Slashdot Mirror
Lost Northwest Pilots Were Trying Out New Software
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that two Northwest Airlines pilots who flew about 110 miles past their destination to the skies over Wisconsin as more than a dozen air-traffic controllers in three locations tried to get the plane's attention had taken out their personal laptops in the cockpit, a violation of airline policy, so the first officer could tutor the captain in a new scheduling system put in place by Delta Air Lines, which acquired Northwest last fall. 'Both said they lost track of time,' said an interim report from the National Transportation Safety Board countering theories in aviation circles that the two pilots might have fallen asleep or were arguing in the cockpit. 'Using laptops or engaging in activity unrelated to the pilots' command of the aircraft during flight,' said a statement from Delta Airlines, 'is strictly against the airline's flight deck policies and violations of that policy will result in termination.' Industry executives and analysts said the pilots' behavior was a striking lapse for such veteran airmen who have a total of 31,000 flying hours of experience between them. In the case of Flight 188, 'Neither pilot was aware of the airplane's position until a flight attendant called about five minutes before they were scheduled to land and asked what was their estimated time of arrival,' the interim report said."
At todays fear of terrorism levels, they are lucky its just job termination - if they had flown over some sensitive and/or military area they could have been shot down... or not?
But it is news to me, it can commandeer aircraft radios and navigational aids within vicinity and convert them into a giant Wi-Fi range extenders.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Yep. Thats my story and I'm sticking to it. I wasn't sleeping. I wasn't browsing the web. I was using the future of cockpit aviation.
Outlook 2007 is difficult at first...
Who would run out of fuel first, the laptop or the plane?
Or the coffee.
Musicians don't die. They just decompose.
Shouldn't they have picked up air traffic control yelling at them regardless? I'm guessing they had their headphones off (if such are even used), but I would think that there would be blinking lights at a minimum, and hopefully any voices would come through. If nothing else, they should be tuned into some kind of emergency frequency no matter what.
It seems to me something is either designed wrong, or the pilots were being much more inattentive than one would expect from even someone using a laptop.
Any pilots or other I am a somethings around?
so the first officer could tutor the captain in a new scheduling system put in place by Delta Air Lines, which acquired Northwest last fall.
Shirley you'll agree that these men should be punished for endangering the over 144 passengers. I don't think it matters if it was a laptop, them arguing, sleeping pilots, or them practicing their jive talk. It's just plain dangerous.
They were raiding in WoW, I would imagine. ;-)
"Tutoring in the new scheduling software", my ass.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
will need to know how to use the new scheduling system now!
They were SO engrossed they neglected to respond to repeated attempts at contact for OVER AN HOUR? They weren't learning a new scheduling system.
They were on a WoW raid, more like.
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
Sometimes I'm glad I'm just piloting an office building.
So essentially they were using a flight simulator while piloting their aircraft? "Sup dawg, i herd you like flying, so we put a virtual cockpit in your cockpit so you can pretend to fly while you're flying."
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
Since most planes, to my knowledge, have auto pilot, and I'm assuming it was set, isn't there something with autopilot that would have also alerted the pilots to their location and time. I understand that pilots would have had time to discuss this stuff, but I almost believe that losing track of time is a big offense. What would have happened had they had fuel issues and now they were running out of fuel?
If I was on that flight I would likely be pissed off knowing that these two who hold the responsibility to get me to my destination weren't really doing their job properly. While this ended in a non-incident there should still be some sort of repercussion for those actions. These men chose to let themselves become distracted.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
or Linux?
We may never know.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Obviously the pilots should have paid more attention, but I suspect the reason they were trying to squeeze in a little extra work is that they weren't going to get paid to learn the scheduling system on their own time.
Pilots go through years of expensive schooling and have to repay their student loans like everyone else. Their salaries start around $20,000 if they can get hired in a very competitive market.
Remember the hero pilot who landed the plane in the Hudson, saving Flight 1549 and 155 people's lives?
the last talk [Capt. Sullenberger] had with his wife, Lorrie, before the crash... was about money.
Like thousands of airline workers, his salary had been cut in half and he lost most of his pension. At 58, the 29-year veteran faced having to find work outside the industry and possibly having to sell his house.
Many pilots take second jobs. Some are on food stamps:
He took home $405 this week. My life was completely and totally in his hands for the past hour and he's paid less than the kid who delivers my pizza.
I told the guys that I have a whole section in my new movie about how pilots are treated (using pilots as only one example of how people's wages have been slashed and the middle class decimated). In the movie I interview a pilot for a major airline who made $17,000 last year. For four months he was eligible -- and received -- food stamps. Another pilot in the film has a second job as a dog walker.
"I have a second job!," the two pilots said in unison. One is a substitute teacher. The other works in a coffee shop.
So if they were discussing this new piece of software and using laptops, presumably you can hear all that on the cockpit voice recorder. As opposed to say, sleeping, which may or may not sound like snoring or nothing at all.
Jealously hoarding mod points since 2007.
There was an incredibly detailed account of the Brazilian midair collision in September 2006 that identified pilots trying to figure out the flight control systems on their new Legacy 600 as one of the distractions that led to the collision. Some of the controls were on a glass panel display, and there was also a laptop that distracted them. Apparently, as they were clicking around on stuff, they shut off their transponder.
http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2009/01/air_crash200901
Even more concerning, was the author's argument that the accuracy of GPS guided autopilot systems also contributed. Historically, even if two planes ended up at the same flight level, headed towards each other, the inherent sloppiness in the autopilot systems would actually increase the chance of a miss. Now, with autopilots capable of keeping planes within very close tolerances of their ideal flightpath, the same two planes accidentally occupying the same flight level may have a much higher chance of colliding.
There is really no excuse for both pilots completely losing situational awareness like this. They're both toast, and deserve to be.
