently swear on their mother's graves that their equipment is "safe" on blind faith while unable to face the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Boeing isn't as bad as kit planes made in someone's backyard or Tupolev's, but the cutthroat profit-obsession culture is different than at Airbus in terms of priorities. Human-piloted aircraft for routine transportation makes no sense. In terms of safety and ecology for long-distance travel, trains will dominate in the end because flying adds inherent risks and consumes much more energy.
  • thethimble 5y ago
    I disagree with so many things in this post… 1. Commercial airline travel is significantly safer than driving on a per mile or per hour basis 2. This flight was from Dubai to Washington. I don’t think there’s any train routes between these two cities.
    • errcorrectcode 5y ago
      Then you're making a strawman just to be disagreeable without adding anything constructive: 1. I never recommended driving. It's awful for the environment and extremely unsafe. 2. Transoceanic train lines. Hyperloop or similar. Do you have anything else to add?
      • josephcsible 5y ago
        > Transoceanic train lines These don't exist, and probably won't for the foreseeable future. What should we all do until then?
• marcodiego 5y ago
  For the first 24 seconds, the plane didn't leave the ground. Then, while a "normal" departure goes from 2000ft to 2875ft in 30 seconds, this flight went from 1050ft to 3000ft in the same amount of time. Not only the take-off was scary for being to slow to gain altitude, when it started gaining altitude, it did so very quickly. For passenger who are knowledgeable, this was certainly frightening. Ignorance is bliss for most of us.
• deleted 5y ago
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• lmilcin 5y ago
  I am not a pilot, but here some very fundamental rules of flying a plane have been broken and from my point of view I can't classify this as a simple error. The crucial job of the crew planning/taking off is to a) calculate the decision points (speeds, distances) at which they have to decide to take off or not b) monitor speed and progress along the runway c) abort if they can't take off safely before the decision point What they did suggests to me a complete breakdown of discipline and process in the cockpit. The autopilot settings have absolutely nothing to do with it.
• bandyaboot 5y ago
  Without knowing much about this Flight Director system, it’s surprising to me it would even attempt to operate in such a configuration—taking off to an altitude of zero feet. I would think it would just display some sort of message or code that’s the equivalent of “you people are on your own with that shit”.
• dboreham 5y ago
  I'm not a pilot and have never touched the controls of an aircraft, but I always mentally call out in my head: V1, rotate, V2 when I'm in a window seat.
  • anaganisk 5y ago
    How? V1 is based on many factors. Or is it just a fun thing you do? Because I do the same.
• pfdietz 5y ago
  I wonder if this will show up on the Mentour Pilot Youtube channel. There's some interesting stuff there.
  • anaganisk 5y ago
    It definitely will after the final report is available.
• aurizon 5y ago
  Arab societies are intensely hierarchical = orders from down from the top, there is no counterflow upwards. This is exacerbated by the political appointees that populate the top ranks. With an incompetent's political appointee as captain, his authority can not be challenged - even as planes crash. This manifests in quasi military groups, the the civilian air forces, which have a preponderance of ex-military officers at the top.(it has been a long time since the last war, so the older air force people move into the civilian fleet and retain their culture) These political appointees pay competent pilots to pass exams, even flying ones. This forum discusses this culture as it manifested in Arab armies repeated losses to an enemy with fewer men and less equipment, but with a culture that demanded a win with no hierarchical encumbrances. https://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars https://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars
  • kingofpandora 5y ago
    Sad to see clap trap like "Why Arabs Lose Wars" used to explain anything, but especially an aircraft incident.
    • aurizon 5y ago
      Bear in mind that the cultural difference that exists in the military, which the air force is part of, has demonstrably spread to the command hierarchy where junior flight crew DARE NOT raise any issue that is at all critical of the Captain or other senior crew members. These hierarchical differences are well known in Arabic as well as Asian flight crews. Hard to see why the demonstrated dismal failure of the Arab armies and Air forces against the Israelis is called clap trap. It is the dismissal of a serious introspective analysis of how the army and air force failed even when they outnumbered their enemy almost 10 to 1 as clap trap that speaks to the ineffective state of those forces.
• kylehotchkiss 5y ago
  USA is one of Emirates key markets, I wonder why they didn’t mandate higher quality pilots for the routes. I’ve flown quite a few times and remember hearing American-sounding pilot names on several occasions so I know they have them on staff.
  • Havoc 5y ago
    How do you know these weren’t American pilots?
