Roger That

There are a number of contexts in aviation where it's very important to verify that another person has heard and understood you, but it's often not a good time or place to have an extended conversation about the information that has been conveyed. When given a clearance on an IFR flight plan, the pilot reads back the entire clearance. It may be in slightly different words, but the words won't change much because they still have to comply with aviation terminology. The controller listens to the repeated clearance, called the readback and acknowledges or corrects it. If there is an error, the pilot has to read back the corrected portion until it is all worthy of the response, "readback correct."

When the flight is VFR, the pilot need only acknowledge the clearance, usually by repeating her callsign. So the controller says, "Alpha Bravo Charlie cleared direct SPOTT," and the pilot says "Alpha Brav Charlie." The message, "I hear and obey o great air traffic controller" is implied. There are exceptions both ways: sometimes in very busy airspace, like Oshkosh airshow arrivals, the controllers just talk and pilots acknowledge by obeying. Sometimes VFR pilots working in complex airspace where the bulk of the traffic is IFR will read back instructions. It's okay to do so any time the pilot wants to double check that what they heard is what the controller said.

Between pilots in the cockpit one may give the other information, information as simple as "Edmonton's on zulu, it's on the clipboard." That means that non-flying pilot listened to the recorded terminal information message on a dedicated frequency broadcast by the tower at Edmonton International Airport (insert sadness here as I miss the late Edmonton City Centre), wrote down the reported airport conditions, including the fact that the identifying letter for the latest recording is "Z" and presumably put the clipboard where the flying pilot could see it. The flying pilot will probably say "Check." Ah, half the time if the cockpit and radio are quiet she'll probably say "thanks" but the meaning is the same, roughly, "I acknowledge that, and I'll deal with it when I need to." It isn't really a favour one pilot does for the other, just both working as a team.

"Approach flaps"

"Flap 15 selected and transiting ... approach flap set."

"Check"

The word "roger" also means the same thing. It's an aviator's way of saying "Gotcha" or "Cool" or "OK." Another old word with a similar meaning is "Wilco", short for "will comply".

Here's what prompted this post. My dentist e-mails me with an instruction. She knows I'm a pilot, because somewhere in the regulations it says I'm supposed to let medical professionals who treat me know that, but the instruction has nothing whatsoever to do with aviation. I don't have to give her any information, just let her know I received the e-mail. I type "check" because it's really the first thing that springs to mind when I want to be perfectly clear about having received an instruction. That reminds me of a story though.

A student pilot was flying in a busy circuit and before she got a word in on the radio to report that she was on the downwind leg (ready for sequencing instructions) the controller pre-empted her call by saying, "Check you're downwind, number three" meaning, "I see you're on downwind, follow the two airplanes ahead of you." The student wasn't familiar with that use of check so interpreted it as a command "check your downwind," that is "do something to your downwind." The student was sure that she was flying in the right place at the right speed so didn't change anything, just asked her instructor about it afterwards. I'm the instructor in that story, and I didn't want my dentist to think I was telling her to check something, so I backspaced over it and started to type "wilco." But that's even more jargon-y. Roger? I ended up with "Sure thing!" Overthinking it perhaps but I offended a medical professional once with a terse automatic aviation-style reply, and I don't want to do that again.

Personality Analysis: Suspicious

Someone e-mailed me to ask for my participation in a Pilot Personality Survey and I said bring it on, but the survey was ... weird. The cover letter requested that I forward it to other pilots, but later in the letter stated that the link was for me only, and not to forward it. I took that to be an issue with the survey software. The survey itself started all the right ways with the notification of approval from the ethics board, contact information for the research supervisor and so on, but if it was a real survey it was either done with poor preparation or it was researching something completely different.

It started with some unnecessary personal questions, like salary and the actual names of the airlines you have worked for. Then it asked me to "Indicate the endorsement obtained from the federal agency National Transportation Safety Board." Now the survey was based in a US possession, and not being an American commercial pilot I know I don't know every wrinkle in their licensing and endorsements, but I've never heard of an NTSB endorsement, and couldn't find anything out about it at the FAA or NTSB sites. Neither organization is a paragon of user accessibility, so that still doesn't mean an NTSB endorsement isn't a thing. I know that the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) investigates accidents and that the FAA grants licences and endorsements. The Canadian equivalent of the NTSB, the TSB, is completely and deliberately separate from Transport Canada, and I thought the same relationship existed between the NTSB and the FAA. The FAA sets and enforces regulations and licensing standards and the NTSB investigates why people crash anyway. What kind of endorsement could a pilot get from the NTSB? Options are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and above, not very descriptive. And they are check boxes not radio buttons. You can choose as many as you like. Anyone know what this is? I move on to the personality survey.

There's a question asking how many children I have and it has the same answer options as the NTSB endorsement question, only this one is with radio buttons. So I can't have simultaneously four and five children, but I can't have zero children, either.

Many of the questions are too transparently like generic statements about CRM to separate pilot personality from pilot knowledge of what research shows good CRM engenders. It's like filling out the CRM awareness annual exam. What can they possibly learn from such a thing? The obvious answer CRM questions are interspersed with "most people have done ... even if just once in their life" questions, for various bad things like stealing and lying. Often those types of questions are honesty markers on a survey, catching people who are putting what they think they should, instead of the truth. Or they are really asking if I have done these things, using the psychology that people imagine that that they are better than most people, so if they have done a bad thing, then most people have done it. I'm not sure it necessarily follows that if someone believes that most people have done a thing that it's an indication that the person himself has done it.

Why yes, I am overthinking the questions on this little survey. I seem to be thinking more about them than the person who wrote it, anyway. After about eighty questions they start repeating. And I don't mean that they ask a similar question again with different words. That's normal on a survey to test for honesty and attention span. No, the last twenty questions are all repeats of earlier questions, or almost repeats with trivial editorial differences. At the end I didn't hit the DONE key, just abandoned the survey, left wondering if this was some kind of strange phishing attack.

I e-mailed the researcher to ask, but received only a form letter thanking me for my participation. I think that e-mail was triggered by my visiting the link, or starting the survey. I notice that the NTSB question now includes the words "only applies for USA pilots," and the children question now has an option for none, so perhaps she updated the survey but didn't get around to acknowledging me. I also e-mailed the purported supervisor, in case it's a phishing attack using her name.

Here's the survey link, purportedly uniquely tied to my e-mail address, so if you want to put nonsense in and click through to see if I'm more likely an ignorant paranoid bitch ragging on some well-meaning researcher's Master's project or a savvy scam-spotter, go ahead. And if you're a statistician or psychologist and would like a platform for an educational rant on survey methodology, send it here.

Meanwhile other things that people have sent here, lately include an article on why there are so few female airline pilots. It omits to mention, as do most such analyses, that the state of the industry reflects not the role of women today, but the role of women fifty to sixty years ago, when today's senior captains were making their career choices. Ten years ago, when today's junior airline FO was making her career choices, it's quite possible her parents told her women weren't allowed to become pilots. That's what I was told ten years ago on the bus, by one of my fellow citizens.

Heck, you want to know what life advice I was give, by a well-meaning relative born in the 20th century?

• Don't compete with a man, but if you have to, let him win.
• Always wear a bra to bed.
• Muscles on a woman are unattractive.
• Only ride your bicycle on the sidewalk.
• Treat frostbite by rubbing snow on it.

Let me tell you, she was not pleased when she saw the big muscles I had from riding my bike up steep hills, on the road, in order to win races, against men. But that's how slow change is. Those ludicrous ideas were held by a person who influenced me growing up.

People are so impatient about change. There are a number of children growing up in my extended family who believe that flying is for girls, and kids making career decisions now have seen female astronauts their whole lives. I don't think there is any great need to see the sexes, races, religions, and sports team fans proportionately distributed in the professions of the world, so long as people have the opportunity to do what they have the capacity to and want to do.

Actual Quotes from Company Manuals

My all time favourite advice from a company manual is from a chapter that after explaining how to tear out the electrical wiring to make snares to catch rabbits, notes that you will get sick if you eat nothing but rabbits for a week. I've mentioned that one before, but I have a few more gems to share with you.

"Pilots must use their best judgment in dealing with life threatening situations."

Those were from the section on dealing with hijackers. I WISH I had the lack of scruples to quote you the hijack bomb threat instructions because they are hilarious. I am now convinced that airline pilots affect the solemn, noble "I'm sorry I can't tell you that for security reasons" demeanour on this subject because they would be embarrassed to admit the ridiculous advice their company gives them to deal with a whacko with a gun to their head. You might be better off to read the hijacker the manual and hope he keels over laughing.

"In the event of a forced landing, if time permits, it would be advisable to anticipate possible injuries (especially head trauma and broken ankles) to one or both pilots and have an evacuation plan."

So after you've run all the checklists, you turn to the pilot in the other seat and say, "In the four minutes before we hit the ground, I'd like to make a pact with you that if one of us is conscious and capable of locomotion while the other isn't that we'll drag each other's asses out of the burning plane, okay?" Or does it go more like "Anticipating head trauma and broken ankles, lets skip movie night on Tuesday, k?" Maybe someone with more CRM experience can give me a heads up on how that conversation goes.

Elsewhere I'm advised that in the event of complete loss of pitot-static information, I should fly pitch and power. That's easy to say, but in IMC it would be extremely difficult. It's not something a person gets a lot of opportunity to practice.

SOPs

Every time you start work at a new company, you have to learn their SOPs--standard operating procedures. In a two-crew environment. Most of that is not so much what you do but what you say while you are doing it. There is a very specific vocabulary and grammar and specific phraseology for each situation you might encounter. This is intended to be absolutely standardized across the company, but is not standardized between companies. That would be impossible to completely standardize because of differences in aircraft and operations, but it could be largely so, saving work not only for pilots, but for the management who have to write the manuals tells us exactly what to say.

Let's say an engine fails. The first pilot to notice it, probably the flying pilot says something like ...

"Confirm number one failed."

