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.

More Vague Pontification on Resetting CBs

As I said yesterday, anytime anything in the airplane emits smoke, fire or a burning/melting smell, it should be immediately turned off and its circuit breaker pulled and left that way until trusted maintenance personnel have examined it. Whether the behaviour led to a popped CB is irrelevant. There's obviously electricity going where it oughtn't.

Prior to the accident that started this discussion a pilot did exactly that. He wrote on the form provided for that purpose "Radar went blank during cruise flight. Recycled – no response ... smell of electrical components burning turned off unit – pulled radar CB – smell went away. Radar inop." That's pretty much what I'd do. Except that the 'radar inop' note might imply that he reset the CB and turned it back on to check. I would just assume that the release of the magic smoke heralded the death of the instrument. (Everyone knows about that, right? During the manufacture of sophisticated electronic equipment, little puffs of magic smoke are captured and held in various components. If at some point in the operation of the device the magic smoke escapes, that portion of the device will no longer work).

Pilots should not attempt to operate clearly non-functioning or malfunctioning equipment. One member of our fleet contains an old fashioned strike finder that doesn't work. It displays random blips of light but nothing useful. It's been placarded U/S for over a year. I fly it with the CB pulled.

The NTSB pointed out that:

Pulling the circuit breaker for the weather radar stopped a symptom (the burning smell) of the problem by removing electrical power from the circuit; however, it did not correct the underlying problem. Airplane electrical system anomalies that result in smoke and/or burning odors are indications of possible fire hazards. Moreover, the heat, smoke, fumes, and restrictions to visibility associated with an in-flight fire can represent a significant hazard to airplane occupants and adversely affect an airplane’s airworthiness.

The maintenance department told the senior of the two accident pilots about the weather radar problem, both by phone and in person, but the NTSB investigators believe that the other pilot probably reset the breaker as part of his preflight. His preflight should also have included reading the squawk sheet, as I believe Americans call the list of aircraft discrepancies. While some people might say that such resetting falls within the bounds of the "reset once" policy, I think it's a different matter entirely. If you find CBs pulled on preflight you should be finding out why. It may be as simple as asking your engineer "Hey Jan, did you pull the CBs for the lights here?" It's usual for engineers to pull breakers while working on systems and not unheard of for them to forget to reset everything.

According to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) air traffic control records, about 0832:49, shortly after reaching a cruise altitude of 6,000 feet mean sea level, the ATP contacted air traffic control to declare an emergency, stating, “smoke in the cockpit we need…to land at Sanford.” The air traffic controller cleared the flight to proceed directly to SFB and descend to 2,000 feet. DAB airport surveillance radar data indicated that the airplane subsequently turned toward SFB and began to descend. The last radio transmission from the airplane was received about 0833:15. This transmission terminated midsentence and seemed to include the phrase, “shutoff all radios, elec[trical].”

That's startlingly fast. I too would try to make a quick radio call in busy airspace before making the airplane dark and silent. You don't know how long the two were coping with the problem before the initial radio call, but the accident was only ten minutes into the flight, so obviously not very long.

I agree with the conclusion made by the NTSB about the probable cause. It wasn't about circuit breakers.

The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable causes of this accident were the actions and decisions by NASCAR’s corporate aviation division’s management and maintenance personnel to allow the accident airplane to be released for flight with a known and unresolved discrepancy, and the accident pilots’ decision to operate the airplane with that known discrepancy, a discrepancy that likely resulted in an in-flight fire.

If you're flying an airplane that is flown by many people without a good means of communication of problems encountered, then you probably don't want to reset something even once. If you fly the same airplane all the time and you trust and communicate with all the others who fly it, maybe you do. If you have a journey log or a snag sheet do read through and see what has gone wrong lately, and what is still wrong that you might not want to accept. Reading this accident report and discussion has not made me uncomfortable with any of the times I have reset breakers. It has made me happier about the times I haven't. If it makes any difference to the people who disagree with our attempt to reset the flap CB a couple of weeks ago, we were on the phone to maintenance at the time and that was the first thing they asked.

Of course it's different for them because they are usually on the ground and can run away. As the report says, "An in-flight fire, especially one located in front of the pilots and directly over their legs, would be very distracting." And I thought the faulty gauge was distracting!

Also, this is very relevant to me. I long to tear out the entire dashboard and start over in so many of the planes I have flown.

Postmanufacture electrical system modifications and installations often result in general aviation maintenance personnel performing critical work among densely packed layers of wiring of different ages and materials

And I can always be wrong. The report says that "the ATP’s instructor stated that the ATP was “highly qualified,” required little or no academic instruction, and showed “exceptional” proficiency during his two simulator sessions. As I read that I thought, "That's what I want people to say about me." And then I had to add, "But not under those circumstances."

The Flaps That Make It Rise

Recently someone forwarded this article to a mailing list I read. In excerpt:

Jumbo jet packed with British tourists seconds from disaster after it fails to rise on take-off

By Daily Mail Reporter Last updated at 2:21 AM on 01st June 2009

Hundreds of passengers narrowly avoided disaster when their plane nearly crashed after taking off.

The British Airways plane shook violently and did not rise more than 30ft above the ground as it set off from Johannesburg to London.

The pilot has been praised for his quick actions in keeping the Boeing 747 in the air, saving the lives of the 256 passengers on board. Miraculous escape: The British Airways Boeing 747 is thought to have gone into landing mode so that the flaps that make it rise did not work.