As for the scheduling system they were going over - actually, that is probably the 'news for nerds' part. The old airline schedules were built in two units - 'pairings' and 'lines of time'. A pairing is a group of flights, typically from 1 to 6 days long, that begun and ended in a pilot domicile. The word 'pairing' was to indicate that an entire crew was 'paired' together that whole time. A line of time (or simply a line) was a month-long group of those pairings. There is a long list of legal requrements (min rest, max flight time, union contractual obligations, aircraft mx requirements, etc.) that these schedules had to meet.
Ultimately, from the pilot's point of view, these lines were published each month for the next month. Bidding was very straightforward. If you were the number 1 senior pilot in that base (technically, domicile, aircraft and status (capt. or F/O), you picked your line, and that was that. If you were #2, you picked your schedule, and got it.... unless the number 1 guy already got it, in which case you got your second choice. If you were number #300.... well, picking 300 schedules in the order you want them was a time consuming task, but the outcome was perfectly transparent. The line awards were public, so you could verify that the schedules you didn't get really did go to senior people. You can debate whether such a system is 'fair', but at least it is clear how it works, both globally and month to month.
Then, with the advent of more powerful computers, a system called 'PBS' was born - Preferential Bidding System. These systems, instead of having hard, published lines you bid from, instead only published the pairings. You expressed your 'Preferences' through a computer language. A computer program then ran, taking everybodys preferences, seniority, system constraints, etc. into account and generated schedules.
In theory, PBS sounds great. A pilot's preferences generally don't change that much month to month, so you could file your bid away and let it run automatically each month with little or no tweaking.
In practice, it's usually been highly disruptive and caused great angst for a year or two after being implemented, for many reasons:
1) The language used to express your preferences is generally designed for the programmers, not the users.
2) The results can be, to put it mildly, unexpected. When you have pre-published schedules, you have a pretty good idea ahead of time what to expect.
3) There are no month-to-month conflicts that generate additional days off, resulting in more work per pilot, a reason the airlines like them and pilots don't, on average.
4) Non-computer savvy older pilots (Captians) have a harder time getting it than younger pilots (F/O's), on average. It takes a vastly important piece of your life (when are you working? Where are you going? 28 hours in HNL or 32 hours in XNA?), and makes it tied to your comfort with learning, essentially, a primitive computer language.
I cringe when I see this, because I've done this - taught Captians while flying about PBS. So have many other F/O's. You just prioritize it where it belongs - below aviating, navigating and communicating. These guys made everyone else look bad.
I am surprised that anyone is able to keep their job. Where an honest mistake where no one was harmed causes someone to loose their career. I would feel more comfortable riding in a plain from a pilot who has a relatively good record and made a mistake and got severely corrected As they know the severity of their mistake, and are extra careful not to make an other one. Vs. a Pilot who has a good records but has gone too comfortable with their job, and will be likely to make their first mistake.
It reminds me when I first started working. I was cleaning out my old backup files. so I meant to do a rm -f *~ but me being green and not so careful I did an rm -f * ~
I Hit Ctrl-C after I realized it was taking way to long. However, I cleared out about 2 weeks of work. Plus my personal documents. Needless to say I learned to backup more freaklently and the value of a good source control system.
But If I were to get fired after that mistake and forced to switch careers then I wouldn't be able to apply my new learned methods.
That is why I cringe whenever there is a big mistake and people go well I hope that guy gets fired. Because the guy who did the mistake and especially if he was honest about it, would probably be so much more careful the nest time around. Who I would be more worried about is the guy who fired him. As part of the mistake is on him too. For not making sure they are safe guard in place.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
They were actually having a flamewar on LKML about what the best scheduler for the Linux kernel is.
This is a non-event. The autopilot takes care of everything in a modern aircraft. In Airbus aircraft, it can even take off and land. The pilot-in-command is there for EMERGENCIES that cannot be handled reliably by autopilot. Almost all of the training of a commercial/airline pilot is related to emergencies. As you can tell, with combined 30k hours of flight time between them, this is the STANDARD (albeit unofficial) procedure in any airline. Flying is very boring to the crew in the time between take-off and landing — the two biggest responsibilities of the human pilots. In fact, some airlines do not allow human pilots to fly the aircraft because autopilot is a lot better on fuel economy. Their biggest mistake was not programming the autopilot correctly for that flight.
Shouldn't they have picked up air traffic control yelling at them regardless?
Would have to assume they took off the headphones so they could hear each other as they discussed the computer app. I don't think there's a speaker in the cockpit from the tower.
Two questions come to mind:
1) what sort of urgency was placed on learning this new system? Were they being rushed? Did anyone suggest they hurry up and get each other up to speed on the app ("as soon as possible"/"whenever you get a chance"?) and they simply didn't have any personal time left to do it? (things like this tend to get pushed to be done on personal, rather than paid, time)
2) 110 miles in a jet? really? big detour? How long does it take a jet to travel 110 miles? This extended the flight what, a whole 15 minutes counting backtrack time? For a jet that's like a bus driver missing an exit and having to drive another 4 miles to the next cloverleaf and do a 180. Though it probably had a few more exaggerated side-effects, like passengers missing connecting flights (which happens too much anyway even when planes are on time) plus the cost of a few hundred pounds of fuel. But still, seems like its being overblown.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
No check-ins... no access by the crew.. if the pilot becomes incapacitated, they are screwed:
Flight attendants have not had keys to open a plane’s cockpit door since the 2001 terrorist attacks, and there is no procedure in which they regularly check on pilots. The cabin crew communicates by phone or through chimes that can be heard in the passenger cabin.
The difference between that and the mistake of a pilot is a potential several hundred lives.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Do you know what happens to a captain (or any pilot, for that matter) when they are terminated? They start at the bottom of any airline that hires them. Yes, seniority is only on a per-airline basis. The only thing that matters in seniority is how long you've been at THAT airline.
so the first officer could tutor the captain in a new scheduling system put in place by Delta Air Lines
If this is really the case (which is still to be confirmed), then they were at least working for their company, making the best use of what they (incorrectly) thought was "available" time.
Keep this in mind, all of you reading slashdot at work !
