PT-6. Idle. LOL
Bit of a follow up to this postā¦sounds like a pretty big screw up with procedures. They went around, but neglected to add the power until it was too late:
The right landing gear touched the ground first about 1,100 meters (3,600 feet) from the start of the runway. It would be three more seconds until the left gear followed, according to the report. The nose gear stayed in the air. A warning system alerted the crew of a ālong landing,ā indicating that the plane had touched down farther down the runway than it should, and the plane took to the air again as the crew tried to make a second landing attempt. Six seconds into the air, the crew began to retract the landing gear. After making it only about 85 feet off the ground, the twin-engine plane began to lose altitude. Three seconds before impact, the crew tried to push the jet engines all the way from idle speed to full power.
However, it does suggest that the pilots did not manually throttle the engines beyond idle until 12 seconds after lifting back off ā just three seconds before the plane struck the ground.
Emphasis mine.
And link to the actual report:
That video is still surprisingly relevant.
In reading the report, it seems that there is a mode of the autopilot that allows for a go-around to be selected and the autothrottles respond (with TOGA power?) but ONLY if the aircraft has not touched down already (which apparently disarms that feature). So there may have been some āmode confusionā involved. The age old āwhat is it doing?ā question that we see so often in accidentsā¦
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that is a very weird mode switch. In one regard I get why, once your wheels are down you have to be quite sure that you want to take off again. On the other hand, once you start that you do it because you are in a hurry, I can imagine the conversation the engineers had when they planned out this mode switch.
Sweet Jeezus! On behalf of my profession I can only say āSORRY!ā Maybe should automate us out of the 'pit.
Time to go fly the Pitts!
What is somewhat incredible to me is that the pilots werenāt prepared for the go-around even though the two previous aircraft had already done so. I mean, if there is ever a time to prime yourself, and go over the few steps required (both verbally as a briefing and in your own mind), I donāt know when is.
Iām not a 777 pilotā¦(obviously), so I donāt know how the modes work. But if you hit go-around while at 50ā and did not advance the throttles, yet the TOGA mode did it anyway, I wonder what happens if you touch down during the go around (apparently they happens occasionally during low altitude go-arounds with these big aircraft that donāt change direction on a dime). I also wonder if selection of TOGA disarms the auto-deployment of spoilers or whatever they are called on the 777.
Whatever the mode of automation though, the lack of recognition of the decaying airspeed and the lack of manually pushing the power forward for that long is pretty troubling. Iāve said it before in these forumsā¦sometimes go arounds are needlessly āas*holes and elbowsā maneuvers that are not performed well by poorly trained or non-proficient pilots. Iāve seen an instance at my job of a guy getting so preoccupied with the landing gear that he forgot to hit the TOGA button on the throttle to cycle to the missed approach to laternal navigation mode. After we got on the ground I gently debriefed him that there is a reason the non-flying pilot raises the landing gear - he should have been flying the aircraft and performing the correct steps in order.
We all screw upā¦but it sounds like the 777 crew screwed up pretty thoroughlyā¦
30 minutes after posting above I flew my 3rd sequence at an aerobatic contest in VA. No kidding, I was still pissed and a little embarrassed. My sequence was 1st out of 11 and I placed 2nd overall. I certainly flew way better than I normally do and credit this thread in a small way for making me dig a little deeper to compensate.
But Iām still pissed. The reason isnāt just because two mouth-breathers shouldnāt drive cars, much less fly airplanes. I am pissed because it doesnāt matter whether you take pride in your flying or just phone it in and collect $250k. Technology has made the difference between a good pilot and a bad one numerically irrelevant.
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You still recording your aerobatic flights @smokinhole? I seem to recall you posting up some gut churning videos (Iād hurl in 60 seconds) in the past.
Yes, to a point though. I meanā¦our most āadvancedā aircraft is actually one of our retrofitted King Airs. Itās a B200 with a G1000, synthetic vision, FLIR, XM weather, Jepp charts on the center MFDā¦etcā¦ Though it is the most technologically advanced aircraft, with a million tools to keep you OUT of trouble, I find I struggle the most with it because of information overload, and simple lack of currency and less depth of experience with it. We just donāt fly it as much as we fly our other standard EFIS B200. I wish weād outfit both King Airs with the G1000, but that is some $$$ and brings up some training problems (no B200 sims with G1000 that I know of).