Travelling at 200mph, he dumped enough fuel for the aircraft to eventually gain height, before returning it to the airport.

It is believed that a technical fault caused the plane to go into landing mode so that the flaps that normally make it rise did not work.

An investigation is under way as to how the jet came so close to crashing.

A BA spokesman said: 'As a precaution BA56 Johannesburg to Heathrow flight on Monday May 11 returned to the airport shortly after take-off due to a suspected technical problem.

'The Boeing 747 aircraft with 256 passengers on board landed safely and the customers disembarked as normal into the airport.

'We are cooperating fully with the South African aviation safety authority's investigation into the flight.'

Referring to the pilot's quick actions, he added: 'Our crews are trained extensively to deal with all eventualities.'

So "the flaps that make it rise" weren't working. Before reading part on, what would you think this term referred to?

It could be the actual flaps, and there are certainly accidents that result when flaps are mistakenly not extended, but flaps are normally used for landing, so 'going into landing mode' doesn't make sense. If the airplane did get off the ground with no flaps and into level flight, I'd expect it to have accelerated rapidly. They say 200 mph. That's slow, but is it in the slow flight regime for a B747? I don't know. I also don't know which orifice they pulled the 200 mph number out of.

I considered that "the flaps that make it rise" were the two sides of the elevator. It does flap like the flukes of a whale, and certainly when it is raised, the airplane normally pitches up. But operation of the elevator is not suppressed during landing.

I thought also of things like spoilers or leading edge devices: anything tab-shaped that protrudes from the airplane could be a flap. But nothing matched well enough to seem like more than a wild guess.

Fortunately a member of the mailing list found an NTSB report on the flight. Without the identifying details of type, airline and airport I wouldn't even have matched the tabloid story to the report.

On May 11, 2009 at 18:37 UTC, a British Airways Boeing 747, powered by Rolls-Royce RB211-524H2-T engines, experienced a No. 3 thrust reverser unlock light illumination during the takeoff roll from the Tambo International Airport (FAJS - formerly known as Johannesburg International Airport) while the airplane was traveling at 124 knots. The No. 2 engine thrust reverser unlock light came on at 163 knots and just prior to rotation the slats retracted. The airplane rotated and climbed at a 200 foot per minute rate. The flight crew dumped fuel and did an air turn back to FAJS where a safe and uneventful landing was made.

So the flaps that made this particular airplane rise appear to have been the slats, which the NTSB report must be using as a generic term for leading edge lift devices. The B747 uses Krueger flaps instead of slats to modify the wing for takeoff. The Krueger flaps fold out from under the leading edge of the wing, creating a barrier to air incident there. This makes the airflow behave as though the leading edge of the wing were thicker and rounder, just like the wing on an airplane designed to go slowly, thus giving the wing more lift at low speeds.

Mind you, if forced to condense that into six words I'm not sure I'd come up with anything much more meaningful than "the flaps that make it rise." Anyone?

I'm scheduling this to post a week or so after I'm writing it, because everyone is talking about Air France 447 at the moment. Although when you see this, I doubt the voices will have resolved the divided opinions:

• a thunderstorm alone could have done this to a perfectly good airplane
• there must be a flaw in the aircraft for a thunderstorm to do this
• the pilots or the software must have reacted badly to exacerbate the situation
• It was terrorists/a meteor/aliens that did it

People I respect and who are more knowledgeable than I inhabit each of the first three camps, so I'm not putting up my tent anywhere. My traffic is way up from people finding this blog by searching on terms like "coffin corner" and "stall recovery." That means that instead of just talking to the people I hang out with, my regular readers, I'm also addressing a lot of spectators who don't "know" me. I do think it's possible we'll never have a satisfactory answer to what happened on that flight.

Long Green Locks

I didn't to get my hair cut immediately before I started this work rotation. I usually do, because my hair grows really fast, but this last time home I got it cut immediately on arrival, so I'd look civilized for the passport photo, thus it had a bit of time to grow before I left, and has been growing ever since. It's going to need cutting pretty badly before I get back. It needs cutting now. I could get it done locally, but (and guys won't understand this), even if I didn't end up with Texas-style "big hair," I'd still be betraying my own hairdresser. I figured I could fake it pretty well with hair gel, but they don't seem to sell anything but extra firm hold hair wax. Or maybe I just don't recognize the brands. I abort the hair gel acquisition mission and wear a hat a lot. But my hair is getting in my eyes, too.

These bangs have to go. Well I'll just cut it. And obviously cutting hair is important, you don't want ragged stupid hair all month. I'm not sufficiently badass to do it the way Starbuck did in season three of Battlestar Galactica. I don't have a hair and make up department to step in and make it look like I did a good job hacking my hair off with my knife. But I can fly an ILS, surely I can cut some hair. So I do it very carefully, as straight as I can, with logical precision. Just like flying an ILS, right?

So how'd that work out for you Aviatrix?

Shut up.

I look like Spock.

Communications Failure

No, there's nothing wrong with the radio, and the headset hasn't undergone a final disintegration. It's my mouth. I can't seem to get communications right with this customer. I try to be really communicative, because that's one of my strengths. I can express myself, explain things, recognize information that will help people make decisions, and share it in a way that is relevant and understandable to them. I've never fallen prey to the desire for power through withholding information. Yay for me! But I keep telling these customers things that make them angry.