The Airbus A320has a cruising speed of mach 0.78 and a max speed of mach 0.82. Mach 0.78 = 593.7415 mph and 110/593.7415 * 60 = ca 11,12 minutes. If they were going in cruising speed they missed the time by 11,12 minutes. Not so amazing now is it?
I am the lawn!
A WoW Raid scheduling system?
Hope is the currency of fools
Slight flaw in your reasoning: what about all the other people on the road, a fair proportion of whom are bloody idiots who aren't even competent to operate a skateboard?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You have to begin your descent loooooong before the 110 miles. They were still at cruising altitude when they noticed they were past their mark.
Funny, then, that the method of travel which you insist is the safest actually results in the most deaths per mile traveled... I am not saying anything about you *personally* but this kind of poor risk judgment is what leads to all kinds of bad decisions. From what type of travel to choose, to what kind of medical treatment to choose, we humans are absolutely TERRIBLE at properly weighing risk. Say what you will about the fallibility of statistics, we all stand to gain if people put a little more stock in sound science as opposed to emotion-driven decision making.
I'm no pilot, nor flight-tech, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but modern passenger and cargo planes is capable of automatic take off, course corrections and landing, right? In my eyes, this is a good time to start discussing taking the human factor out of flying? Let the planes fly themself from takeoff to landing and keep the pilots along only as backup/supervisors, and only until peoples paranoia for autopilots has gone away. At least, start with the cargoplanes and test until deemed safe and then move to the rest.
I don't think there's a speaker in the cockpit from the tower
From the last link the TFS (emphasis mine):
At cruise altitude - the pilots stated they were using cockpit speakers to listen to radio communications, not their headsets.
I'm sorry but that's just crap. New pilots, sure, they make less, but on *AVERAGE* the pay is around $70k. http://www.avjobs.com/salaries-wages-pay/pilot-pay.asp
Yeah, GP is full of BS. No stats, just single anecdotal sob stories. From a list of overpaid jobs:
9) Major airline pilots
While American and United pilots recently took pay cuts, senior captains earn as much as $250,000 a year at Delta, and their counterparts at other major airlines still earn about $150,000 to $215,000 - several times pilot pay at regional carriers - for a job that technology has made almost fully automated.
By comparison, senior pilots make up to 40 percent less at low-fare carriers like Jet Blue and Southwest, though some enjoy favorable perks like stock options. That helps explain why their employers are profitable while several of the majors are still teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
The pilot's unions are the most powerful in the industry. They demand premium pay as if still in the glory days of long-gone Pan Am and TWA, rather than the cutthroat, deregulated market of under-$200 coast-to-coast roundtrips. In what amounts to a per-passenger commission, the larger the plane, the more they earn - even though it takes little more skill to pilot a jumbo jet. It's as much the airplane mechanics who hold our fate in their hands.
The mechanics are the ones that really get the short end of the stick. But they don't have expensive schooling.
yeah cause putting your trust to the hundreds of people you share the road with daily is much safer than the 1 or 2 you have to trust to fly the plane.
that on this site we have so many people who believe Michael Moore?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
You can say a lot of things, but those captains F/O are certainly NOT underpaid.
I am an ex-IT engineer turned airline pilot (currently flying Airbus A320) so will bite and explain some items...
1. there are loudspeakers in the cockpit, usually the volume is at mid-level, but you choose the volume you want
2. it takes about 10m to fly 80 miles, so 110miles of course would mean they were engaged in the discussion for some 25m (10m from Top of Descent plus the 110m after destination)
3. You normally keep an ear out for someone calling you in the radio, but sometimes you just might miss it. I concede that 30m without listening to air traffic control is too much...
4. Their timing was all wrong... Near top of descent turning on their laptops?? Come on...... It's one of the only 2 situations were you really must have full attention, Takeoff until Top of Climb and from Top of Descent to Landing....
5. There is an automatic system called TCAS (Traffic Collision and Avoiding System) that would warn them if there was any chance of colliding with another aircraft. This system is mandatory (at least in Europe) and is why those 2 aircraft over Brazil collided some years ago.
6. In what regards to fuel, you take fuel to fly to destination + fuel to fly from destination to alternate landing + 30m holding at alternate + whatever your airline policy sees fit + whatever captain decision sees fit. They probably landed short on fuel to fly to destination, but there are procedures in place for this.
7. Normally there are allways 2 radion frequencies in use, the area you are in and the emergency frequency. Also, some airplanes have HF frequencies and can be called over HF. This will sound a buzzer in the cockpit and is quite loud.I doubt ATC called them over HF....
8. Autopilot was obviously on, but it doesn't beep when reaching Top of Descent...
9. Firing them is a bit excessive, but some sort of disciplinary action should be taken. Do not forget that training a pilot costs above 100kUSD, so it is not immediate to find a replacement. Also it is easy to just appoint blame, but keep in mind that aviation is not like your regular day job. There is no excuse for what happened here but the mentality of "you erred, you're fired" will cause problems in the future.....
B
Jesus Christ, I hate those christians!!
What you need to get is that to make Senior Captain, you need seniority. Not skill, experience, recommendations, or flight time. 100% seniority. And if you ever are laid off and change airlines, you start over at the bottom of the paygrade. So yes, some old guys make a shit-ton of money, but it's next to impossible to break into the industry, military or not, because everyone else (cargo pilots, regional airline pilots, corporate pilots) are paid very little considering the debt, demands of the schedule, and impossibility of finding a second job if you ever fail a checkride.
"It'll come up any minute now..."
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Step 1: buy out another airline, and start looking for ways to "eliminate redundancies".
Step 2: force the workers to spend work time learning a byzantine new management system.
Step 3: fire anyone who makes errors at work as a result.
Step 4: Profit!
They were on laptops for over a hour? They said they were being notified by a special transponder system that sounds an alert in the cockpit - they didn't hear that?
And doesn't the system they were using need to access online schedules? Were they connected?
I still think they were getting some nappie-poo time.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
They were having a Windows 7 Launch Party!!
Unfortunately the video didn't cover this situation...