"Engine failure, left engine."

"Left engine failed. Confirm."

The other pilot confirms the failure with language that probably echoes the wording of the first call, then they launch into the memory items of the engine failure checklist. Typically, in a propeller-driven aircraft, the steps are to feather the correct propeller, shut off the fuel for the failed engine in a couple of places and finish securing it from the written checklist. But because shutting down the wrong engine in an emergency is a highly reliable way of killing yourself, there's usually a whole litany of confirming before anything gets turned off.

The litany above might continue ...

FP: secure left engine

NFP: left throttle, confirm

FP: Confirmed. Close.

NFP: Left propeller, confirm.

FP: Confirmed. Feather.

NFP: Left fuel shutoff, confirm.

FP: Confirm. Close.

And so on. Somewhere in here is a tipping point where the procedure becomes so unwieldy that either it distracts the pilots from flying a seriously underpowered and lopsided airplane in an emergency situation OR the captain gets fed up with it and just shuts the damned engine down as she would have single pilot, thereby bypassing all the safety the procedure was designed to provide. Both are real risks. On the groundschool course that I recently had the privilege to attend free of charge with no obligation, I had the opportunity to witness the conception of a monster as one of the instructors noticed that an SOP involving selecting bleed air off in response to a duct overheat light did not have the identify/confirm step in it. I think I managed to avoid screaming "no! no!" (or maybe that's why they didn't invite me to continue with the programme) but I thought it. It's just bleed air. If the wrong one is selected off, an SOP such as "oops, other left" or "why don't you turn them both off until you get a chance to see which shoe the 'L' is written on?" isn't going to kill you. The management pilot concerned might argue that having a full on confirmation protocol won't kill me either, but it's sad when your SOPs aren't sleek and elegant.

You end up with something like this.

Smuggling

So I'm doing the walkaround on a Boeing 737, but because I'm asleep and this is occurring during a dream, it's a little weird. It's cold outside, but not snowing and the ramp is not slippery. I walk from the front airstairs, clockwise around by the left main gear, by the left engine pod, around the left wingtip (red light) and look at the ailerons and flaps from the rear. I look at the skin along the rear of the fuselage and then somehow I'm inside the airplane, looking at a bulkhead between the rearmost row of seats and a rear galley or perhaps storage area. I'm concentrating on the bulkhead. Instead of being fabric-upholstered like a lot of these things are these days, it has uv-weakened yellowing plastic panelling, like a Cessna 172 in a rental fleet. It's cracked and mended with tape and cotton batting and bulging. I think there also may have been eels swimming in it briefly, but that wasn't anything the dream wanted me to focus on.

I'm a new FO and I have one of those captains who doesn't want to be bothered educating a new hire. He just wants an FO who will do all the mundane tasks for him and will shut up and stay out of the way. For him I am sure that "go do the walkaround" means "go get out of my hair for a few minutes" not "please return with a list of observations about the serviceability of this aircraft, most of which are probably a trivial waste of my time but any one of which could cost me my life or career if I fail to perceive its urgency from your necessarily timid report." Nevertheless we summon maintenance and they determine that the bulkhead is filled with bubble-wrapped machine guns and little plastic horses.

Anyone know if that's covered by the MEL?

They say a dream only lasts a second or so, that it's just a few random neuron firings, and that your subconscious mind fills in all the details that were missing, just the way you can see a few streaks of shadow and light and perceive a face, so that as you awaken you have a "memory" of the events of the dream, even though they didn't happen. This is complicated by the fact that I lay in bed and tried to work with my conscious mind the bits that my subconscious hadn't been too clever about, so all I can tell you is that none of this happened to me in real life.

Easing back into aviation, starting with my dreams. And life is, all things considered, good.

Perspective.

One Is the Loneliest Number

During a career preparation talk at flight school, an administrator asked my class what we though the greatest single threat to our career progress was. I had a ready answer, "the advent of the single-crew airliner cockpit." I remember getting the most supercilious glare possible from the instructor before being told the correct answer was "recession." I don't think she was thinking long term. Recessions come and go, was my opinion. But once the airlines' pilot complement halves, it's game over.

She said that would never happen, but while it isn't as inevitable as death, taxes, and the next recession, it's not an impossibility. It would require a lot of advances in automation, and telemetry, and security, but such things have considerably reduced the number of people in airplane cockpits over the years. It's a bigger jump from two to one, but I don't think it could never happen. It would make flying a lot less fun and somewhat less safe, but probably more cost effective for the airlines. At first. Then after twenty years or so of the system operating, accidents would spike. As much as I rant about both people in the pointy end being pilots, and the first officer/co-pilot not being a trainee, there is a bit of an apprenticeship going on. The new hire FO doesn't know as much about flying an A320 as the captain does (and sometimes the new hire direct-entry captain doesn't know as much as the experienced FO) but together they have the experience to get the job done. The pilot with the experience appropriate to a situation will take over if they suspect the conditions may be beyond the other's abilities. The newer pilot learns from the other and gains experience without it having to be paid in blood or bent metal. By having to be the person who knows what is going on, even if you don't, you learn more. Kind of like being a parent. Having a single-crew cockpit with a ground-based telemetric backup wouldn't provide the same apprenticeship-type situation. And that might not be so cost effective in the end.

Ryanair carries most international passengers of any airline in the world. Most of these are short hop European flight. They have cheap tickets, and the cheesiest nickle-and-diming fee structure imaginable. For example, they charge you money, I think it's five euros, as an online check-in fee. But you have to check in online. There is no airport check in available. Your base fare might be only twenty euros, but they charge extra for everything. The obvious jokes about "insert two euros to start the flow of oxygen, then place the mask over your nose and mouth, securing behind your head with the optional (one euro) elastic strap," have all been made. The company even makes the jokes.

It's a little scary because you can't tell when they're serious. The Irish accent is hard to take seriously -- sorry, Irish people, some kind of cultural thing. They're semi-serious about eliminating the copilot, according to this Salon article.

I'm not in a position to replay the YouTube clip out loud right now, so you'll have to tell my why my notes for this post say "strip poker." And if it doesn't make sense, I'll have to make something up about Ryanair getting passengers to play strip poker for available seats, in order to facilitate security screening.

The Night Before Christmas

I don't mind the original poem, but I don't like 'Twas the Night Before Christmas parodies. So I'm not giving you one. Here is a new, original, aviation themed Christmas piece written by a Comics Curmudgeon reader I know only as Old Goat

.

The following is an excerpt from a CVR transcript:
Capt. S. Claus (15:26:37): Uh what a view of the Bay today.
First Officer B. Elf (15:26:42): yeah.
Elf (15:26:52): Skids up please, after takeoff checklist.
Claus (15:26:54): Skids up.
Claus (15:27:07): After takeoff checklist complete.
Claus (15:27:10.4): Birds.
Elf (15:27:11): Whoa.
(15:27:11.4): (Sound of thump/thud(s) followed by shuddering sound.)
Elf (15:27:12): oh (expletive).
Claus (15:27:13): Oh yeah.
(15:27:13): (Sound similar to decrease in reindeer noise.)
Elf (15:27:14): Uh oh.
Claus (15:27:15): We got one rolling — eight of ‘em rolling back.
(15:27:18): (Rumbling sound begins and continues until approximately 15:28:08.)
Claus (15:27:18.5): Giddy-up deer.
Claus (15:27:32.9): Mayday mayday mayday. Uh this is uh Sled One hit birds, we’ve lost power all reindeer turning back towards Pole Field.
North Pole Departure Control (15:27:42): Ok uh, you need to return to the Pole? Turn left heading of uh three six zero.
(15:27:43): (Sound similar to shaking noise from reindeer harness begins.)?___
Elf (15:28:02): Airspeed optimum restart. Three hundred knots. we don’t have that.
Claus (15:28:05): We don’t.
Departure control (15:28:05): Sled one, if we can get it for you do you want to try to land runway one three?
Elf (15:28:05): If three nineteen…
Claus (15:28:10.6): We’re unable. We may end up in Hudson Bay.
Departure control (15:28:31): Arright Sled One it’s gonna be left traffic for runway three one.
Claus (15:28:35): Unable.
Traffic Collision Avoidance System (15:28:36): Traffic traffic.
Departure control (15:28:36): Okay, what do you need to land?
Elf (15:28:37): (He wants us) to come in and land on one three … for whatever.
Predictive Windshear System (15:28:45): Go around. Windshear ahead.
Departure control (15:28:46): Sled One runway four’s available if you wanna make left traffic to runway four.
Claus (15:28:49.9): I’m not sure we can make any runway. Uh what’s over to our right anything in Canada maybe Nunavut?
Departure control (15:28:55): Ok yeah, off your left side is Nunavut airport.
Elf (15:29:00): No restart after thirty seconds, reindeer master one through eight confirm …
Departure control (15:29:02): You wanna try and go to Nunavut?
Claus (15:29:03): Yes.?___
Departure control (15:29:21): Sled One turn right two eight zero, you can land runway one at Nunavut.
Claus (15:29:22): We can’t do it.
Elf (15:29:24): Is that all the power you got? … number one? Or we got power on number one.
Departure control (15:29:27): Kay which runway would you like at Nunavut?
Flight Warning Computer (15:29:27): (Sound of continuous repetitive chime for 9.6 seconds.)
Claus (15:29:28): We’re gonna be in the Bay.
Departure control (15:29:33): I’m sorry say again Sled??___
Departure control (15:29:53): Sled One radar contact is lost you also got Saskatchewan airport off your ten o’clock about one hundred miles.
Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning system (15:29:55): Pull up. Pull up. Pull up. Pull up. Pull up. Pull up.
Elf (15:30:01): Got skids out.
Elf (15:30:03): Two hundred fifty feet in the air.
Ground Proximity Warning System (15:30:04): Too low. Terrain.
Elf (15:30:06): Hundred and seventy knots.
Elf (15:30:09): Got no power on any deer?
Radio from overhead commercial plane (15:30:09): I think he said he’s going in the Hudson.?___
Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning system (15:30:15): Caution terrain.
Elf (15:30:16): Hundred and fifty knots.
Claus (15:30:21): Got any ideas?
Elf (15:30:22): Actually not.
Departure control (15:30:23): Pole One if you can uh …. you got uh runway uh two nine available at Saskatchewan it’ll be ten o’clock and about ninety miles.
Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning system (15:30:24): Terrain terrain. Pull up. Pull up. (“pull up” repeats until the end of the recording).
Claus (15:30:38): Brace!