For example, I received a text from my company about our planned maintenance schedule. I called the customer to get his approval on that plan, and while there was nothing wrong with the plan, and we were willing to change it if there was, the customer was unhappy. I believe he felt ambushed because a mere pilot knew before he did. I should have waited until my boss told his boss and his boss told him, so he'd know in a day or so, instead of my getting the information to him as soon as possible.

It just seems wrong to me to have information that someone needs and wants, and that is intended for him anyway, but to be obliged to withhold it until it arrives through the proper channels.

It's not all cruising along above the mountains, joking with ATC and recalculating my fuel reserves.

It Was Right Next to the "Fly To Calgary" Button

The Aviation Herald reports a little excitement on a Westjet Flight departing Abbotsford BC.

Incident: Westjet B736 at Abbotsford on Jan 20th 2009, navigation system flies different route than pilots

The crew of a Westjet Boeing 737-600, registration C-GWSB performing flight WS-456 from Abbotsford,BC to Calgary,AB (Canada) with 104 people on board, noticed during an RNP (Required Navigation Procedure, precision RNAV navigation) departure, that the airplane was not following the programmed standard instrument departure route. The airplane was below minimum safe altitude. The crew contacted Victoria Terminal and was issued radar vectors away from high terrain. The airplane continued to the destination for a safe landing.

Subsequently it was established, that the engine out procedure had been inadvertently activated in the flight management system.

Now you see why a pilot might want to shoot the FMS?

Two Settings

The weather associated with the warm front has passed and a cold front is expected tomorrow. The customer calls me in the afternoon to go and do some flying. While I am preparing the airplane for takeoff, my replacement arrives at the airport. He appears around the hangar from the airside. I assume he disembarked through the terminal and then reaccessed the airside at the FBO, as opposed to hopping off the airliner and strolling down the apron. Procedures at this airport aren't that lax.

It's good to see him. I arrange to meet him again the next morning for a handover briefing. The best time will be at 6 am before he has to meet with the customers. It will mean only four or five hours sleep for me, as I expect to land around midnight and not be in bed for an hour or so after that, but tomorrow is not a duty day for me and I can try and sleep on the airline, and then go home and sleep for real. Any alternative would either delay this flight or delay his duty rest tonight. He's been on airplanes all day to get here.

There's only a little bit of light left in the sky by the time I take off. I probably didn't log it as a night takeoff, but I probably didn't log it as a night landing, either. I always forget. I probably have hundreds of hours of night flying logged as day flying in my logbook. It will get a lot colder as the night goes on, and there may be some mist, too. During the day you barely need the heater while the outside air temperature is above -10C because the bodies inside keep it pretty warm and the sun seems to come in the windows better than it goes out. Flying greenhouse. I have the heater turned on now, but on low. The outside air temperature is -4C, just below freezing. I don't have a thermometer showing inside, but I'm comfortable sitting in a sweater.

It gets a bit darker and a bit colder and after an hour or so I'm asked for some more heat in the back. "Coming right up!" I move the temperature selector placebo lever to the right. Not all the way to the right, because if you turn this heater to full there's a chance that the overtemp detector will cut in and pop the circuit breaker before the heater cycles off on its own. That might not sound so bad, except that the CB for the heater is not accessible from the cockpit, nor from anywhere inside the airplane. You can't reset it until after landing. It's meant to be a failsafe against cold pilots desperate for heat if the heater really is malfunctioning. Too bad they couldn't have done it with a self-resetting thermocouple of some sort, but seeing as the heater is a drum in the nose, just forward of my feet that is literally burning gasoline, overcaution is a good thing. Another name for these heaters is "nose bombs."

About fifteen minutes later it's still too cold in the back. I tweak the lever over further, and turn the heater switch off and on again. Perhaps the heater cycled off and didn't restart for some reason. The weird thing is that there's two heaters, one in the front and one in the back, so can they both have died? When I have passengers I've been running the back one from takeoff in the cold, and then turning on the front one when I get cold or when they ask for more heat, but I now suspect that the back one hasn't really been working. I can't test it on the ground, because you're not allowed to run it on the ground: there is insufficient cooling.

It's still getting colder in the back. Damnit! I let them know that I am sorry, that I am doing all I can to heat it up, and that I am personally willing to continue. Paranoia (pilots call it "safety concerns") drives me to dress for every flight as if I am going to have to spend the night in the wilderness. So it's not unsafe for me to fly without a heater, and my airplane is sufficiently old-fashioned enough that freezing temperatures don't affect the essential flight instruments. If the flight is to be discontinued, it is their call.

And they call it. Their computers aren't tolerating the still-dropping temperatures so I head back to land. I don't know what is wrong with the heater, but I don't try to troubleshoot in the dark.

I clean up the cockpit and make sure I've left all the charts and airplane specific equipment. I pack everything that is my equipment into my flightbag and neaten up the seatbelts and so on, so it will look nice for my co-worker in the morning.

He's still up, so I head by his room and debrief there. I fill him in on the customer expectations, the FBO hours, the telephone number that is supposed to summon deicing, and the restaurants to avoid. I give him the logbooks and other paperwork. And I tell him apologetically about the heater situation I have left for him. "With luck, it's just a circuit breaker," I suggest hopefully. He asks if the heater was on high. I shake my head. He knows how it works too, so neither of us is very confident that a circuit breaker will fix the problem. "There's a good chance, though," I confess, "that when you turn it on it will just work. I seem to have psychological influence over airplanes. And I really wanted to go home more than I wanted to fly tonight." He doesn't even laugh. He's seen enough capricious airplane behaviour not to blink at it.