Go inverted, and give them the bird.
2) 110 miles in a jet? really? big detour? How long does it take a jet to travel 110 miles? This extended the flight what, a whole 15 minutes counting backtrack time? For a jet that's like a bus driver missing an exit and having to drive another 4 miles to the next cloverleaf and do a 180. Though it probably had a few more exaggerated side-effects, like passengers missing connecting flights (which happens too much anyway even when planes are on time) plus the cost of a few hundred pounds of fuel. But still, seems like its being overblown.
110 miles is a LONG way out of their defined flight path. Which is, you know, the path through which there is any guarantee of not HITTING ANOTHER PLANE.
Its not about time, money, fuel or inconvenience.
Its about gross negligence and a very real risk of causing an in-air collision. (and killing 2 planes full of people)
Are you flying right now? :)
Gosh, we are so impressed by your arithmetic skills. Try reading the article next time, genius. It's more like 30 minutes. It turns out you have to start descending some distance before actually reaching the airport.
In the case of Flight 188, “neither pilot was aware of the airplane’s position until a flight attendant called about five minutes before they were scheduled to land and asked what was their estimated time of arrival,” the report said. By that time, the plane, which should have begun its descent into Minneapolis about half an hour earlier, was still at 37,000 feet and more than 100 miles beyond its destination.
You probably shouldn't be on ./ while you are piloting your Airbus A320 dude.
Oh wait, that's me. Fsck.
I am surprised that anyone is able to keep their job. Where an honest mistake where no one was harmed causes someone to loose their career. I would feel more comfortable riding in a plain from a pilot who has a relatively good record and made a mistake and got severely corrected As they know the severity of their mistake, and are extra careful not to make an other one. Vs. a Pilot who has a good records but has gone too comfortable with their job, and will be likely to make their first mistake.
It reminds me when I first started working. I was cleaning out my old backup files. so I meant to do a rm -f *~ but me being green and not so careful I did an rm -f * ~
I Hit Ctrl-C after I realized it was taking way to long. However, I cleared out about 2 weeks of work. Plus my personal documents. Needless to say I learned to backup more freaklently and the value of a good source control system. But If I were to get fired after that mistake and forced to switch careers then I wouldn't be able to apply my new learned methods.
That is why I cringe whenever there is a big mistake and people go well I hope that guy gets fired. Because the guy who did the mistake and especially if he was honest about it, would probably be so much more careful the nest time around. Who I would be more worried about is the guy who fired him. As part of the mistake is on him too. For not making sure they are safe guard in place.
I have had the same kind of experience at work. Except I *WAS* fired for it. Kind of sucks when you are designing a $20000 dollar circuit board in your first month and you put the PGA socket lands in backwards. Needless to say, I didn't make that mistake again. It also made it kinda hard to get a new job...
---
Here
Unexplained communications blackout? I’d love to hear what the passengers and support crew experienced during this time. The flight crew runs these routes multiple times a day and you know that they are just watching the clock until lunch at the terminal.
And yeah – I’ve seen every episode.
In the end, arn't we just dust?
I work the phone for support. If I spend one or two hours reading tech articles trying to increase my knowledge of my job when I was scheduled to be taking calls from customers, I'm not doing my job. If I go to my boss and schedule time to read those articles when I'm not supposed to be taking calls, that's the right way to handle that.
When you are a piloting an airplane, your job is to pilot the airplane!
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I am an ex-IT engineer turned airline pilot (currently flying Airbus A320) so will bite and explain some items...
Wow, that's even worse, that guy is writing slashdot comments while flying an A320!
The first time I encountered that damned ribbon menu it took me a long time to get anything done, too.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
So what if they decided to join the mile high club, but in the afterglow, they realized that they had missed radio calls. They knew that the CVR might give them away. They needed to kill 30 + xx minutes. Deciding that the easiest way would be to leave it on autopilot at FL37 until they 'ran out the clock'. Then played like they were distracted, until one of the flight attendants banged on the door.
It took them a few tries to get the story straight once they landed, first: 'we argued', next 'we lost track of time', next: 'we were using computers'
9. Firing them is a bit excessive, but some sort of disciplinary action should be taken.
The article says they ignored air traffic control for 90 minutes. I am not a pilot, but it seems that would fall under the category of egregious disregard for their responsibilities.
What are the possible safety consequences of ignoring ATC and other radio communication for that long? Does the ATC pass any safety related information to the cockpit crew?
Perhaps they should not be fired, but I would certainly not expect them to fly a commercial passenger flight again.
HAH! "for a job that technology has made almost fully automated... the larger the plane, the more they earn - even though it takes little more skill to pilot a jumbo jet."
$200K for the decades of training and experience to know what to do when one of the world's more complicated machines breaks, a mile in the air, with 200 souls on board. "Overpaid"? What a jackass.
"Jesus Christ, I hate those Christians?" I guess there's no danger of your plane crashing when the rapture comes, huh? :) (For the record, I don't believe in the rapture...)
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
...because nobody's ever been killed by other drivers of passenger cars texting, talking on cellphones, or doing other crazy things behind the wheel?
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
Re your point 3, again, as I said above, they were out of radio contact for 78 minutes. Which also means that they didn't start at top of descent, just that they started much earlier and "cruised" through it without noticing. 78 minutes. *78* minutes. I suspect that might also change your opinion about firing?
errm, nop, DUH!
Jesus Christ, I hate those christians!!
If there was some crazy emergency - like another aircraft with distracted pilots on a collision course - they would not have responded appropriately since they were ignoring the radio. I suppose there may be a collision warning system they *might* have heard... I don't mind if a pilot takes a break, so long as the other guy is paying attention, but for both to just geek-out at a laptop for 20 minutes is not something I'd consider "safe".
:-)
If they do keep these guys, maybe they should be required to fly without the autopilot for a few months
What these pilots did was gross negligence and indicated they lack the self-control to pilot a passenger jet. The mentality of "you always have a second chance" continues to cause problems in the present.