I especially like the recasting of the Hudson River as the Hudson Bay, and the resulting cameos by Nunavut and northern Saskatchewan, even though the whole of each province and territory gets one aerodrome.

Health & Safety

Interesting article here about a group of flight attendants who refused their flight assignment when the in-charge (lead flight attendant) told them that on an earlier flight the pilot had threatened to ditch the airplane into the Atlantic.

An inquiry couldn't find any evidence that the captain had ever threatened such a thing. It's not impossible that the captain threatened such a thing, but it requires less suspension of disbelief if the FA made up the story.

If the captain did threaten to ditch the airplane in the Atlantic during flight, it would either have to be while the first officer was present, or while the FA was alone in the cockpit with the captain while the FO was in the washroom. If the former, why would an FO collaborate with an insane captain to cover up a stated suicide plan? If the latter, what would be a reasonable response by the FA? Remember, he's believing that the person in charge of the aircraft intends to kill everyone on board. To say nothing to anyone who could corroborate the story either during the flight, on landing, or at all until it was time to meet for another flight with the same captain? Wouldn't you ring an emergency code on the call button, radio ATC with the threat, report to company as soon as you were able, enlist the help of your immediate co-workers to restrain the captain, or tell the FO what had transpired as you let him back into the cockpit?

It seems to me more likely that a conflict arose between the authority of the pilot and the authority of the in-charge. The captain is ultimately in charge in such a situation, but some flight attendants try to manage up, and some pilots take that worse than others. It's possible for someone to make a subordinate's life hell without actually transcending workplace regulations, and it's not uncommon for such subordinates to rebel. Maybe the in-charge asked the others to boycott the flight and provided the story. Maybe the in-charge made the others believe the captain really was that loopy. At any rate, I hope Air Canada has a better contingency plan than relying on employees to invoke workplace safety regulations in the event of flight attendants detecting mental instability in pilots.

I approve of workplace solidarity in the face of unacceptable demands. I disapprove of crashing airplanes into the Atlantic.

Back to Work

Even a pilot can only do so much sitting around and reading funny websites before she has to go back to work. I have checklists for packing to make sure I don't get to the job and not have a water bottle, warm socks or my camera battery charger. The list takes into account that during any given rotation I might be going to the Yukon or to Florida, to a big city or to a camp in the middle of nowhere. I have to be ready to work with appropriate clothing, supplies, entertainment and the like. I think I have the suitcase of Dorian Gray: I weigh the same as I did in high school, but my suitcase seems to get heavier every year. It's because every rotation in the field I discover one more gadget I can't live without, or decide that I should have eleven changes of socks instead of ten, so as to go one more day without doing laundry. Now before going to the airport I weigh the suitcase, and evict some of the toys that have snuck in. It helps that I now have the company manuals on the hard drive.

I would like to pre-pack my flight bag, that is the bag that will be in the cockpit with me when I am the pilot, and just have it inside the big suitcase ready to go, but I don't want to check my electronics, so they all go in my carry-on with my laptop. Sometimes when the big suitcase weighs in over the fifty pound limit I just open it up and pull out the flight bag to carry as my "personal item" (it's a leather messenger bag). So I also have to pack the forbidden carry-on items outside the flight bag. So many things that I want in the cockpit are forbidden in the cabin.

Recently I checked in and the bag went on the scale at something like 51.2 lbs. "Do you want me to take out one point two pounds?" I asked immediately.

"Normally I would make you do it, but because you were so willing to, it's okay," she said. Amusingly, nearby check-in agents chimed in to back her up.

"She does! You're so lucky!" It must be a routine to make me feel well-treated. I think I already told that story. Whether you work in an office or in the sky, your life is a routine, the routine is just a different shape and size.

The flight is quite turbulent, but nothing to be alarmed about so long as you and everyone around you has their seatbelts securely fastened. Not too long ago several passengers were injured in turbulence because while they took the suggestion that their seatbelts be fastened while they were seated, they buckled them so loosely around their laps that the buckle part was able to fly up and catch on the arm of the seat, undoing the belt in turbulence. For best results, do up your seatbelt snugly under normal circumstances and when the turbulence starts or the announcement is made, cinch it tight. It should be somewhat less uncomfortable than breaking your neck on the ceiling. We arrive, and so has my baggage, so I proceed to step two.

This month's work site is not served by commercial carriers, so once again I rent a car to travel to the site from the airport. The car is less new than the typical rental car. Maybe I shouldn't have told the agent I wanted it for a crew change. She knows that probably means hard driving on rough roads. There's a bit of a vibration in the steering column, but it goes in a straight line. I drive into town to pick up my coworker. (He's here already because he came out early to visit friends).

We go to a Tim Horton's to supply for the journey. He says he ate recently and is saving his snacks for later, so offers to drive. I warn him about the steering and accept. As I write this up, I realize that our decision not to return the car for a better one was a continuing theme for the month. I'll have to watch for that in out future CRM together.

The local tourist information place was closed for the winter or the weekend or something, but we had Google map printouts and road signs to guide us, and decided that would be enough. It's not like there will be so much traffic and so many interchanges that we won't have opportunity to plot our route safely. It's not snowing and there is no snow on the roads yet, either. After forty-five minutes or so, my co-worker hands me his watch, trying to escape the flagellation from the vibration. I didn't ask him whether he would have preferred me to be late than suffer this car. We'll be there soon.

And despite the amount that all the detail in this account resembled foreshadowing, we were there in less time than we expected, and with no incident. Except after we unloaded, I went out to the car to get my sunglasses and park the car, but then forgot to get my sunglasses and had to go out to the car again, much to the amusement of the others. The crew we were replacing met us at the hotel lobby and it was a joyous reunion. We all went out for supper and debriefing. In a different car.

On the Flightline

I move forward and sit in the pilot seat to take a look. I get a kick out of the fact that I wasn't allowed to take a photo on the actual flight line, but that I can take one of the simulated flight line. There was a row of simulated KC-130s out the other window, but this picture was the only one that worked out. It's hard to get the camera to focus correctly on the projection screen. The illusion is even better than this photo shows, because I wasn't yet sitting right in the seat when I took it, so the view is a little distorted. When your eye is where it's supposed to be, you don't see the spherical distortion.

The instructor asked us not to touch anything during the break, because everything was set up exactly as he wanted it, and he didn't want it moved. Fair enough. The guys went off for their debriefing and were back before I had a chance to do anything but take a few photos, anyway. I talked to the pilots briefly. One had no flight experience prior to enlisting and did basic flight training from scratch. The other attended Embry Riddle and completed his commercial licence before he joined up. I ask if that proved to be an advantage and the answer was interesting. It was a great advantage at first on the bookwork, and it reduced the total number of training flights he had to do, which a much greater advantage than you would think, because of the way the scoring works. You start with a perfect score and you lose points for every error you make. The more flights, the more errors. He said as soon as they got past that stage the earlier training didn't count for much, but he already had the high score which got him the placement in his choice of aircraft, so it didn't matter any more.

I've trained under that system and I find it irritating as an instructor. You want to aim the difficulty of each lesson to the abilities and temperament of the individual student. Every student should make errors: that's how they learn. If a student is struggling, you make it easier for them and if they are coasting you make it harder, so they are continuously in the learning zone.

I asked them a few more questions about the airplane. They were keen, respectful interesting pilots. You might think that an Embry-Riddle grad who was also a Marine would be an insufferable prick (dickishness is an unfortunate side effect of having been consistently told you're the best of the best) but I've rarely chatted with nicer friendlier pilots anywhere. Go Marines! And come back safe.

They went back to work. The second session was more of the same, except they switched seats. I'm thinking that part of their debriefing was to do with SOPs, because checklists were noticeably crisper and they made more of the callouts I expected. They still didn't do the "take off power set ... airspeed alive ... rotate" mantra I'm used to, or if they did it was too quiet to be audible from where I sat. There were little cameras on the ceiling aimed at each pilot position, so presumably there were microphones too, such that an instructor could review the whole performance with a student.

As the crew joins a simulated downwind, suddenly the entire exterior view goes black. The visual display has shut down. From the pilot seats I hear, "oh shit" and "watch your heading bug" in quick succession. It's obviously not a checklisted emergency, but they handled it beautifully. Someone taught these guys that when all else fails, fly the plane. The visual display came back up just in time for them to turn a wide base. It happens again on final, and again they quickly make a sensible decision, "Go around." They apply power and climb back up to circuit height, continuing on in an instantaneous and unforecast solar eclipse.

"Can you fix this?" asks the instructor, and I realize he's talking to me. Urp, he must have spoken to the end of the chain that got the idea I'm a visual systems expert.

John covers for me quickly, but natural curiosity and problem-solving instincts make me play my part. I ask troubleshooting questions looking for patterns of when and where it occurs. I wish I could report having solved the mystery, but it's not related to any particular workload, period of operation or anything I can find.

The scenery comes back--the instructor may have reset it--and the guys join the pattern again for more circuits. One of their weaknesses is not only the centreline alignment on final that I noted earlier, but centre positioning on touchdown. They are landing parallel to the centreline, which is important and good, but they are not putting it right on the big white line in the middle. If they were my students I'd be saying, "Gee, I wonder what that big line is over there to the left. Does either of you have any idea?" I'm pretty sure I stole that from another flight instructor, but it's stayed with me. You hear your flight instructor's voice in your head forever, which is why it's so important to teach it right the first time. Don't ever program the words "it really doesn't matter" or "that's good enough" into your students' heads. Transport Canada knows this. A flight instructor candidate can qualify even though she is really incompetent at teaching and barely proficient at handling the airplane, but one phrase out of her mouth that could kill a student if they followed it, and it's back to flight instructor training for you.