I really have seen such behaviour but there are more rational explanations than a pilot's subconscious mind having the power to suppress electrical circuits and bend metal. Things go wrong with airplanes all the time. It's the nature of the beast. This is just a matter of when and where we notice them and recall them. Firstly, a pilot who really would rather not fly today is more likely to notice and respond correctly to an indication that something is not right. A pilot who really wants to get the hell out of an Indian reservation in the middle of nowhere is very unlikely to notice a broken MP gauge before takeoff. So the defect will go unnoticed there and will instead show up when the pilot is home at the maintenance base, or somewhere else the pilot doesn't mind being stuck. And secondly, when the defect is noticed, if it's something that delays the pilot but has no other particular impact, it's not long remembered. There are many causes of delay and thy happen all the time. But when the defect spares the pilot from having to make a flight she didn't really want to do anyway, it takes on more import, and is longer remembered. I imagine that there is some correlation between pilot morale and "ramp rash" too. Pilots like to be in control, so claiming psychokinetic responsibility for things we have no control over is right up our alley.

In the morning the heater does start up flawlessly. It wasn't the power of my subconscious mind, however. When we consult the mechanic about it he asks what was the outside air temperature, what was the humidity like, and what was the heater setting. That the answers are respectively "just below freezing," "some visible moisture," and "low" solves the mystery. Set to low, the heater runs for a while then shuts off and lets the temperature drop. With the outside temperature -4C and not -20C the airplane cools slowly, so the off cycle lasts for several minutes. During cooling the pitot tube-like air intake is collecting moisture, which freezes and blocks the intake. And then the heater cannot restart.

So not only does out heater have the traditional two settings "too hot" and "off," but those two settings are too hot and leave it on for the whole flight or else versus off for the rest of the flight. You can't win. But at least I can go home.

Fun With the Constitution

As the entire planet knows, the USA recently had an election. A few of you also know that Canada had an election too. The US race will result in a change of governing party, but the handover won't occur until January when the president-elect will become the first US president with recent African ancestry. (I say "recent" because current science suggests that all our ancestors were Africans. It's just that some walked out long before recorded history, some were abducted, and some voluntarily emigrated). Meanwhile the Canadian election resulted in no change of Prime Minister, but now the party in power has only a minority of seats in the House. This blog entry discusses the current constitutional wrangling with respect to the Canadian government, which is a bit of a joke, and then a joke relating to the US constitution and their recent "historic election."

Canada first: When the ruling party in Canada is defeated in the House of Commons on a money bill or in a specific non-confidence vote, the Prime Minister has to go cap-in-hand to the Governor-General (the Queen's representative in Canada and our titular head of state) and ask for a decision. She can ask another party to form the government, call an election, or give everyone a timeout (prorogue). The PM can recommend a decision, and the GG usually abides by his recommendation, but she doesn't have to.

Last week a coalition of two parties, aided by a written agreement with a third stated its intention to vote against an important bill. The coalition has informed the Governor-General that they are prepared to form the government but the vote has been delayed because the GG granted the PM a prorogue. Meanwhile the ruling party, the Conservatives is casting disparagement on the opposing Liberals and NDP because they are allying with the separatist Bloc Quebecois. The Conservatives have a secret tape recording of advance planning of the coup. How do they have it? A member of the Conservative party was accidentally invited to a conference call on the subject, on account of having the same last name and a similar e-mail address to a Liberal MP. Meanwhile the Liberals have found an even older document proving that the Conservatives planned to do exactly the same thing if they were in the same position. Pundits are calling it a constitutional crisis, but it makes me laugh.

Politicians everywhere try to make their opponents look bad, and that's the theme of the US joke, a way that the Republicans could really tick off the Democrats. If George Bush were to resign before the inauguration, VP Dick Cheney would become president. Now that would annoy a lot of people, but here's the funny part. If Dick Cheney were to make Condolezza Rice his VP, and then resign himself, the Republicans could lay claim to the first African-American President of the United States.

By the way, the United States will be the third and last country on the continent to have a head of state who can trace ancestory to Africa. Mexico had the first in 1829 and Canada's Governor-General Michaëlle Jean is a first generation Haïtian immigrant.

I know I can trust you guys to comment on this blog entry without disparaging any of the candidates or the people who voted for them.

Attention Canadians: VOTE TODAY

Canadians: Don't forget to vote!

I always find tears coming to my eyes when I see news pictures of newly emancipated people lined up around the block to vote, or coming out of the polling booth showing the inked finger that is their country's equivalent of voter registration lists. I don't know if it's happiness for their pride in the new power of democracy, or sympathy for the soon to be shattered naïvité of people who think that casting that ballot really is going to make their world better.

It's not a very big power, because there's so much going on above our heads controlling the choice offered to us, and the way people behave once chosen, but it's still an important part of the system. Know what the candidates offer you. Know what you want. And make a choice.

David's Daughter

By the unanimous and gracious decision of my readers, the winner of last week's baseball ticket giveaway is David's daughter. I will send David the gift card code and the website link, and I assume the young lady can go from there to choose the exact nature of her prize. I hope she'll get back to us to say what game she saw, and how it went. If she likes to write, she could even do a guest blog entry on the subject.