Didn't know it was this long... 78m is a very long time.... still, it does not change my opinion on firing. but a long time grounded and maybe a demotion (for the captain) should be in order....
Jesus Christ, I hate those christians!!
By that time, the plane, which should have begun its descent into Minneapolis about half an hour earlier, was still at 37,000 feet and more than 100 miles beyond its destination.
Fine. But tell me this: if they should have begun descending 30 minutes earlier than they did, they had cruised for 30 minutes too long. 593.7415/2 = 296.87075, which means they should have been closer to 300 miles off, instead they were 110 miles off. That means A) they must have flown at approximately one third of the cruising speed, or B) they were flying in spirals(?). Which begs the question: why?
Gosh, we are so impressed by your arithmetic skills.
Oh and thank you. I'm blushing.
I am the lawn!
I don't see how this has anything to do with the theme of this website.
Who in the name of Khan modded this guy down??
. . . they were re-enacting scenes from their favorite gladiator movies.
Firing them is a bit excessive, but some sort of disciplinary action should be taken. Do not forget that training a pilot costs above 100kUSD, so it is not immediate to find a replacement. Also it is easy to just appoint blame, but keep in mind that aviation is not like your regular day job. There is no excuse for what happened here but the mentality of "you erred, you're fired" will cause problems in the future.....
B
No. it's not "you erred, you're fired". It's: "You fucked up, your ass is grounded." The rules of no distractions in the cockpit are there for a reason. They didn't just inconvenience their passengers for 15 minutes, they delayed the landing by over an hour, causing missed flights, a grounded plane, and a grounded flight crew. They stopped talking to ATC an hour before the plane was scheduled to land, dozens of ATC members tried to get a hold of them and in this paranoid day they were damn lucky they didn't receive an escort from a couple of F-16's.
Look at these two of your points together:
3. You normally keep an ear out for someone calling you in the radio, but sometimes you just might miss it. I concede that 30m without listening to air traffic control is too much...
4. Their timing was all wrong... Near top of descent turning on their laptops?? Come on...... It's one of the only 2 situations were you really must have full attention, Takeoff until Top of Climb and from Top of Descent to Landing....
You say termination was excessive. I disagree.
If I was on-duty, and in one of those situations where I "really must have full attention", and instead, I totally blew off and ignored my boss at that critical time (and an additional 30 minutes or 78 minutes or however long)... if I didn't have a really darn good reason for acting so unprofessionally, I would expect to be terminated. And I don't even fly around big, expensive machines with hundreds of people on-board depending on me.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
That is also true, but let me explain something about aviation,
The system in place today relies on pilots/atc controllers reporting everything that happens that could cause an incident or accident (look up the definitions on google). A lot of the procedures in place today exist because there is the perception that you can report errors/distractions/whatever and that report will be used in order to improve the system so that that particular distraction/error/whatever will not occur again, and not that the report will be used to penalize you.
If you start penalizing and firing people for erring (and believe me, pilots do err, but a most of the times the redundancies of the systems in place prevent that error from becoming an incident/accident, and by redundancies I also mean the other pilot, not just automatic systems) then those reports will not occur and you will loose a very valuable way of knowing what happens in a flight.
These voluntary reports are what make aviation so safe these days...
B
Jesus Christ, I hate those christians!!
Nearly everything that ATC says is safety related. There is no chit-chat. ATC gives heading and altitude assignments. You need to go where they tell you to go because you are not the only plane in the sky.
Also, ATC will vector you around severe weather. One reason why these pilots were not paying attention is likely because there was no severe weather near their flight path. They would not be expecting any vectors for weather. They would only be expecting vectors for the descent and approach.
It's never a good idea to tune out ATC, either electronically or mentally, a pilot needs to be aware of what's going on in the area. If there is traffic above, below or crossing it's a really good idea to get visual contact.
There are many possible safety consequences of ignoring ATC. When ATC doesn't know what you're doing, they can't ensure separation. They get pretty upset about that since separating traffic is what they do all day. ATC has procedures for getting everyone out of the way of a plane that is not responding. Those procedures are very disruptive to the normal flow of air traffic.
Before 9/11, an equipment failure or a brain fart was more forgivable. Now the response for ignoring ATC is pretty strong. Ignoring ATC, at any time, is a career limiting action.
The FIRST rule is that somebody has to fly the airplane. Even if that means turn on the autopilot and kick back listening to the radio and looking around. The computers are not to be delegated *everything*.
Wot a load of pish. Yeah, it's a job that's fully automated - until the shit goes down and the automation suddenly cannot cope with 'out-of-the-envelope' conditions. You think a machine could have landed Sully's jet safely following a bird strike?
or C) They should have started descent about 20 or so minutes prior to their destination.
Owning a calculator doesn't mean you get to stop using your brain. Last time I flew, we did not fly directly over the airport and then drop straight down 37,000 ft to the runway in zero time.
The only question going begging here is why are you so dense?
I'm a Network Engineer and a private pilot working toward ATP and I hear what you're saying with all 9 of your points. The pilots honestly expect us to believe that they took out their laptops and were so distracted by what they were doing that they lost track of time. No, sir. I don't buy it. This simply does not happen. Pilots are some of the most methodical and anal retentive people on the face of the planet. Taking time away from the duty of flying the aircraft (especially a large airliner with over 100 people onboard) simply doesn't happen unless the pilots are incapacitated. Yes, computers do much of the mundane work but the pilots are responsible for always triple-checking the aircraft's computers with respect to navigation, fuel state, engine performance, and a host of other factors that keep them busy. Even if one of the pilots took out his laptop for some reason (Showing off Windows 7?) the other pilot never would have done the same. As for missing the radio calls, you know as well as I do that not long after the flight is airborne, the non-PIC has trained their hearing to pick out his/her flight number from the ATC traffic like it was their mother's name. No sir, they were asleep. We all know the problems commercial pilots face. Long hours, little pay, waking up at 3:30am to open Starbucks and then jumping into the cockpit of an RJ at 9am. Pilot fatigue is reaching a critical stage and I believe this is just the beginning of events like this. Granted, both pilots falling asleep is going to be rare, but having at least one pilot taking a power nap in the cockpit is fairly common.
that nobody has offered is that they were having sex. Duh.
