Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
I donât recall. But I imagine if what Iâve observed in my career is any indicator, they were likely a âknown quantityâ. It was a âwhiskey tango foxâ incident for sure. It was also an object lesson in how crews fail when acceptance of deviation is allowed to snowball. It was also a lesson in how warnings, no matter how loud and obnoxious, get tunneled out of consciousness when the brain is focused elsewhere.
Isnât it interesting, that in our line of business, we actually have colleagues who everybody know about, due to their performance, or lack thereof, and yet nobody does anything about it? Seems to happen everywhere.
And then you have those colleagues who nobody thought could ever do anything wrong, who has a wtf moment.
Thatâs the hard part, isnât it? Deviations will occur, due to human nature. We all âknowâ of a better way to accomplish our task, than how our procedure tell us to do it. Should the procedure change, or our adherance to it? TrickyâŠ
Yep! Or if you see/hear them often enoughâŠ
Sorry if Iâm being a bore here, dragging the discussion along, but I just love discussing the human factor part of our highly automated and structured job. I find it fascinating and can listen to stories like these, all day.
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Hey guys, I donât virtually fly aircraft with an MCP often, maybe once a year, so please forgive me if I rate the dumbest question in this thread. But when you are receiving departure clearance, wouldnât your initial altitude assigned be something that you would enter as it was being given? Or would you not pause from writing it down and enter it later during a cockpit preflight? And wouldnât an item like that be on a pre takeoff checklist? So possibly two times to get it right?
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I can speak from my own industry (American Law Enforcement) on this. Being out at our academy we see them when they first join, and it is usually very recognizable. We document them, report them, fail them, and ultimately get told they are going to be passed. Later on I see them again for in-service training, or remedial training for making the same mistakes. Again, we document them, report them, fail them, and ultimately get told they are going to keep their jobs.
Then finally when something goes horribly wrong and someone gets hurt or killed, a giant snowball of bureaucracy crashes down claiming they âslipped throughâ the system. We produce all the documentation, reports, test scores, etc, and are told by the higher up âthat times are changingâ, we are going to be empowered to fix this, etc and then we repeat the cycle. Iâve been doing this for a decade and have seen this happen at least a dozen times now.
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Depending on location, some airliners use CPDLC as a two-way data link, and get the IFR clearance that way, so no radio audio clearance âCRAFTâ (with the A being the altitude check).
I think youâre right that it would be in several checklists for sure though.
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Damn @chipwich! You get a âding ding dingâ. Yes. Thatâs part of the clearance. Thatâs part of reviewing the clearance. And it is part of the departure briefing. AndâŠitâs also part of the checklist. For me personally I think the MCP entry was a red-herring. The obvious issue was a failure to rotate. But Emirates disagrees and they obviously get a say. And you have provided the perfect response.
To @WarPig below: Yep, same.
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While I canât speak for what happens in a 121 cockpit, for us in the 135 world, we really try to have both crewmembers in the cockpit to pickup the clearance during the cockpit prep checklist, before passengers show.
Typically, PNF requests the clearance, writes it down, reads it back. While heâs writing it down, the PF âwritesâ it on the panel, including: initial altitude on the MCP, initial/assigned heading, routing, departure freq and squawk. Then during the readback they look at each otherâs work and make sure it matches.
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You also described what happens at 142 training centers around the country, too! 
Not that itâs a laughing matter, but your description is spot-on. 
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Interesting.
It happens in medicine too.
I think so too. Missing it is pretty hard to do and canât explain the chain of events. It could perhaps have triggered itâŠ?
We require this too. Both pilots in headsets.
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