Also let it be known that henceforth Callsign Echo bears the official title of Posterperson for Readers of Aviatrix's Blog. I'm not sure what her duties and privileges as such are, but I'm sure she'll tell you if you ask her.

Further to the topic of readers and titles, let me introduce the title of a reader's new blog. A few posts ago we were talking about the logistics of turning around a B767 between flights and Dispatcher mused about having plenty of tales to tell. I offered to host some on my blog, but my services won't be needed. You can go to Dispatcher's Diaries and read them there. It's an interesting new angle for the aviation blogosphere.

Clunk, Part I

Despite local doubt in our ability to progress, we taxi out at Oneonta. I get Lite Flyer to make the call, and she says something reasonably similar to "backtracking" before we enter the runway and taxi out. I think she had me do that takeoff but I don't remember. I remember watching the trees pass below as we climbed out over them, with my hand guarding the throttle while I waited for a suitable altitude and position to pull the throttle back to climb power. The motto on the airport sign was City of the Hills but there are still landable fields around, and where there aren't, there are lakes. It's very freeing having any calm water be a suitable landing site!

The airplane has two throttle levers, one for my right hand and on on the other side for Lite Flyer's left hand. That's a kind of odd thing, because you can have your hand over the throttle and someone else can move it. Lite Flyer hasn't scared me yet, though, because she makes very gradual throttle movements. She has to watch out when she is levelling off because this airplane has enough power to go through Vne in level flight at climb power. The manufacturer's checklist has "flaps as required" after takeoff and "flaps up" in the cruise checks. I have been "requiring" them up in the after takeoff checks, as it would be very easy to overspeed them at level-off. While I'm on the topic of cockpit controls, I'll make it clear that the airplane has dual sticks. The shared controls include the brakes and the trim. The brakes are operated with two hand levers that would fall under my left wrist if I had an armrest. There is one brake on each main wheel, with a separate lever for each. I push the levers forward to brake, a little counterintuitve at first, especially as the levers sit right where I might expect throttles to. The trim is a stubby lever right between the brake levers. It's probably my least favourite control, but I talked with the manufacturer and he tried it in a number of places and that seemed to be the best of a bad list for airplanes that required full dual controls. If the airplane was to be fitted with only one set of controls he could put the trim on the side and that worked better. The trim lever is quite stiff while the controls are very light, so I find that in this airplane I more often 'trim and test' and trim again than trim to what I feel right away. That may also be the fault of the fact that a very small travel of the trim lever makes a big difference to the trim.

I'm expecting four to five thousand foot ceilings for the latter half of our flight, but the winds will be so much better at 5500' that I ask Lite Flyer to climb that high. Reaching 4500' I hear a change in the engine sound that I couldn't testify actually occurred, but that I don't like. Maybe it's just the batteries running low in my noise cancelling headset. Or it's all in my head like the "automatic rough running" you get over inhospitable terrain. I look at the gauges. The cylinder head temperature and oil temperature are high, just as one would expect in a steady climb. They are no higher than they have been in other climbs, but something tells me I don't like it. I ask her to level off for a moment, and set cruise power, just to let the engine cool off a little. So sue us if we're at a wrong way altitude.

The engine changes sound as she sets cruise power, of course, and now I can't say if I still hear or if I ever heard anything I didn't like. We continue at that altitude for a while and the engine temperatures come back down exactly as one would expect. The engine does absolutely nothing unexpected. I feel rebellious and exposed at the wrong-way altitude--going northeast we should be at 3500' or 5500', not 4500'--but I don't tell her to climb again. There are a few clouds above us and she is uncomfortable flying when her visibility is not 360 degrees. And for that matter I can already see that the forecast lower ceilings are going to occur. But I don't ask her to descend, because the terrain ahead will be higher and altitude is life insurance. Plus I want that tailwind. I just can't believe that we are this far north and could still run afoul of a tropical storm.

Winds are just about perfect here, giving us groundspeeds over 80 kts. We reach the New York-Vermont border perhaps an hour and a half after takeoff. I muse to Lite Flyer, somewhat puzzled, about the scepticism that we would make it this far. "They have airplanes. Do they only fly around in circles and not know how small the states are here?"

The ski hills start at the Vermont border, but I quickly see that I have nothing to fear terrain wise. The ski resorts are on ridges which themselves are neither very high nor very wide, and the terrain between them is flat and cleared. I didn't even detour from the straight line route through the pass as I had planned. There was an area beyond the ski resorts where the terrain became crinkly for a while, but its saving grace was that it was dotted with lakes. With this airplane, lake equals landing site.

We continue over an area marked on the chart for heavy glider use, but we spot no gliders. Vermont turns into New Hampshire, which looks the same but is flatter and has bigger lakes. I am tempted to go down and do a touch and go on one, just for fun. The wind is still at our backs, the GPS tells us we'll be in Maine within both daylight and fuel range, and all is well. And then there is a loud clunk.

Lite Flyer had the controls, but we both heard the clunk. "What was that?" she asks me.

No bullshit from me. "I don't know. Was there any feeling from the controls when it happened?"

Nothing. She heard the sound, but the airplane didn't jerk. The engine gauges haven't budged, and the engine is running smoothly. I take control and gently test the control authority about each axis. There is no binding, no difference from before. I direct Lite Flyer to look out her side as I look out mine, for anything flapping, damaged, bent, odd in any way. Neither of us can see anything. All the flying wires we can see are intact. The wheels are still visible outside the windows. There are no feathers or blood on the visible airframe. The baggage is secure, has not shifted, and is composed of small cloth knapsacks, anyway. There's nothing to go clunk.