Whether they were sleeping, or arguing, or playing with their computers hardly matters. They must be fired in any case.
Why such harsh punishment? Because, their actions and the resulting publicity will to more to harm the flying public's confidence in the safety of air travel than just about anything else in recent years.
I wager that even a crash killing hundreds of people does less to rattle public confidence than a news story of drunken or negligent pilots.
or C) They should have started descent about 20 or so minutes prior to their destination.
Owning a calculator doesn't mean you get to stop using your brain. Last time I flew, we did not fly directly over the airport and then drop straight down 37,000 ft to the runway in zero time.
The only question going begging here is why are you so dense?
Look -- your rudeness isn't helping you case. But I'll be patient. I'm no pilot but I think it's fair to assume that take off and landing are more or less static intervals, at least for commercial flights, to avoid any nausea or even panic. The only way the math adds up is that they began descending 11-12 minutes too late. Do you not get this?
I am the lawn!
The HF buzzer you refer to is presumably Selcal, which assumes they were tuned to company frequency on one radio. I thought the A320 generated a MCDU message to check flight plan when the aircraft deviated from its route, though IIRC the message and attention getting light are purely visual, and under the circumstances gentle visual reminders weren't going to do much.
They didn't do their job, instead preferring to do what flight crew do 90% of their time - discuss rotas and pay and try and work out if they could squeeze another allowance. Firing them isn't excessive at all. You mentioned TCAS - how quickly do you think these two could have reacted to a TCAS RA, when they have already ignored radio traffic, the MCDU warning prompt and had no positional awareness at all.
In a broader context, perhaps this is a sign of a deeper malaise. Airbus aircraft (with Boeing not far behind) are increasingly automated, with the flight crew purely monitoring for much of their time. Monitoring is boring, and maybe that's the real reason this happened.
Its not about the distance, its about the time.
When the time between life and death (to respond to an emergency communication from ATC) can be measured in as little as seconds... Not listening to ATC for forty five minutes can hardly be overblown.
On top of that, if they were concentrating that hard on their laptops for that long they could easily have missed a minor problem on the aircraft that was trending into a major problem. Etc... etc...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
5. There is an automatic system called TCAS (Traffic Collision and Avoiding System) that would warn them if there was any chance of colliding with another aircraft. This system is mandatory (at least in Europe) and is why those 2 aircraft over Brazil collided some years ago.
Not quite working as intended then, ary they?
1) This is complete crap. Even if they were expected to "do this on their own time", which is possible, that doesn't imply do it while they're flying... which isn't their own time. Even busy people have way more "personal time" than they admit. But who the hell wants to do this kind of crap in their personal time? I suspect there was training time made available that the pilot either couldn't or didn't make use of for whatever reason and didn't want to reschedule official training time.
2) The detour isn't what people are making a big deal about, it happens all the time for various reasons. The only reason people are making a big deal is the fact that the pilots were blatantly ignoring safety rules that are there for a reason.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
You don't see that big a deal huh. Yet this is one of the FAA "Crash and Burn" Regs that was violated and do you know why they're called Crash and Burn? Simply because breaking them means mandantory loss of license. That's how big a deal the FAA considers this to be. So these two idiots are going to be Groundlings for the rest of their lives as they wont even be able to fly a Cessna after this kind of screwup.
As to the Disciplinary Action, that's going to come down from the FAA who issued their Licenses so No the Airline doesn't have to fire/discipline them. As to the Cost, Forget the Fucking cost of training. It's got no bearing on this as the cost of the Aircraft is 10x that at the minimum plus the potential "loss of Life" which runs far higher. I'm sorry but if you think that poorly about your fellow Humans, then you need to be grounded permanently to prevent you even having the possible opurtunity to pull an duplicate of the 9/11 attack somewhere else and it's the reason the FAA requires Psyc Evals as part of the annual physical.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
or C) They should have started descent about 20 or so minutes prior to their destination.
Owning a calculator doesn't mean you get to stop using your brain. Last time I flew, we did not fly directly over the airport and then drop straight down 37,000 ft to the runway in zero time.
The only question going begging here is why are you so dense?
You must be the dumbest fucker around. Seriously, do the fucking math, and afterwards please kill yourself.
yo Mods, hit this shit like you owe it money! Mod this up!
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
My question is at what point are airlines going to put cameras in the cockpit for "flight safety"? I mean, seriously. It wouldn't be very difficult to tie a stream into the flight recording system. This would prevent a whole lot of misconduct on planes, and answer a lot of questions when things go wrong.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
This is what happens when people become complacent and just start to accept things.
1) Passengers have to put up with delays in the Air Traffic system, airlines, airports and ATC. We've all become accustomed to it so it wasn't
until somebody in the cabin spoke up and the flight attendant called the flight deck. Passengers, don't become complacent and push the call button.
2) The Flight Attendants were probably too busy worrying about their next flight and how they were going to make it with only 15 minutes. Hey, FAs,
a word. Instead of worrying when the pilots have to pee, make sure they're alive up there from time to time okay?
3) The ATC folks were checking for defective bulbs in their antiquated systems to make sure that the plane was still in the air. Calling multiple times without an answer
should have triggered a call to the guys with the fighter jets. Those jets should have been dispatched within 1/2 hour after loss of contact, if anything to confirm
that somebody was still alive on the flight deck. Sorry, ATC, FAA you deserve a big fail. After 9/11 this is a very very stupid mistake.
4) Finally, two idiots who have the responsibility to operate their aircraft safely and within the operating rules of their airline and the FAA. These two idiots
should never fly anything more than a kite from now on. When I read the NYT story I just laughed, here's two senior pilots trying to go over the way that
they can bid on new flights and routes on a new system. WTF? It seems that their priorities were severely out of kilter and they won't have to worry about
that any longer. I also think this may warrant an investigation for Criminal Negligence.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I am an ex-IT engineer turned airline pilot (currently flying Airbus A320)
Dude, did you learn nothing from this story? Don't post to slashdot when you're flying!It'll get you in trouble! ;-)
You can't take the sky from me...