I don't need to worry about biting my tongue on that comment though, because before I could have finished saying it anyway, the real instructor reminds them where they should be landing. And it's like this for the whole session. I wonder why, when they're consistently high on final, they aren't putting in some flap a little earlier, just before the instructor suggests the tactic. I've got my big, "I'm in an airplane!" grin on, but it's only a little bit because I'm in a cool pretend airplane and mostly because I know how to fly an airplane. It doesn't matter that it's a four engine turboprop I'm not even allowed to look at in real life, with systems I can only guess at. (For example, I'm guessing from the instructor's pre-taxi tip that it has two alternators, on engines #2 and #3). It doesn't matter how big it is. It's an airplane and I know how to fly it. I'm totally comfortable with what's going on here. I'm sure I'm missing plenty, and I'm sure these sharp young men do this a lot better than I would have with their experience, but experience counts for a lot.

John asks the instructor why they do not fly a longer final approach. That's a good way to solve problems with alignment and not being able to see you're high on base (although they have the latter pretty much licked now). The answer is a little surprising. Because that's what the Air Force does. The Marines way is a circle to final. Just because it's harder? Just because it's different? I don't know. There's definitely a Marine pride in not being the Air Force. At another point I tried to ask if there was an attempt to standardize procedure across types on their fleet. I wondered if they make the same callouts, when appropriate, on an F22 as on a C130. Maybe this explains the lack of the airline-style two-crew take-off calls. He answered a different question though, saying that no, the Air Force flies them one way and the Marines fly them another way and they don't mix crews, so it's not important. Marines fly this aircraft with a flight engineer and the Air Force doesn't.

I noticed that approaching touchdown, the instructor was calling out altitudes. I asked whether the actual aircraft was supplied with an annunciator that the simulator lacked and he said no, normally a non-pilot crew member would do that, because if you assigned the non-flying pilot to do it, he would fixate and that would be all he looked at.

The instructor announces that he's quitting at seven o' clock because he wants to go and watch NCIS. The guys come around for their last circuit and turn final, right on the centreline this time. And they are right on slope, no jockeying the power. Speed is good, gear is down, flaps are set. This is going to be a beautiful one. And it is. The sim may not duplicate the back pain of a poor landing, but it lets them know they did well. They taxi in and shut down as directed.

"I knew you were going to ace that one!" I confide as they leave for their debriefing.

"So did we! Did you hear us?" I didn't, but all the way down final they were quietly cheering each other on for what they knew was going to be a greaser. I don't remember which guy was at the controls. It doesn't matter. It was a beauty. CRM spirit achieved.

Middle Seat, Again

It's time to go over to the simulator building. Oh and John billed me as a Canadian bush pilot, but someone involved in the approval process got the idea that I'm a simulator visuals technician. I guess it doesn't take too much message mangling to go from "visual flying" to "visuals." "So maybe you could admire the visuals," suggests John. I'm actually nervous about the sim, not because I might be faking my visual credentials, but as a pilot reflex. Being in a simulator is about succeeding or failing at a job interview, or about getting to keep your job versus having to go back to the bush leagues. Even though no one will ever know if I fly this pretend airplane badly, it's still how I feel. I also don't want to look like an idiot.

The simulator building is inside a fence which we enter through an unlocked gate. John points out a new simulator almost ready for use in its own building inside the compound. It is for another type, which I don't know if I'm allowed to name. Once it is operational that gate will be locked and one will have to enter through the checkpoint around the other side of the fenced area. Today there's no one at this gate to check my ID.

The lower door into the tall room where the simulator sits is open and I can see that it looks pretty much like any other motion simulator, a big pod up on a hoist, with hydraulic hoses and wires hanging off it. It is white, like other simulators; the Marines have somehow resisted the temptation to paint it grey or khaki. Upstairs, past an Uncle Sam "WE'RE AT WAR! ARE YOU DOING ALL YOU CAN?" sign is the entrance to the simulator. There's a North Carolinian touch added to the standard sign forbidding food and drink in the simulator.

We cross the bridge into the simulator pod. At the left side near the back are monitors and controls for the instructor to see what the students are seeing and where they are, and to change weather, location or the operability of the aircraft. There's a flight engineer seat on the right and of course two pilot seats at the front. Each of the two pilot positions has what looks like a clear sunvisor positioned in front of it. When you sit in the seat you can see green lines, providing a horizon, airspeed, altitude and some radio nav information: a heads-up-display. Instead of having to choose between looking at the cockpit instrumentation and looking out the window, you can look at both at once, or switch your focus between them without moving your head a single degree. And I thought the "VFR" button on my transponder was a cool attention-saving device.

You can see a throttle quadrant, a traditional-looking FMS, EFIS screens, standby instruments, and everything else you'd expect to see in an airplane. I'm directed to sit in the flight engineer's seat, which is on a track, such that I can slide it forward and left from its position at the FE console to the middle of the airplane looking between the two pilots. There's a four point harness and I put it all on, then shrug off the shoulder straps so that I can still lean around all over the place to rubberneck.

I'm introduced to the instructor, but it turns out that he hasn't been informed of my presence. John and the instructor both take this as a matter of course. It's always heartening to know that one's own organization is not the only one with communication difficulties. The instructor checks with someone, I think, and then we're on. I asked him if there was anything I would see or hear during the lesson that couldn't be published. He assured me there was not. I still know I have a habit of noticing the one thing I wasn't supposed to know about, so this is all double-checked through John before posting. There is no safety briefing, unlike other simulators I've been in.

The pilots whose session I am sitting in on will be taking their second lesson in this simulator. They have been through basic flight training and upgraded to turbine engines on the military equivalent of a King Air, but they have never flown this airplane for real. They are both very young men, wearing one-piece flight suits with blank velcro for the insignia patches on their shoulders. The instructor closes up the back of the simulator and tells them that today they will take off, climb to altitude, practice as many steep turns as they like and then do some stalls before returning to the airport for circuits. It's a pretty standard familiarization lesson. Their conversation with the instructor is casual and respectful both ways, with no military overtones. I know someone who quit a Canadian military flight instruction job because he didn't like the training atmosphere, but I'd be happy supervising this session.

The trainees are directed to set up the computer. They are entering weight and fuel information, communicating with each other, but not through checklists or crisp SOPs, just talking. They get everything set up and the instructor gives them a tip for entering their fuel burn when the route includes maneuvering, instead of just point to point. When everything tallies they are directed to start up. The first engine they start is #3, and the whole simulator shakes from the vibration of the simulated engine. They continue through the checklist on the glareshield, starting #4 next, then #2 and #1 last. Imagine having twice as many engines that might not start on any given day. At least they are turbines. And their simulated ATIS gave them a 20 degree day. It's twilight, but it doesn't matter if it is dawn or dusk, because the simulator is set to remain frozen in time. The instructor says there is a continuous setting that allows time to run, but instructors never use it.

The instructor offers a hint to the left seat pilot to bring up the power on the inboard engines, in case the FO accidentally turns off the APU. I didn't see the layout that suggested that was likely. There's a simulated marshaller on the ramp, but the instructor turns him off, because he says he's a pain to operate. He just gives the guys a taxi clearance, which in typical American style names no taxiways, so they are free to find their own way to the assigned runway. They go most of the way down the ramp, which the instructor says is fine, when they ask. As they turn they know too go past the intersection before turning, because they are sitting forward of the nosewheel. I would have forgotten; I sit over my nosewheel.

Positioned on the runway, I shrug my shoulders back into the shoulder straps and watch power application. Centreline control isn't perfect, but probably pretty good for someone's second time with that many engines and that much power. I'll have to remember to be right THERE on the rudder as the power comes up. A master caution light illuminates on the panel, "door open," but to my surprise neither pilot calls for an abort. I have written most of "why aren't they aborting?" on my notepad before they decide for themselves that that would be a good plan. Oh yeah, I realize. As cool as they look in their flight suits and as far superior as they are to me in youthful reflexes and expense of training, these guys have less than five percent of my experience. They come to a stop without going off the end of the runway and the instructor reminds them about correct and timely callouts for such an occasion. He says "don't look out the window, it will mess you up," and resets the simulator to the beginning of the runway. Of course I look, and see the mind-warping whoosh as the airplane accelerates backwards and rematerializes on the threshold. If you're prone to airsickness, don't look!

On the next take-off the same door-open alarm sounds and the guys react much better, not flawlessly, but enough to win instructor praise. They joke about getting maintenance to look at that door. They haven't eaten up much runway this time, so he clears them for take-off from that position and this time he fails an engine. They abort correctly, and stay on the runway despite a some directional control problems.

The next time they are allowed to get off the simulated ground with no failures and are quickly at exercise height. They do a good job of the steep turns, both technically and with a good brief from one to the other for the two-crew exercise, and they are happy to move onto stalls after two steep turns each. The computer tells them the speeds to fly to approach each stall for their weight. The left seat pilot has the controls first, approaching at 145 knots to a clean stall, then a dirty one and then a climbing turn stall. He tries another one just letting the stick pusher do the recovery.

There is a ding-dong alert from the avionics, but the instructor clears it. It is a fuel quantity disagree error between the flight computer and the fuel sensors, due to the trick he used with the fuel planning. He tells them how to clear it themselves if need be. The right seat pilot repeats the stalls. Like the largest airplanes I have flown -- none as big as this -- they just power out of stalls with no pitch down.

The instructor simulates the ATIS again for their return to the airport and the pilots run the approach checklist. "Passengers and cargo?" says one pilot from the checklist. Presumably the correct response is something along the lines of "briefed and secure," but there's a pause, perhaps they haven't learned the correct briefing yet, or realize that there isn't really enough time. Then the other pilot replies, "They're all dead," and they get on with the checklist. It's nice that they can concentrate on one thing at a time, and train seriously without having to be super serious.