And it was definitely a clunk, not a snap, not a whump. I'll leave you in suspense for a while to wonder, as we did what that clunk was. I did find out. And let me tell you, my mouth went dry.

Second Class Citizen

So, having passed the portion of the flight test that takes place on the ground, I head out to the airplane. You don't go flying unless you pass on the ground.

When we get to the airplane, the examiner surprises me by pointing to parts of the airplane and asking me questions about them. Not that I mind, I know the systems well; it surprises me that he thought there was a reasonable chance of an instructor candidate not being able to identify and describe the function of a wing root cabin air intake, the filtered air intake, the alternator belt and the underwing fuel tank vent. He is satisfied with my answers, although I have to think a moment about whether the overvoltage light will go on in this aircraft in the case of a broken alternator belt. I hold his door for him, let him know the seat is adjusted full aft, and start to explain how to get in, as if he were a student. That's okay, he says, just get in. "I take it you decline the passenger briefing?" I ask.

"Offered and declined," he says, a mental tick in a box. "I want to spend as little time as possible in these things."

I start up, get taxi clearance and taxi out. He asks for a soft field takeoff, my favourite, and I demonstrate one. Next he wants me to teach him straight and level flight. I show him how to use the trim, and chastise him for looking inside the cabin for it. He makes it easy to pretend he is really a student, as he's a good roleplayer, so I just relax and do what I am good at. He asks me to demonstrate some maneuvers, teach others and evaluate others as he does them. He demonstrates a beautiful perfect steep turn and I tell him he would get a four out of four for it on a flight test. steep turn pretty much perfect, Mine was not as good. I am hamfooted, if that's a word: hamfisted with my feet. The airplanes I fly for work need bootsful of rudder, whereas this little airplane needs me to merely think about the rudder for it to be too much rudder.

As we approached the airport he said that he would do the landing and that I should assess him, as I would before a first solo to see if he was ready to go on his own. I give him control and see that he is set up very high for the field. I ask him matter-of-factly (not with the "you might want to think about this" edge in my voice that an instructor uses when hinting) what flap setting he plans to land with, and what he planned touchdown point is. He says twenty degrees flap, and the beginning of the third centreline stripe. Both are reasonable choices, although I don't usually teach a student to land with more than ten degrees flap until after first solo. I look at his eyes to make sure he keeps a proper lookout, He keeps his hand on the throttle and makes small, necessary corrections around all three axes of movement and with the power. He is on track for a for a flawless landing. He carries it to the runway like that and at the last moment I realize what he is going to do. I brace and put my hand ready to grab the yoke, even though I know that he won't carry through and do what a student might do.

The airplane rounds out sightly and then meets the runway smack!. The nosewheel comes down at the same moment as the mains. It's a perfectly calculated bad landing. I'm not sure I could do a bad landing so well. I say nothing until we have taxied clear of the runway, then I take control and debrief him, praising him for setting up a perfect approach and telling him--as the student--that he will be rewarded for all his good work on the approach if he just holds the airplane off the ground a little longer. I tell him as the examiner that if I were supervising a new instructor with this student I would tell her that she could solo him as soon as he was holding the nosewheel off right through touchdown, and that if that was achieved in the next three lessons, I did not need to fly with the student again.

In the real debrief he tells me that when he does that stunt, many candidates will criticize him for landing long on that exercise. He always responds with "you didn't tell me where to land." So I have scored points for determining where the student planned to put the airplane. I criticize myself for my poor rudder work, and he agrees that that is the worst thing. I am praised for being articulate, adaptable, and am criticized for using trigonometry during the briefing. I admit that I put in the trig because he was pretending to be an instructor and am surprised when he says that knowledge is not necessary, even for an instructor. Not everyone agrees that trigonometry is a beautiful thing and should be exercised whenever possible.

It was one of the most enjoyable flight tests I've ever done, and despite my propensity for overusage of both rudder and trigonometry, I am once again qualified to be paid to tell you how to fly. According to Transport Canada statistics, as of March 2008 there were 302 valid class 2 instructors for aeroplanes in Canada. I wonder how many of them work as instructors.

What the Pentagon Wants

The Pentagon (that's the "bombs and missiles Pentagon, not the demon-summoning sort," as I remember having to clarify seven years over a poor intercom, when I was told that it was on fire) wants aircraft to be fitted with a Kill Switch. Not to actually kill the occupants, and specifically not to interfere with the crew, but to disable the aircraft. They specify that the innovation should allow the aircraft to be quickly (and presumably economically) returned to operation, but that it should block the aircraft from taking off.

This runs against the entire design of aircraft, which strive to avoid any single point of failure. As soon as you design one in, you have one, and it can fail, thereby making the airplane more dangerous. The simple fact that you have designed the airplane with a single system that can independently shut down the airplane, means that someday it will, unintentionally. I promise that every other single thing that can break has happened to an airplane.

The strategists have divided their desire into disabling an aircraft before take-off and then preventing an aircraft in flight from overflying a particular area. Let's look at the first. If they wanted a legitimate aircrew to abort a flight by remote command, that would be simple: turn on a fire bell. Immediate abort of a takeoff in progress, or if it occurred after V1, an inflight engine shutdown and immediate return for landing. There's nothing wrong with the aircraft, you just ask the crew to perform one of the highest risk procedures in aviation, at the most critical phase of flight. Usually this can be accomplished without injuries or significant damage, because aircrews practice and pass a test in it at every renewal, and recite to one another the procedures for doing it before every take-off. That's how critical it is.