Mod parent up, please.
this is a great point to drive home: that the pilots had lost SA and positive control of the aircraft. had an emergency situation presented itself they would have been behind the aircraft, and that is not a good place to be. SA (situational awareness) is one of the key factors in aviation that differentiates the "that was a close one" moments and the "NTSB re-assembles my aircraft" moments.....
until something goes wrong, like an engine failure, swallowing a flock of geese, or the one in a billion chance of an engine failure taking out all flight controls, etc. then you're paying for those "lazy bastards that just push buttons" to get your screaming butt on the ground in one piece. computers do not now, and i doubt in the next decade or more, have the decision making ability and adaptability to handle most emergency situations.
and do you really want someone on the ground to be able to control the airplane. 9/11 would have been much worse had the hijackers only needed to hack the system to fly you into a building instead of actually expend their own lives. lot more guys willing to kill others if they don't get into harms way as opposed to those willing to kill themselves in the process
My guess is they were trying to use Slashdot's submission system...
New mod option wanted: -1 DrunkenRambling
Maybe we can agree there are at least two classes of errors: (1) mistakes committed due to cognitive overload or poor user interface, or judgment calls that turn out to be bad, and (2) errant but intentional decisions that cause needless danger.
An error of Category #1 is a result of being human, and as you point out it is highly valuable to report and learn from them.
Errors of Category #2 are also a result of being human, but require people to consciously decide to commit them, and to take actions that are contrary to professional behavior.
I believe what we have here is the second type. These pilots brought their laptops with them into the cockpit and then made the conscious decision to open them up, and made the conscious decision to ignore audio signals from ATC and other pilots. This is not just a case of "oops, I didn't know, I didn't hear, I didn't see". These guys engaged their brains and intentionally chose to disregard their professional training and obligations. There should be consequences for this sort of thing.
I totally agree...I think it's terrible that many airline pilots are only making low/mid 5 digits a year. Seriously. The training isn't cheap or short and the hours aren't humane.
I see that real estate agents are on the list; I have one in my family, and while it doesn't require a great deal of training, any agent that is making a lot is going to be on call and working literally any time they are awake or can be awakened by the incessant ringing of their cell phone. Rich douchebags may call on a Saturday morning and want a viewing/purchase arranged NOW NOW NOW, and then they will keep bothering you with stupid shit after they have bought/rented the property, and you may have to act as the ref. between renter and landlord. Also the whole field seems to be thoroughly BS-ified with non-compete agreements, union-like organizations, etc, and of course since it attracts those who worship the little green god, there are many backstabbing lowlifes working in the field. It's not a job I'm jealous of in any way. I always say, money can't buy time.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
ALMOST believable. Pays may have been slashed, but these numbers are just too ridiculous.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
That's a SIX YEAR OLD list of overpaid jobs. Six years later, Chesley Sullenberger has to pack his own peanut butter sandwich because the airline won't even feed the flight crews. Six years later airlines are losing billions of dollars and passing on the joy to their employees.
Six years ago working in IT pretty much guaranteed you an overpaid job. Something has changed since then.
If it isn't part of the pilot's job to LOOK OUT THE WINDOW occasionally to check that they are not on a collision course with another aircraft, then those strobe lights they are all required to have are pretty pointless, aren't they? With all the publicity this event has received, the airline really has no choice but to terminate these wankers' careers.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I would go so far as to say that would be a necessary last barrier of protection in the whole system, and no argument can really justify the cost to not have it.
Knowing the randomness-ratio is good though, and the cost is probably a tiny amount of fuel / time, but it's just a small insurance against problems of "too perfect systems".
In most cases, it might even save fuel. The "ideal path" may not always be so ideal in practice, as in theory.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Engine failure, hydraulic failure, structural damage, landing gear failure...the list of things that an autopilot is worthless for goes on and on. If a real pilot doesn't fly the airplane when any of those situations occur, everyone on board dies.
FD: I am an aerospace engineer and a pilot.
and we thought texting while driving is dangerous....
I am an ex-IT engineer turned airline pilot (currently flying Airbus A320)
I suggest you get off your laptop before you get yourself in trouble.
Firing the offender over an incident like this usually misses the real cause of the problem.
Maybe the radio system is designed in a way that makes it too easy to ignore - there's no special alert to say 'hey, buddy, this message is for YOU'.
Maybe the scheduling software is too complicated, counterintuitive, buggy, and slow, giving pilots a powerful motivation to spend a lot of time on the computer rather than flying. I fear that this effect will hit doctor's offices with the focus on electronic medical records.
Maybe the pilots weren't given enough training time for something so important as determining when, where, and with whom they will be working.
Maybe cockpits lack information, communications, and capabilities that pilots really need. And that's why they had personal laptops in the cockpit in the first place.
So my first reaction when an incident like this occurs is to ask what's wrong with the system that allowed and encouraged it to happen? Go after fixing that. The offenders probably require some sort of disciplinary action. But unless they're real morons who escaped detection for a long time, then their probably just average individuals for their profession who did what many other individuals are on the verge of doing every day. Firing them will just mean replacement with rookies who are even less skilled and experienced with the broken system.
Decades?
In fact airline pilot's training is very short (you can manage to get fATPL in about a year - take or leave 6 monts) which qualifies you for a co-pilot job.
Getting the f (frozen) out of the ATPL requires minimum of two years of work if you started from zero but decades?
Compare this to nearly any college degree and you find that in fact a pilot's carreer is more about getting the money fast to get the certification and meeting the healt requirements. It is expensive (though not that expensive when compared to US top-dollar universities) but is quite comparable to any job requiring constant training and a career which doesn't automaticly start from the top.