They are still very high as the instructor gives them vectors onto final. I've never flown this airplane of course, so perhaps it drops like a rock. At the point that I'm wondering what their plan is, one of the pilots jokes that it's a "space shuttle approach." I had a boss once who used to say things went "down like a rocket." Perhaps I've finally realized what he meant. They are high and fast and resolve the problem by doing a go around. They are high on the second one, too, but lose a little altitude getting back to centreline after hooking the approach, and then get it down even though they are only using half flaps. It's a little fast and my flight instructor instincts cause me to shift my feet and arms so as not to take the touchdown impact directly on my once-broken spinal column. But the simulator is merciful and doesn't smack us as hard as a real airplane will. And the seat is a lot cushier than in a C150, too.

The instructor asks the pilots what is considered a good touchdown point for this airplane, and he approves their answer of "in the first third of the runway." Heh. I'm going to do a bush pilot short field approach, and put it at the beginning of the runway, just to see how short you can land this behemoth. Probably pretty short. They continue flying and the pilot improves quickly. I still think he's starting the flare a little too soon, but then we're pretty big.

After a few circuits the instructor directs them to land with full flaps. He says it's easier with half flaps, but that full is the correct way. I'm not sure why it's easier. It looks much more correct to me with full flaps. The right seat pilot takes control and he does right hand circuits, so he can see the turns. They're both having a little trouble rolling out aligned on final, but they work on that. After a couple of hours the instructor freezes the sim and they take a break.

My turn? Oh man, now I have to put my money where my smart-assed blogging fingers are. John checks with the instructor. Narrative continues after I check again with John to see what I can blog.

Dead: Two in the Cockpit, Four in the Cabin and One Far Away

This accident investigation tells a sad tale. It's not just the story of an airplane that had some kind of problem after takeoff. The crew consisted of a results- (as opposed to safety-) oriented maverick chief pilot and what the NTSB terms an "ill-prepared" first officer. They explain that term only in stating that the company gave inadequate checkrides, but one can imagine he or she was new, got less actual training than the company records stated, hadn't been required to demonstrate an ability to fly the airplane unassisted, and did not operate in an environment where he was given the opportunity to absorb an understanding of two crew teamwork.

They take off, and something happens that makes control of the airplane difficult. It might be runaway trim, the autopilot misbehaving: the investigators don't know. As soon as this happens, the pilot who notices, probably the flying pilot needs to articulate the problem to the other pilot, even if they aren't quite sure what is wrong. "I can't hold the nose up!" "The trim is freaking out!" "I'm holding full left rudder to keep it straight." The flying pilot needs to continue flying the airplane, concentrating on keeping the airplane right side up, clear of obstacles and with an appropriate heading and airspeed. If it's an emergency for which there is an aircraft checklist, there will be a call for that, e.g "runaway elevator trim emergency checklist," and the correct aircraft configuration, procedures (and exactly what the pilots say to one another) may be specified right in the checklist with the first few steps committed to memory. If it's something outside the checklist, well that's why pilots learn how their airplanes work, so they can make reasonable decisions.

Usually any relevant checklists are followed exactly, but if there are extenuating circumstances and where the crew hasn't yet determined what is going on, the captain makes the final decisions. But the division of labour is fixed: one crew member flies the plane, and the other one does other stuff. For this reason the captain often gives control to the FO in an emergency, because anyone can fly a plane, I mean really, you could. I tell you "you have control. maintain 140 knots, three thousand feet, on this heading, and you're going to have to exert about 10 kilograms of back pressure to keep the nose up." If the FO has toothpick arms, then the captain may make a different decision, but someone has to be flying the airplane. They shouldn't both be trying to find a circuit breaker any more than they should both be working on their laptops.

There are many events like the one the NTSB describes that led to this fatal accident that are non-events, because a crew manages the situation professionally and returns to the airport to get it fixed. The "we don't know what happened, but they should have handled it better" vibe is a little harsh here. After all, if they don't know what happened who says that the crew didn't manage it in a flawless textbook manner, but it was more than human beings could handle? The dead, ex-drug runner captain has already shown a disregard for the law and others' safety, so he's an easy mark on whom to pin the blame.

Also do you see what they are doing regretting the absence of cockpit video monitoring? Every time they say "too bad there was no video recording," they are angling for video monitoring of our workplace. YouTube of the future will be a more grizzly place.

And finally, the fact that their cargo includes a human transplant organ, introduced extra pathos for me. Had there been five in the cabin instaed of four it would have made no difference to me, but I imagine someone's cellphone ringing that afternoon, with the joyous news that a matching donor organ had been found. That person grabbed an overnight bag and went straight to the hospital, or perhaps they were already in hospital, knowing a transplant was their last chance at life. They were prepped for the operation, and then received the news that the organ wasn't going to arrive after all. And the loved ones of the donor were hoping to hear news that their deceased family member's organ had helped someone else to live. Instead they learn that six people died transporting it, and the organ became fish food.

The NTSB investigation report from which I have inferred all this melodramatic speculation is here.

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Yesterday Cirrocumulus pointed out that the aviation industry "needs objective research into effective ways of keeping boredom at bay and humans alert while they're just monitoring safety-critical machinery. At present the humans are between the rock of forbidden pastimes and the whirlpool of stupefaction." I liked this by itself, and then Aluwings took up the standard to outline some of the strategies employed. I laughed at his post because I have done and seen similar ones. Never met the UFO guy, though.

Outraging the Modesty of a Woman

According to this The Times of India article, a physical fight of some sort, involving both pilots and two flight attendants, broke out in the cockpit area during an Air India passenger flight. It's really not clear from the multiple accounts cited in the article and the accompanying video who was fighting whom over what, but it may be relevant that Air India pilots have just called off a strike, as political issues are some of the worst to have in a cockpit. I can't see reasonable people coming to blows and leaving the aircraft controls unattended over which version of the ETA the FA used in her PA without some underlying quarrel.

To me the most interesting thing about the whole mess is the charge against the pilots of "outraging the modesty of a woman." Clearly that means something in Indian law. It's a common phrase in Indian news articles and it appears to cover almost everything from grabbing a woman's hand inappropriately, to rape. It appears analogous to the Canadian concept of sexual assault. Compare the Canadian concept to the Indian judgment cited here, downgrading a charge of rape to one of outraging the modesty of a woman. (Texans may need to stop and read the Canadian link before commenting: the Canadian definition is significantly different from the Texas one cited there).

"Intention is not the sole criterion of the offence punishable under Section 354 IPC and it can be committed by a person assaulting or using criminal force to any woman, if he knows that by such an act the modesty of the woman is likely to be affected."

In many cases the Indian wording may be better than the phrase sexual assault, but in some the Indian wording may trivialize a serious offence that falls short of rape. One wonders if the modesty of a man can also be outraged.

ClustrMaps shows me a lot of red dots on India, so perhaps a regular reader will know more about outraged modesty and Air India policy and practice with respect to who is or is not on the flight deck, and the state of the cockpit door in flight. At any rate, I am liking the phrase, "Sir, you are outraging my modesty," for distracting someone whose behaviour hasn't yet escalated to a point calling for physical or legal defence.

I Liked the New Star Trek Movie

This is my idea of a movie review. When Aviatrix reviews a movie you are fortunate indeed if you get away without a scene-by-scene retelling containing more notes than the original shooting script, and only a few long asides on social relevance. There are always spoilers, so don't read this if you want to see the movie without knowing all about it.

I would pretend that I saved this review until most of you had a chance to see the movie, but really I saw it while I was still on time off and just haven't had time to fit this post in with all the excitement. Movies can keep.

I almost didn't see this one at all. I figured the only correct way to make a movie like that right was to watch every episode of the original series, making detailed notes of every mention and reference to the past history of each character, ship and world. I didn't trust the moviemakers to do this. Even if they did, there would be probably so many continuity errors contained in those very notes that it would be impossible to make anything align with the established past history, let alone an interesting movie. If it couldn't be done right, it shouldn't be done at all, at least not for me to watch, so I resisted. But everyone, including fans, kept saying it was good, so I relented and went.

There was a trailer for a movie that looked like it might actually be interesting, but it was as if two trailers had been intercut: one that had a story and another that consisted mainly of epilepsy-inducing special effects. Perhaps that was a metaphor for the Transformers. Perhaps I'm putting way too much thought into a movie about a cartoon about toys. The next trailer was for essentially the same movie, except in this case the plastic star was G.I. Joe. I hope there's a scene in the movie where he gets it on with Barbie. if you're going to cinematically recreate thousands of 1970s toyboxes you can't just stop the cameras when he puts down the plastic machine gun for the night.

The movie starts off in a battle, on a starship that is not Enterprise. It's your typical Star Trek stuff with the ship going to investigate an anomaly or a distress call, and encountering something that is unlike anything they have ever encountered before. The readings are off the scale; the shields are falling; the ship cannot take it anymore. The captain leaves the ship to negotiate a surrender, and places a young Kirk in command on the bridge. That seemed a little abrupt. Kirk orders an evacuation, during which we discover that his wife is on board, in labour. While everyone evacuates, Kirk sets a direct course for the opposing ship and his son is born seconds before he dies in the ensuing collision. I guess he turned off his transponder to prevent the alien TCAS from providing a resolution advisory.

Just before he dies, Kirk senior has an exchange with his wife about the baby's name. She suggests naming it Tiberius after his father and he rejects that as ridiculous, and says to go with her father's name. That was when I realized that we were looking at the birth of James T. Kirk. That's not a canon origin, but I was willing to grant them poetic licence for it. Even though I think there are canon references to Kirk doing things with his father while growing up, his mother could remarry, and it was appropriately epic, so I was willing to go along with it. They got it right that he grew up in Iowa ("I'm from Iowa. I only work in outer space,") so they weren't completely abandoning the established continuity.