But of course that's not even on topic, because it's unauthorized take-offs they want to prevent, and for an unauthorized take-off, that wouldn't work. If you are breaking the rules, you probably break all of them. If you're planning to die you might as well do it on one engine at take-off power, so the airplane has to be actually disabled. This is where an airplane is not like a car. Take the example of the fuel pump issue I had a while ago. It was fixed with a few taps of a rubber mallet, and I went on my way. A reader expressed concern that I didn't have it checked out more thoroughly. "What would happen," he asked, "if it were to refreeze most of the way through a take-off?" The answer, as people who read the comments know (some don't, which is why I am repeating myself) is "nothing at all." The other, engine-driven, fuel pump for that engine would supply sufficient fuel pressure to keep the engine operating at full power. I would not even notice that the electric pump had failed until the next time I went to start the engine. Not only the electric fuel pump, but the entire electrical system--both alternators and a battery--could spontaneously shut down and my take-off would be unimpeded. At night I would notice my lights going out, and probably abort. By day I might notice the sudden cessation of radio chatter. But the essential functions of my airplane would still function. A more complex airplane, is more reliant on electrical systems, but has even more redundancy, (although, as discussed recently, the A320 could use a bit more), so a kill switch would have to cut a wider swath through systems, making the airplane more vulnerable.

Most airplanes have what's called a squat switch, a sensor that tells systems whether or not there is weight on the landing gear. Systems may be squat switch limited (e.g. landing gear retraction or operation of heaters that require significant airflow) so that they won't work on the ground even if the pilot tries to turn them on, or squat switch activated (e.g. transponders), turning on automatically as the airplane leaves the ground. I would expect Pentagon-mandated disabling mechanisms to be squat-switch limited. But this doesn't solve the problems that whatever measure the kill switch takes--cutting off fuel, deflating tires, deploying spoilers--could for one, happen accidentally once it has been rigged to happen, and for two, happen at the end of the take-off roll, after V1 when an abort is exceptionally dangerous. And I should mention that the squat switch can fail just like anything else: it's not like it gets tested before every flight, so the accidental kill could happen in the middle of the Pacific, or during climb out, too.

The 'prevent the airplane from flying over a particular area' part is a little more science fictional, but presents the same sort of safety issues. It could be done by requiring airplanes to fly by autopilot at all times, with clearances physically enforced, but the danger of that should be apparent. There are plenty of approach plates that warn pilots to take independent action if not cleared to turn onto the ILS, because of high terrain beyond. And there are plenty of cases where ATC radios have failed. I don't think I have ever flown across the country without hearing reroutes or accommodations being made for failed ATC equipment. And then the terrorists can forget about going after aircraft and just go straight for the ground stations that control them, or by breaking the code of the transmissions made to the control mechanisms. Aircraft must be able to navigate independently.

I understand the military desire for a way to stop errant aircraft in their tracks, but I think it's an issue of design philosophy rather than just finding the right switch to throw. And I haven't even bothered to address the issue of the implications of a remote control off switch for airplanes. Airplanes malfunction quite enough on their own without help; what's keeping us in the air is redundant design that opposes single points of failure, and pilots who are trained to troubleshoot and take appropriate action.

Edit: I neglected to include a reference for this entry. I don't remember where I heard about it, but here is the Pentagon RFP. The anti-aircraft measures are Objective C on that page.

Not a Good Scene

If you can read a technical aviation report, you may want to go straight to this one. The four and a half page National Transportation Safety Board report details an inflight incident where a United Airlines Airbus A320 lost much of its electrical power immediately after takeoff from the Newark Liberty International Airport.

Because of the power loss, many systems stopped working, including three of the six pilot displays, autopilot, autothrottles, landing gear control, all communications radios, and the transponder and TCAS. The ECAM troubleshooting system flashed up messages so quickly that they were erased before the pilots could read or respond to them. They were in good weather, so were able to level off, turn around and land without those systems (the landing gear was stuck down, not up), but that doesn't make it any less of an emergency. An airplane of that sophistication is not designed to be operated just by looking out the window. The co-pilot's screen was also giving false readings and the standby [i.e. emergency backup] attitude indicator gave crazy readings too, before it stopped working altogether on the downwind leg of the circuit. The copilot estimated that if the weather had been bad, and his screen hadn't started working again, the aircraft could have been lost.

Even in good weather, they could have met serious danger. As a footnote points out they were in a large aircraft at low altitude, had failed to make contact with air traffic control, were no longer transmitting the transponder signal that allows ATC to track the aircraft on radar, and were headed for downtown New York. Needless to say, the crew didn't spend a lot of time troubleshooting, just turned back and joined the circuit to land, hoping that the controllers would figure it out. They did, and cleared other traffic out of the way.

Once on the ground, they discovered they had a failure of the #1 electrical bus, but the light indicating the failure had not illuminated in the air. According to Airbus, this is the fiftieth time that electrical bus failures resulted in loss of flight displays, and in some cases all six displays were lost. The failure was consistently difficult to troubleshoot, and in some cases switching manually to the #2 bus did not correct the situation.