  • School-Cotton 5y ago
    Why would Americans be any better pilots than people of any other nationality? Presumably what matters is the standards of pilot experience and training that an airline demands, not what country the pilots are from. Perhaps some of the Americans working for Emirates do so because they couldn’t get jobs at a US legacy carrier. (I don’t know whether this is indeed the case; I’m just claiming it’s plausible).
  • anaganisk 5y ago
    You are so close to imply US pilots are superior in flying? I have many incidents where US pilots failed and pilots from other countries heroically landing a damaged plane on US soil. But if yo didn’t mean that. You must understand Emirates doesn’t train pilots from their childhood. Who know/ the pilots might’ve been perfectly capable and even extraordinary. He might be under fatigue, may be he went into shock. Until FAA comes back we must avoid this talk. Recently people started making fun of pilots on Boeing 737 max, until they found out the plane had issues.
• habeebtc 5y ago
  It is funny to see this guy in the comments: > This sort of safety event will become more common as airlines hire based on equity, not skill. I meet these people frequently in tech. It is never the Rockstar engineers making this complaint. Good to know it is not just a tech thing.
• caf 5y ago
  Never mind the passengers, this would have been pretty scary for those in the houses being overflown by a 777 at treetop height!
  • twistedpair 5y ago
    Biggest jet engines ever made, at tree top level, running @ TOGA power. Yeah, that woke up the neighbors. Too bad this was at night. Would have been some wild Nest cam footage during the day.
    • caf 5y ago
      Probably could have made out the panicked expressions on the faces of the aircrew!
• jhugo 5y ago
  I'm surprised fatigue is not mentioned more in the discussion of this incident. The takeoff was at around 3AM local time, and Emirates is well known for pushing their pilots hard (many pilots take a job there specifically to build hours quickly, despite the unpleasant working conditions, with the intention of moving to greener pastures once they've done that).
  • avh02 5y ago
    While I agree with you, I remember that 3 a.m. was also quite busy in Dubai, it's not an usual or quiet time there.
    • jhugo 5y ago
      True, I was more referring to the time relative to the pilots' sleep cycles. They likely spend their days off in UAE, and probably sleep at night on those days off, so 3AM would be a difficult time to be alert and performing at your best.
• zoomablemind 5y ago
  Scarry as it already appears, it also looks as if the flight were considered overloaded. Thus longer speedup, shallow climb. Was their landing profile also out of ordinary? Wrong details keyed in, or some undisclosed and supposedly heavy cargo? Though such a Bond-style mystery may not make any reason to it, as the destination was IAD. Well, the pilots should feel lucky that everyone is safe and sound.
• stelliosk 5y ago
  More details here: https://avherald.com/h?article=4f24b2d7&opt=0 https://avherald.com/h?article=4f24b2d7&opt=0
• a-dub 5y ago
  "You’ll want to look at the right two columns, with the left column being the altitude, and the right column being the speed." actually i think i'd rather look at plots rather than images of tables of numbers. smh.
  • hanspeter 5y ago
    So did you produce the plot from the data presented?
• l33tman 5y ago
  AV Herald thread about this: https://avherald.com/h?article=4f24b2d7 https://avherald.com/h?article=4f24b2d7
• amelius 5y ago
  This is what you get when an "Autopilot" is not 100% implemented.
• dynjo 5y ago
  I know who the pilot was on this flight and I’m damn happy she won’t be getting near the controls of a plane again anytime soon. Coworkers were astonished she didn’t rip the flaps off.
• aaronmdjones 5y ago
  This seems to be a good summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23fiDj8Uy6Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23fiDj8Uy6Q
• neycoda 5y ago
  When the rich and powerful start feeling the bad effects of corporate greed and lack of safety oversight, they'll start doing something about it.
• twistedpair 5y ago
  A similar incident happened to Qatar Airways Flight 778 (another 777-300ER), from Miami in 2015 [1]. Incorrect runway lineup led to the plane only getting airborne after the end of the runway, after smashing through the ILS antennae. They then continued onto Qatar (13.5 hours away), with bits of antenna embedded in the tail. [1] https://avherald.com/h?article=48c78b3a https://avherald.com/h?article=48c78b3a
• eatbitseveryday 5y ago
  Why is the American FAA investigating a fight in another country?
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• adamm255 5y ago
  Just compared the 13th December to the 20th December. WAY off, where the proper departure was at 200kts 700ft, the bad one was still at 0-75ft, at 216-234kts. https://pasteboard.co/el9EdvFEiiEC.png https://pasteboard.co/el9EdvFEiiEC.png - took the KML files from flightradar24 into Google Earth.