The young Jim Kirk steals and destroys an expensive sports car, almost killing himself in the process. He first meets his mentor, someone who knew his father, after being beaten up in a bar brawl. He's is an uncontrolled reckless maniac, and after a moment's reflection I realize that that is exactly appropriate. The grown up Jim Kirk is an only barely controlled reckless maniac with an approach to dangerous situations that you don't get without long experience with same. You don't win interplanetary bar brawls without having lost a few in your youth. The young Kirk would have had to be like that. In fact as I think about it more, the young Kirk should have been depicted as less of a James Dean loner and more of a gang leader. One of his strongest skills is leading a group of people into and back out of trouble. Where do you get leadership skills ripping around on a motorcycle being cooler than everyone else?

His mentor feels that Starfleet has lost but needs to regain the reckless edge that Kirk senior had, and knows that Kirk junior has it, so advises him to report to the local space shuttle station for transport to Starfleet Academy. Kirk seems to disregard the idea, but after cruising by the under-construction Enterprise (apparently also from Iowa before being shipped to outer space) on his motorcycle he changes his mind and reports for training, tossing his bike keys to the first person who admires it at the dock.

We see a bit of his maverick interactions with his stunned classmates on the transport ship: they have uniforms, he's still in the t-shirt bloodied from the bar brawl. They have probably applied and interviewed and written essays and aptitude tests to get in. He's just turned up because someone who knew his daddy pulled strings. Mercifully, the producers know I didn't want to see much more of this and his academy integration passes with a "Three Years Later" title. Of course three years later he's getting hot and heavy on a bed with a curvaceous woman, and why didn't I see that coming. If Kirk didn't try to shag every female within sensor range it would be a clear violation of his prime directive. The next surprise, which we also should have seen coming, is when the woman in question calls for the lights to come up. She's a green-skinned gal. Very nicely done. She hears her roommate coming and asks Kirk to hide because her roommate is getting ticked off at all the men she keeps inviting over. Kirk's reaction to "all the men" is great, and the roommate turns out to be Uhura, who has already spurned Kirk's advances and is none too pleased to see him there.

Uhura is depicted in the series as actually African, not African-American, with a native language of Swahili, in a Starfleet where her race is a minority. We see green-skinned people rarely enough that we have to realize that the Orion in San Francisco is a member of a very small minority, too. The roommate pairing reminds me of a pilot friend who has just accepted a dispatch job in a community just south of the 60th parallel. She knows that her assigned roommate is a woman who immigrated from Nigeria: they have already met at a training course. My friend doesn't have green skin, but she isn't white either and is from another culture. I'm not sure if they are the only women at their base, in which case it only makes sense, but it's not uncommon for the "different" to be teamed together. I think it will be good for my friend to live with someone who shares her outsider status. I doubt that the writers had Starfleet put the sexy colourful babes together out of either racism or empathy, but just did that because you can't make a Star Trek movie without Kirk getting naked with a green-skinned alien, and if the roommate is going to walk in, you just make it the funniest possible roommate, and they did.

They picked up on a lot of things that were just hinted at in the original series dialogue: McCoy's marital history and dislike of space travel, Uhura's coolness to Jim and her connection to Spock. I'm willing to believe someone did watch the whole series with a notebook. They even have Kirk cheat at the Kobayashi Maru as it was established he did in an earlier movie. He gets in trouble for that, but just as his punishment is about to be handed out, an overused "the fleet is overextended, but no one else can go, so we'll have to take the graduating class" scenario breaks out. I let them get away with it in Top Gun, so I roll my eyes and let them get away with it here. Kirk is told he is under academic suspension pending the outcome of his interrupted hearing, so has no ship assignment, but McCoy uses medical trickery to get him on board, where we meet more of the original crew.

Sulu forgets to release the parking brake before leaving spacedock. Poor guy can never get a break. Chekov still has a Polish accent. The actor and director knew that the "nuclear wessels" schtick wasn't in keeping with a Russian accent, but decided to keep it for continuity. Perhaps by the 23rd century there has been a great consonant shift in Russian, leaving the V-sound unfashionable and completely replaced with the W. They didn't however, follow the retro continuity of the exterior appearance of the ship. The shape of the nacelles on NCC-1701 are wrong.

Kirk lounges in the captain's chair on the bridge in just the way his Shatner-portrayed older self does--and then is yelled at to get out of the chair. The Enterprise promptly encounters an alien distress call near Vulcan, which our young Kirk is uniquely situated to recognize as a trick. It duplicates what happened to his father, plus he has some information most of the others don't, overheard when Uhura was speaking to her roommates about something they heard from the Klingons while in the radio lab. The audience didn't pay much attention to the dialogue at that point, as Uhura was taking off her clothes, but here's where Kirk's experience comes in, because he synthesizes the data to realize what is happening. When the communications officer admits an inability to distinguish between spoken Romulan and Vulcan, Uhura is plausibly installed at that station, on account of being conversant in more than one dialect of Romulan. Kirk, however, is given a completely implausible field promotion to First Officer. Or maybe that's just me jealous of countries where new grads are dropped in the right seats of heavy airliners. McCoy also gets a field promotion when the ship's doctor is killed in the inevitable Romulan attack.

I was disappointed when the Romulan bad guy appears on screen, because part of the plot of one of the original series episodes was that while the Federation has communicated with Romulans, no one knows what they look like, and it was a moment of stunning revelation when they turned out to look just like Spock. Later series wrecked this by giving the Romulans funky foreheads, and I have to give this production credit for nodding to both sorts of Romulans: the bad guys have elaborate forehead tattoos that make them look like the Next Generation foreheaded Romulans without it being a racial characteristic.

Kirk, Sulu and another guy (did he have a red shirt?) parachute onto a drilling platform in space. Of course the redshirt dies and the other two save each other's lives a couple of times, then Chekov gets to save them both with his video-game honed transporter skills. I think the implication is that Chekov is very very good at Russian-invented Tetris. Or they just wanted to give him something heroic to do.

Christopher Pike, the original Enterprise captain from the original series is present. They place him in danger, but I watch smugly because I know he has to live to maintain continuity. And then they kill Amanda Grayson (Spock's mother) and implode the entire planet of Vulcan. The timing of the next part is perfect, giving just enough time to think, "they can't do that" before the nature of the enemy weapon is revealed, making me realize this is a time travel story. So this is going to get fixed somehow, I reason. And then they did one better.

I don't remember the exact details of how Kirk ended up in an escape pod on the surface of a frozen ice planet, but he ignored the computer's warning that the environment is unsuitable and tries to walk to a nearby outpost. He's pursued into a cave by a monster than looks like one of the Transformers from the trailer, and there he is saved by none other than Spock. Not the young Spock whom he doesn't get along with at all, but the old Spock who has been Kirk's friend and first officer for many many years. At first I thought that Kirk had time-travelled into the original series episode where a planet's sun is about to go nova and the entire population escaped into the planet's past, with Spock ending up in the ice age where he ate red meat because he was in tune with his ancestors of that time. It seemed a pretty wacky episode to mine for plot, but before I remembered how they got out of that one in the original series, Old Spock explains what is really going on.

When the vengeance-seeking, time-travelling Romulan killed Kirk's father in the opening sequence of the film, he created a parallel universe. The death of Kirk's father, the destruction of Vulcan, the face-to-face meeting with a Romulan and hey, even the nacelles being wrong can all be attributed to them being in a parallel universe.

Needless to say, Kirk saves the day and life goes on. Everyone got to say their signature lines, except that Uhura never said "Hailing frequencies open." One question remains: isn't navigation in Earth's solar system going to be a little tricky what with that new black hole they made just by Saturn? Also Kirk gets a medal instead of getting in trouble and they make him captain of the Enterprise. That's just a little stupid. I'm willing to buy making someone with enormous potential a first officer right off, but there are parts of being captain that you don't learn in three years of the academy nor by crashing expensive sports cars in the desert. They should have assigned him a position on a good ship with a good captain, both recognizable from the original series. I guess one problem is that most of the captains on the original series were horribly ineffective, in order to make Kirk's guns-blazing leadership style look good.

So yeah, I liked the movie, and I think if you like funny action movies that someone already told you about, you should go and see it, whether or not you like Star Trek itself. Plus there are a few bits I didn't tell you about (like Scotty!) and probably lots of bits I got wrong.

Will She Fly or Will She Sleep?

Seven a.m. came too soon after getting to sleep after having a four hour nap in the middle of the day, but I got up. Ate breakfast with company and two chainsaw replacement chain salesmen from Portland, Oregon. Raisin french toast with bacon.

Go to plane. I load and secure baggage while she checks weather. "We're not going high, but we're going," she says. Fine with me. I set the radios and the GPS, bookmark origin and destination in the CFS, tell her what I've done and then pick up my crossword puzzle. I'm not sure, but I think there's a possibility that half-assed two-crew procedures when it's legally a single-pilot operation are worse than single pilot with someone who is also qualified but is clearly not doing anything to contribute to the flight. Today I'm working on that theory. She'll assign me duty if she wants help. "I expect you to have that crossword puzzle finished before we arrive," she warns. So I have my flight duty. Also I may have to fly to the end of my duty day tonight, so I should relax now.

Winds favour 07 or 12, but the aprons and taxiways are only set up so that one can easily get to 25 or 30. My reply to her possibly rhetorical question about the best way to get there is "let's just call the FSS and ask which way they recommend."

We don't even have to ask. When she calls to taxi they recommend "alfa, bravo, backtrack 07." She's at the B-12/30 intersection before she says, "Wait a sec, how am I supposed to backtrack 07 from here? Runway 07 crosses at the other end of this runway." They meant backtrack 12, which we do. Meanwhile Jazz calls up and asks to depart off 30. The FSS points out that it's NOTAMed closed for work that isn't currently being done, but it's still closed, so the CRJ will have to backtrack 12 as well. We take off. Gear comes up and gear handle clunks back to the up-neutral position, as it's supposed to. It's more obvious from this seat.