A detail that caught my eye is that according to Airbus, the standby attitude indicator is designed to work for five minutes after a power loss. Five minutes?! What possible good is that supposed to do? You can't get anywhere in five minutes. Is that supposed to give you enough time to write a will and make peace with your deity? The NTSB agrees with me here and recommends that Airbus design a backup system that gives a minimum of 30 minutes of standby AI operation, and that the FAA make it mandatory in the US.

It made my muscles feel a little weak, reading that report. Imagine being in cloud, working your asses off to manage an airplane with minimal flight instruments, wondering what hardware was launching to protect New York against you.

NAV Mode

While flying in at a constant heading and altitude is just great, pilots often prefer to be on a constant track, that is following a straight line over the ground, even though that means turning the nose back and forth a bit in the air to compensate for changing winds. This can be done by plotting before the flight exactly which bits of the ground you're supposed to be over, then looking diligently out the window throughout the flight, noting and correcting for each deviation as it occurs. That's how you do it on the commercial flight test (using one of two arithmetical methods of correction, not just veering a bit to the left). But this test is not of visual skills. In real life pilots fly long distances in a straight line by following a navigational instrument: a GPS, a VOR or an ADF. This airplane has a GPS, but it isn't an IFR installation, so it's not coupled to the autopilot. This airplane is a proper northern airplane with an ADF, but to my knowledge no one makes an autopilot that can do ADF tracking, because ADF tracking requires semi-magical powers and/or a lot of swearing. Only real pilots are capable of that. So in this airplane the NAV mode is all about the VOR.

I'm sure I've blogged about the VOR, but quick review: a VOR is a station on the ground that creates beams radiating horizontally in all directions. Each beam is called a radial, and the VOR receiver in the airplane is capable of displaying the angular distance of the airplane's position from a selected radial, and whether flying parallel to the radial would take you closer to or further from the station. A pilot's usual tactic is to merge with the radial on an angle, that's called intercepting, and then follow the radial as exactly as possible either towards or away from the station, that's called tracking. Tracking allows you to follow a straight, predetermined line on the ground even if you can't see the ground and the wind is changing.

In autopilot speak, this is the NAV mode. It allows the autopilot to intercept and track a VOR radial just as a pilot would. So to use it, you have to do all the things a pilot has to do before intercepting a radial: tune and identify the station, set the CDI to the desired track, and bug a reasonable intercept heading. Then you activate the HDG function and press the NAV button. That shows on the annunciator panel as NAV/ARM. The airplane flies straight until the airplane approaches the radial and then turns to intercept. At that point the HDG mode switches itself off and the mode switches from NAV/ARM to NAV/CPLD.

The system is totally dependant on the pilot to tune the correct frequency and select the correct radial, but with that done, it tracks pretty well. It even uses internal logic to choose when to start turning, not unlike what an experienced pilot would do, based on the deflection of the CDI and the rate of change. It's not perfect, but maybe they program that in so pilots can feel superior.

It would work the same way if the GPS were in the system. In fact, I don't believe the autopilot itself knows whether its input is the GPS, or a VOR. I think once the pilot selects which navigation input is displayed on the HSI, the autopilot just follows it. The difference between intercepting a GPS track and a VOR radial would be taken care of by the GPS, which is clever enough to give signals anticipating turns.

Pilot and Copilot

Public comment on the B777 that landed short of the runway at Heathrow has made me realized how little the general public understands of pilot duties during a flight. People are aware that there are two people up front, but are often quite vague on what they do.

Both of the people sitting in control seats in an airliner are fully qualified pilots. They have taken the same training and passed the same tests on the systems, handling and emergency procedures. Either pilot is capable of flying the airplane without assistance from the other. The main difference between the tests they take is the seat they sit in: left or right.

The pilot who is in charge of the flight is called the captain, and sits on the left. She is responsible for the decisions made by the pilot in the right seat, The second pilot might be called the "co-pilot" or the "first officer," often abbreviated FO (eff-OH). The same pilot might work as captain on one type of airplane and FO on another, for the same company. At some company all pilots are qualified as captains (i.e. they have taken their tests from the left seat) and just take turns sitting in the left seat and being the pilot-in-command.

For each "leg" (from take-off to landing) one of the pilots is designated the flying pilot and the other is the non-flying pilot. In a typical operation, pilots alternate in these duties from leg to leg. The typical division of labour is that the flying pilot handles the controls and the non flying pilot tunes frequencies, programs the flight computer, talks on the radio and does other 'support' tasks for the person flying. That means that if the first officer is flying he or she gives commands to the captain, like "set take-off power" "gear up" or "could you adjust the sunvisors so I don't go blind up here."

All the main controls are accessible from or duplicated on both sides of the cockpit, but there are a few exceptions. If a circuit breaker needs to be pulled, it's often on the captain's side, so the captain transfers control of the airplane to the first officer in order to find the circuit breaker. And often steering on the ground is controllable only from the left side, so after the first officer has landed, the captain takes control and taxies the airplane to parking.

The two pilots work together as a team and practice communication just as much as piloting skills. Control may be passed back and forth during a flight for various reasons, like someone eating lunch or getting up to go to the washroom. If there is a particular challenge during the flight, control may be passed to the pilot who is best at it, or the one who wants to practice it.

That is fairly uncommon though, so if you hear of an incident where, as in Heathrow, the first officer was handling the airplane, that probably just means that the pilot in the right seat was the one who happened to be flying at the time the incident occurred.