So sometimes I wonder if ābadā pilots would be āgoodā pilots if they were taken back to some basic autopilot stuff and green needles with less wondering what the airplane is doing. To me though, the biggest problem in professional aviation (at least Part 135) is that the training is geared toward the checkride and is usually a big missed opportunity for developing skills that could really benefit us. Iāve said it before - Iāve flown that damn JFK 4L circle to 31R approach probably near 100 times in the sim because that is the checkride profile. Iād be great if examiners had the leeway to say āOKā¦this guy knows how to do thisā¦letās do some other stuffā¦ā Instrumentation miscompares in flight, RNAV arrivals in the mountains where you lose your FMS, icing recovery on the approachā¦lots of stuff I can think of that I might actually encounter in my flying. Instead, Iām perfecting, once again, the GPS 4L circle to 31R at JFK. One of these days Iām gonna request that approach in real life to tick it off my life list of things to do.
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Beech,
Iāve done your job, albeit briefly. It requires a very different mindset than that of an airline pilot. Nobody who flies air ambulance can āphone it inā. In my job you can. 99.9% of us just chose not to. I have met many 777 pilots who who take pride in having lost all flying skill. (Let me insert here this is NOT the same as having a lack of professional skill. I donāt think anybody I know is capable of Dubai or Asiana) Itās weird but they laugh about it. I had a 787 guy in the jumpseat (not saying the airline) and he was shocked to see the FO hand-fly up to 18000. He wasnāt just shocked, he was angry. As if WE were unsafe. To him, hand flying was something that was only done below 200 feet. Thatās, what, 3 seconds on either end plus a minute for the takeoff roll. Which multiplied by 3 times a month MAYBE equates to 45 minutes of stick time a year. I think an attitude is developing that will force us into an early professional obsolescence.
Alsoā¦
(Sorry for spamming)
ā¦But the information overload you are talking about fortunately isnāt a problem with airliners. GA aircraft, even the single engine ones, have become far too complex. All of that information is there because it is virtually free. To their credit, Boeing, Airbus and the rest keep it basic.
Yeah the presentation of information is a art in itself as much as getting the aerodynamics right. I really wonder if itās not the planes that are the problem, but the specific training regiment with certain airliners that prohibit or limit hand flying as much as possible?
Anyway, I fear we are veering into a topic that you could fill a library with including a set of competing ideaās.
Thatās all interesting to read @smokinhole. My wife has worked in the Chief Pilotās office of a major airline for the past twenty-some years, so Iāve heard some of the stories. We recently lost a couple guys to JetBlue and its been interesting hear them explain the differences between our operation and their new airline gig. The observations by both is that the airline is (purposely) far, far more standardized, no doubt because you might fly for years before you fly with the same crew pairing - it has to be. Whereas our small group definitely has personalities you get to know and adapt to.
The standardization of Boeing and Airbus must be niceā¦ 
We have four different airplane avionics suites at this point. Although now that we got rid of the Citation V and replaced it with another Ultra, that will go down to three.
I think that can be airline specific. I think it was United or American that had some sort of advanced airmanship class that specifically used to address upsets and unusual attitude type stuff. Not sure if that is still happening there. As reactive as the FAA can be though, if we see a bunch of āautomationā crashes weāll end up hand flying our checkrides for the next ten years until another person hand flies an airplane into the Golden Gate bridge or somethingā¦then the pendulum will swing the other way.
Every year I go back to training in the sim I have to askā¦so are we stalling with power or without this year? On approach or departure? Are we leveling off or are we climbing after recovery? Are we full stalling or stick shaker? Are we allowed to have the first officer call out altitudes and speeds during steep turns or not? Are we landing in the -250 to +500 of the touchdown zone on the circle approach or not this year? This stuff is always changing and each year it seems like the Feds have put a new or different spin on the same stuff. At least it keeps things interesting in some respects.
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Airlines send mixed signals. One is the importance of maintaining flying skills to avoid Air France-type disasters. The other is the safety benefit of using the automation to keep both pilots in management mode.
Clearly the answer is to just call in sick. That flying stuff is dangerous.
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Unrelatedā¦but this certainly doesnāt look rightā¦
You right, something seems offā¦
Gonna take full power to taxi to the gate I fearā¦
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