"I guess I should make a quick turn to get out of their way," she says, referring to the Jazz flight.

I can see them out of my window. "Nah, they're just starting their backtrack. Take your time," I say. We loop lazily over the airport and en route. I'm stumped for a while on a clue that asks for a zoology word for permanently attached. I'm thinking that arms, legs, tails, most zoological bits are more-or-less permanently attached, and that the exception like the skink's sheddable tail is more deserving of a special name. And then I work out the crossword theme of NINE to FIVE and fill in a few more words, giving me a couple of letters and the now obvious SESSILE. I'm soon down to three clues. I need a "Fighting" team that fits IL_INI, a simple sugar that fits HE_OSE and "Holly" across with I_E_. The team could be anything, because lots of letters are pronounceable there, but none is recognizable. The holly is probably a Latin name. I run the alphabet on the sugar and decide that HEXOSE sounds like a nice name for a sugar, and as IBEX is fauna not flora I go with ICEX for the holly. It's almost definitely not correct in the crossword, but I don't know the holly or the team, and ICEX is a liquid you use to treat the surfaces of deicing boots to make it easier for them to shed ice. (If you're cheap you use Armor-All, but the latter leaves black streaks on your wings.) The same section of the paper yields another, easier crossword puzzle, a word find, a jumble, comics, descriptions of the top ten new reality shows, and a scrabble puzzle. And that's about how long the flight was. There may have been scenery outside, but I doubt it.

I've been here before so I direct her to where we parked then. It's busy, with three commuters at the terminal, a row of little jets lined up along the back of the apron, and people all over the place. We dodged between a Dash-8 just shutting down and a helicopter just starting up to squeeze into our spot beside a hangar.

I go to the FBO to arrange our stay. There's a pilot on the phone to flight services, making "sorry, I'll be right done gestures." I smile and point at the FBO attendant, who is on a different phone. I'm waiting for him. Another pilot is also waiting.

"Are you the Dash-8?" I ask him.

"Oh no," he says, in an accent that's four or five thousand kilometres southeast of here, "much too slow for me." He's one of the jets.

"Something going on in town?" I ask, still wondering what's brought all the traffic. But it turns out that his accent is from much further south than his passengers. He's based in Calgary, just doing a crew change. Apparently Thursday is a big crew change day here.

It's raining. We go to the hotel. Lunch at Boston Pizza. The rest of the day is overdue paperwork, which is why some of this entry is not fully expanded from the terse notes that begat it.

Next Northern Town

I promised you Fort McMurray and now I haven't even seen the Oil Sands Museum before shipping out. I've recently been informed that the Athabaska Oil Sands are this years ice trucks on American TV. I'm always surprised to have Americans know weird details about the north of Canada, but apparently it's all content for cable TV. So maybe you know all about Fort Mac already. I can tell you only that it's strung out along highway 63. There's no downtown 100th Street and 100th Avenue or any grid pattern at all: the oldest streets are named after people and the streets loop around in little sections off the main road. It's an overgrown bush camp, is what it is, and it's still growing. The service is indifferent, like most places in Northern Alberta. People can get high paying jobs easily and it's hard to recruit motivated workers for the service industry.

On the weekend there's no parking at all at the airport, and the long term parking lot contains a lot of very long-term parked vehicles with flat tires. I guess sometimes people who live elsewhere buy a local truck and fly back and forth, then when the contract isn't renewed they abandon the truck. From the air it's like anywhere in northern but not arctic Canada: rocks and trees and lakes. The trees are very green, a combination of the springtime new growth on the evergreens and a large deciduous mix. There's a lot of muskeg swamp. People come up here for recreation, too. Right by the airport there are two camps, one surrounding a little lake and one just at the airport for convenience of its occupants. There aren't many people who say, "I wish I had had longer for sightseeing in Fort McMurray."

After lunch I settle the fuel bill for our training flights. One of my colleagues is short only a few hours PIC for her airline transport pilot application, so I give her the leg to fly. She plans it and tells me there's some low stuff so we'll be at 1500' agl. That's fine with me. She's legally single pilot, but I offer to do the radios and she accepts. I set the GPS for the destination, being careful not to set it to Moose Jaw, this time. She asks my opinion a few times about which way to go around rainstorms, but I know that she doesn't really need it. It's just girl-style CRM. We're flying above a big river and she looks it up on the GPS. "That's the Athabaska." One of the fun things about this job is the number of times I get to just casually fly above some hugely significant geographical feature. The Great Lakes, the Hudson Bay, the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, the Athabaska, Mississippi, St. Lawrence, Fraser Rivers, the Rocky Mountains, the Canadian Shield, the chain of volcanoes that runs from BC to California, the South Dakota badlands, the astonishing flatness of the Canadian prairies in winter. That I can recall being slightly bored above all of these vistas just makes it all the more amazing.

Once en route there's no one to talk to on the radio. I tell her I'm napping and actually do fall asleep for a while despite all the low level bumps. I wake up about fifteen minutes out of our destination. It's still the same rocks, trees, lakes and oil extraction infrastructure, maybe a bit lumpier terrain as we're closer to the Rockies now.

We land and taxi in, asking the flight service specialist where we can buy fuel. The fueller is even there, despite it being Sunday, and tows our plane to parking after fuelling. He even helps with the luggage. Wow, where are we? Texas? You never get service like this in Canada. The customer picks us up in a truck. He's talking on his cellphone "just picking up the pilots ... well, they do have their own vehicle, but it doesn't work so well on roads."

The airport is a ways out of town, so we get to see it. It's another northern town I've never been to. There are trucks and trees and mud. There's talk of building a nuclear power plant here. We go to dinner at a restaurant with a startling large menu: everything from cheeseburgers to lobster dinner. We all order Chinese, the house specialty and get large portions of excellent food, with superior service from a soft-spoken young man who turned everything I ever wrote about northern Alberta service on its ear. He wasn't just enthusiastic. He was skilled. At the end of the meal my fortune cookie promised that I would be reunited with a "lost treasure" this month. Everyone laughs as I express hope that this is my suitcase.

The WestJet website still lists the case of my missing suitcase as "Open" which they define as still looking for it. I had hoped it would be at least "Matched" by now. I've already called them when I found out that I was leaving Fort McMurray, but now I have an address where they can send it, so I call them back. It turns out that my suitcase has been found. It's in Fort McMurray, of course. It got there about the time we left, I imagine. Too bad their tracking system didn't work well enough for me to intercept it. They will fly it to Grande Prairie and then send it to me by bus.

Icing Inexperience

Spring has well and truly sprung in Canada and I've been off camping, paying no attention at all to my blog account mail. I peeked at it recently and it's full of unread mail from you guys and news alerts on the Colgan accident investigation. (I originally blogged about the Colgan 3407 crashthe night it happened).

The cockpit voice recorder transcript was released last week, and a lot of information about the pilots' lifestyle was released at the hearing. If you're reading about a fatal airplane crash, the only thing you can read that can really be said to be a relief is that the crash was misreported, and everyone is alright. That's obviously not the case here. It's still a little bit of a relief to find out some of what happened, because it collapses the network of all the possible bad things that could happened into the few that actually did.

The first thing that hits me reading this transcript is the stunning inexperience of the crew in comparison with Canadian aviation. The captain says he was hired with 625 hours. That would have been as first officer, but you'd be lucky to get a job on a Navajo or a King Air in Canada with that time. The first officer had sixteen hundred hours at the time of the accident, but much of that was as a flight instructor in Phoenix. There she would rarely have seen a cloud, nor below freezing temperatures. In her own words, in the recording made not quite five minutes before she died ...

"I've never seen icing conditions. I've never deiced. I've never seen any-- I've never experienced any of that. I don't want to experience that and make those kind of calls. You know I'd have freaked out. I'd have like seen this much ice and thought oh my gosh we were going to crash."

So she has no basis beyond company training on which to judge the severity of icing. She's never flown northern routes in the spring to places where the most distinctive landmarks are the crashed remains of airplanes that didn't make it. She is depending on the captains she is flying her now to teach her how to make those judgements. And that's part of being a first officer. She's smart enough to know that, too. When talking about the people hired at the same time as her, she notes that many are agitating for an upgrade but that she "really wouldn't mind going through a winter in the northeast before I have to upgrade to captain."

It sounds as if upgrades happen pretty quickly there, and as if not everyone thinks of their period of time as a first officer as an apprenticeship. I originally looked at the fact that Rebecca Shaw had been with the company through a winter and assumed that meant she had experienced icing conditions in that airplane. But I wasn't thinking about the short routes that Colgan uses the Dash-8 on, and that with a southern base, it's possible to go through a US winter without meeting ice.

The captain you would think had more experience, but he accepted the autopilot setting "I've got you in pitch hold," in icing conditions. Regardless of your experience, one of the things that icing training teaches you so you don't have to find out for yourself is that an ice accumulation that looks exactly like the one the airplane handled fine last week may result in completely different handling today. Very subtle changes can have a huge affect on aircraft stbility and handling. Hand flying allows you to notice how the ice is affecting you, if the airplane is needing more trim or more power to hold the same parameters. You don't want an airplane on pitch hold, holding its own nose up without you realizing what it's having to do to achieve that. In ice, that can lead to a stall. And this airplane stalled fifteen seconds after a cheerfully unconcerned radio exchange with air traffic control.

Not only are they talking to ATC, but they are talking to each other. We're getting a complete career analysis from both pilots right through the flight, interspersed with their clearances and checklists. A reader asked me if he thought that women,stereotypically more chatty, were more likely to disregard the sterile cockpit than men. Anyone who reads my blog can tell that I have a lot of verbiage to dispense. But I know what a sterile cockpit is and what it is for and I STFU when required to. I want to be a professional pilot and it's about more than having your hat on straight. Act like one, sound like one. I don't think this is a male-female issue. The captain is keeping up his end of the conversation. It's company culture. The FO says she's been flying with a lot of captains, some of whom can't finesse the rudder, but none of whom have apparently instructed her or demonstrated to her that one shuts up about ones career below ten thousand feet. It's not a difficult culture to instill because how many times would an FO have to have a a captain point at the altimeter or say, "sterile cockpit please" before she never opens her mouth for non-essential communication below ten thousand?

Other evidence from the hearing shows that pilots paid far too little to live at their bases were living far from their bases were commuting across the country and then sleeping on crew room couches before their duty periods. Ever flown a redeye and then had a nap on a couch in a room where people were coming in and out, having discussions and watching TV? Ready to handle any emergency right? And ready to handle three back to back 16-hour shifts? Yeah, right.

I commute across the continent that, but only once a month, and the company ensures I've had eight hours in a hotel bed before I'm expected to work. Three back-to-back 16 hour duty days is criminal. I'll work three fourteens and I'm beat. There's no way I'd be safe with another two hours on each of those days. I worked back-to-back sixteens like that back when I was seventeen years old. After a few days of that routine, I slept right through my alarm and was late for work. But I didn't get in trouble. The doughnut shop *manager* got in trouble for scheduling me that way. Yes, I was working in a doughnut shop, not flying an airplane. It seems that Canadian doughnuts and coffee are deemed by company upper management to deserve more alert supervision than the controls of a Colgan commuter airline. The FO also seems to have had a cold--she sneezes more than once during the flight and the captain is inquiring about her ability to clear her ears as they descend, even planning the descent profile for her comfort.

A manager at Colgan suggested random audits of the CVR for compliance with sterile cockpit procedures. That's not where professional flying comes from. Train and examine people to the standards you expect. Spot checks? What is this, summer camp? If you have to do spot checks of basic safety proedures, you're hiring the wrong people or training them incorrectly.

Choose Your Own Misadventure

You are the commander of a Boeing 737 passing through 10,000' and setting up for a visual approach. You realize that you have misjudged the wind and your descent profile. You are likely to be too high and fast. You:
a) extend speed brakes
b) fly further out than usual before turning final
c) recheck your calulations
d) nose down and go faster, hoping it will work out

You are still high and fast. You call for flap 15 but the co-pilot does not respond to your request. You:
a) ask him why he did not do as you asked
b) yell at him
c) extend them yourself
d) continue the approach without flaps

You are on final approach and the flaps are set to five degrees extension. The manual calls for at least thirty degrees of flaps for landing, but the manual also calls for a much lower airspeed before extending that much flap. You:
a) try to extend the flaps anyway
b) leave them up and land anyway
c) conduct a missed approach

You believe the flaps are malfunctioning, as you have selected them down but the airplane is not slowing as it usually does. You:
a) continue the approach at high speed
b) check all your power settings and other parameters
c) conduct a missed approach, extend the flaps at altitude and have a crew member go aft to the passenger cabin to confirm the position visually

You encounter windshear on approach to a runway. You:
a) conduct a missed approach in accordance to your company procedures
b) land with minimal flaps at above normal speed
c) continue at whatever speed and configuration you can attain, just to get the airplane on the ground.

You are at the position on the approach where your company manual calls for you to be stabilized. You are so high and so fast that the airplane automated systems think you are crashing. You:
a) attempt to land
b) conduct a missed approach

You are almost a hundred feet above the runway threshhold, well above landing speed and not in landing configuration. The copilot is telling you to conduct a missed approach, and does not confirm landing checks complete. You:
a) attempt to land
b) conduct a missed approach

You touch down over a third of the way down the runway, at well over maximum tire speed. The airplane bounces twice, pulling almost three Gs, and the nose gear collapses while the copilot yells at you to go around. One of the engines comes off its pylon. You:
a) kill 22 people and injure almost everyone else.

Sadly, there is only one choice in the end, and that is the adventure a real life commander chose.

Indonesian pilot Marwoto Komar has been sentenced to two years in jail after being found guilty of criminal negligence for attempting to land a Boeing 737 in the wrong configurations and at almost twice the normal speed. The jet overran the end of the runway into a rice field. Twenty-two people were killed and fifty were seriously injured in the crash and ensuing fire. The Daily Telegraph story here includes a dramatic photo of the post crash fire.

According to the investigation report, the aircraft was already fast through 10,000' on the approach, as they exceeded the crew accepted a straight in visual approach to Yogyakarta but continued on the ILS approach without informing ATC. As long as someone is looking out the window, there's not a lot of difference between a well-flown long straight in visual and an ILS approach, but unfortunately this was neither. The aircraft arrived overhead the initial approach fix high and fast. Not just a little bit high, but at 3927' instead of 2500'. It wouldn't be the first time a crew had cut a few corners and come in too high, but the captain, who was the pilot flying, elected to rectify the situation by lowering the nose into a steep descent. There's an expression in aviation: you can go down or slow down. They had been trying to do both for the whole descent, at one point reaching 293 knots below 10,000', knowing they had a tailwind.

The captain called for more flaps, but the first officer did not extend them because the airspeed was 33 knots over flap extension speed. The captain continued to ask for flap fifteen right through the approach, but the FO never extended them nor gave a reason why he was not doing so. The ground proximity warning system reacted to the configuration, speed and rate of descent by issuing alerts and warnings, which the crew ignored, fifteen times.

They arrived over the beginning of the runway still 89 feet in the air and travelling at 232 kts with flap 5 (as opposed to the manufacturer's recommended 134 kts with flap 40). The aircraft touched down 860 m from the threshhold (more than a third of the way along the runway), bounced twice, then landed again still well over the recommended tire speed. The nosewheel tire burst, sending up sparks as what was left of the gear scraped along the runway. Both thrust reversers were deployed, and presumably the brakes were applied, but with too much speed and too little runway remaining, the overrun was inevitable.

It does not appear that there were any mitigating issues such as approaching weather, critical fuel, or pre-existing emergency.

There are so many issues here. I'll touch responsibility, training, co-pilot assertiveness and the role of the criminal justice sytem in air safety.

The captain never took responsibility for the crash. "Lack of remorse" was even cited as a factor in his sentencing. Compare to Captains Sullenberger and Haynes who saved lives landing airplanes crippled by circumstances beyond their control, but later agonized over what they could have done better. It's almost bizarre how Komar blamed everyone and everything but himself. He attended the trial in uniform, and fully expected to return to work.

He claimed windshear at touchdown. It's a known problem in the area and something a captain with over 13,000 hours of experience should be able to recognize, but there were no other reports of windshear in the area, no indication that it might be present from the detailed winds aloft, and a professional approach marred by windshear is inconsistent with the speed profile recorded throughout the descent.

He claimed that the flaps were faulty and did not extend when selected, but investigation found "no evidence of any defect or malfunction with the aircraft or its systems that could have contributed to the accident." The chief crash investigator, Mardjono Siswosuwarno, said the aircraft's wing flaps failed to extend for landing and that might have been caused by the high speed, but that's not something the captain can blame on the flaps.

The captain also levelled blame at the co-pilot, for not lowering the flaps, and at the poor emergency services. Admittedly the copilot did not clearly refuse the flap extension command by stating "Unable, we're thirty knots high" or whatever his SOP callout was, and the emergency services at the field were poor and contributed to the death toll, but none of that excuses the captain's actions.

The PIC said that he was unaware of the actual airspeed and expected that the copilot would inform him of any speed concerns, but that doesn't align with the comments he made during the descent, or the knowledge that someone with 3700 hours on the airplane would have to possess. The copilot called for a go around before and after touchdown, and the captain did not respond. It has been suggested, (but the captain has denied) that a company incentive to save fuel led to the decision to continue the unstable approach.

Poor training probably contributes to the decisions the crew made. For example, training records showed that the pilots had attended an "introductory" GPWS course with no evidence of related sim training. Non-pilot staff seem to be lacking some basic training in public relations, seeing as they got took their pictures taken, smiling, with the burned out wreckage. But how much training does it take to choose a missed approach at some point in that accident sequence? The copilot doesn't seem to have had sim training in the actions he needed to take in order to take control of the airplane from a captain who has not stabilized the approach. He did try. He said, he had shouted at the captain to go around because "that was the proper procedure ... to ask people to go around with yelling".

And that's tough. You need training, confidence and a company culture that will support taking an airplane away from a captain. This co-pilot stuck up for the captain after the crash. I don't believe that he literally blacked out from the g-forces. I think he needs a story to tell himself to explain why he did not take control and perform the missed approach. It reminds me of Michael Origel, the co-pilot of American Airlines flight 1420 that overran the runway in Little Rock Arkansas during a landing in a thunderstorm. Origel insists that he called for a go around, despite the fact that experts can find no trace of it on the CVR. I believe him. The voice in his head screaming that this was not right was so loud that he can't believe the captain and the recording microphone didn't pick it up. Has there ever been an accident in which a copilot's loud demands that a captain go-around were cited as a cause or contributing factor? Ever hear of a copilot fired for asking a captain to go around? I can name names, hell I have a pocket in my formal coat containing funeral programmes that name names of people who might be alive today had they demanded a go around.

But considering all the things that people did or didn't do, should or shouldn't have known to do, was a criminal act committed? They broke company policy in the lack of a stabilized approach, but I don't know that they broke air regulations. Could the possibility of the CVR being introduced as testimony in court cause pilots not to admit errors in flight?

It is very uncommon for a pilot to be charged with a crime in connection with a crash. It's a somewhat disturbing precedent when you're a pilot. We're usually assumed to be doing what we believe is best for the flight, in defense our own necks, and air law gives us a lot of latitude to do things that would otherwise be against the rules to defend our safety. Any misjudgements we make already force us to face possible injury or death and then we have to defend them to our own conscience, our boss, and the aviation regulatory authority. Do we need to add the civil justice system?

The decisions the captain made during this flight seem reckless. I think his conviction is closer to the correct outcome than having the manufacturer sued for the flaps failing to deploy at excessibe speeds, but I'm not convinced that the justice system should have a role here.