I'm with you on that pilots are not overpaid (partly because I'm one, although flying just for fun, doing boring IT stuff for work) but it is justified to ask why treat pilots any different from bus drivers if we do not count in the more expensive training and requirements? If the bus catches fire then it's dependant on luck who survies - if the plane catces fire - well, there is really not much the pilot can do besides read the manual and act as teached.
The real challenges today are not on pilot but on the systems controlling the traffic, in a single event a good pilot can save the day, but in everyday life the challenges are elsewhere.
I would say that the problem for the pilots is it's been a slow news week. A lot of Pilots and Flight Attendants said in the beginning these guys wouldn't get fired. I think a lot of that is based on past experience with these situations. Most people don't understand that this isn't the first time something like this has happened. The problem is these issues are usually internal matters. Maybe the purser finds a crew member asleep. It's taken care of internally.
This is a big international news story that just won't die. And it's likely the pilots will be terminated because of it.
I will disagree with cost to the airline. Delta has made so many route reductions, mainline to barbie-jet shifts, reduction in cycles, etc that they have Pilots to spare. If they needed to find a replacement they have had a fair number of lay-offs over the last few years and likely still have Pilots they could recall.
1) The numbers on that web page don't look like real data or even realistic data. A pilot earns $100 to $400? All certified flight instructors earn exactly $25? And no GIV CAPTAIN (whatever that is) earns less than $130,000 or more than $180,000?
2) The average they show is not median but mode, which is a crappy way to estimate what a member of a group will earn:
Ten guys earn $30,000 a year. One of them gets promoted into a special position with the same job title and earns $90,000. Wow, all those other guys just got a raise to $60,000! Then ten more guys get hired at $30,000. The average is still $60,000.
Median, unlike mode, can be a good average to use in discussing salaries. But I don't see a median salary listed for actual airline pilots on any of the sites cited in this discussion.
Fire them.
Then nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Airline pilots don't simply forget to descend or ignore the center due to a distraction like a laptop. This is a bunch of bullshit. They were either asleep or getting a Bill Clinton from a flight attendant. Still, even then that wouldn't be enough of a distraction to warrant their lack of communication. I say they were napping with earplugs in.
What part of ignoring everything about your aircraft for even 15 min says to you "Second Chance"?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
I spoke to a commercial pilot recently who told me that his aircraft has a sort of fold down shelf just in front of him where he can position his laptop. He commented that when he opened the laptop it completely obscured the aircraft instruments.
Why is no one complaining about having electronics on during flight and so near the avionics? Shall we also assume a pilot who can't figure out scheduling software knows how to disable his laptop's WiFi transmitter?
I completely trust that the government and airlines have nothing but my best interest in mind and are completely honest with me about electronics aboard planes. Usually I get this feeling when they tell me to turn off my i-Pod and offer some $10.00 headphones to listen to their piped-in music.
Try contacting them over IMs or just drop them a facebook message.
Most pilot/flight scheduling software is on a mainframe with a web front end. How were the pilots getting internet reception to be able to log in??
- Bus driver texting rear-ends a car
So does that make you the car that the bus driver rear-ends?
A DOUBLE bird strike, in fact.
The fact that he got that plane down in one piece and nobody on board was killed is nothing short of AMAZING.
That man is a hero and deserved every ounce of congratulations that he got. Had he not kept his cool and correctly made a series of critical decisions, and done *exactly* the right things, it is likely that everyone on board would have died.
Let's see how you see this after 10 Years of commercial flying. My Brother is captain on an A320 for many years now. The problem is boredom. Most of those pilots are over-achiever until they have the job they want. And from then on, they have too much time while doing their jobs. Most of them start doing their office work in the cockpit, play games, watch movies, etc.
I don't want to say that the "computer thing" wasn't a silly excuse for something else, but think about it, most of them are so bored by their job that they start doing stupid things after some years (especially when they also have a lot of routine on the routes they fly every day).
Cheers,
-S
Your thinking that ignoring your aircraft for over an hour is a mistake is simplistic idiocy at best. What they did was NOT a mistake. What it was was an egregious (~80min) lack of any attention to an aircraft traveling around 600 mph with over 100 other people on board that you are supposed to be responsible for.
If you think that a pilot that can ever be unaware of everything in his aircraft for that period of time should be given a second chance. Then your "everyone is worth something" attitude as buried itself to deep into your brain for it to ever be of use again.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
I agree: for the responsibility they carry, pilots deserve a good wage. I'm thinking that the people Chesley Sullenberger saved don't think he's overpaid (and if they passed the hat they could still come up with a little something extra -- you know, for the effort).
Not skill, experience, recommendations, or flight time. 100% seniority. And if you ever are laid off and change airlines, you start over at the bottom of the paygrade.
Yes, unions are like that.
Maybe it's just me, but I no longer believe that my "electronic device will interfere with the planes navigation system."
I don't mean to come across as saying we should all pity the poor airline pilots - they chose their profession, and many of them did it because they had a unique skillset and the fortune of opportunity (pilot training from military, family, etc.), and are stickign through the tedious to get to the fantastically overpaid. I think the system is stupid, but that's why I didn't choose to go beyond my private pilot license.
Just pointing out that it's entirely plausible to suppose pilots without seniority would be begrudgingly arguing over a new pay scale system in-cockpit since they don't have time anywhere else. Not defensible, but plausible.
...but if it's within 1-2 day's drive (Example Oklahoma City to Baltimore)...
Having been to Baltimore, this sure sounds like hours of boredom followed with moments of sheer terror to me...
a mile in the air, with 200 souls on board.
Pilot: someone who can transubstantiate "200 drunken fucktwats in the back" to "200 souls aboard" with two words: "Oh, fuck!"
$200K for the decades of training and experience to know what to do when one of the world's more complicated machines breaks, a mile in the air, with 200 souls on board. "Overpaid"? What a jackass.
Getting your commercial license does not take "decades of training", or even years (see below). It's not nearly as complicated as you may think, and the pilots don't have to learn how every little thing is engineered. You can personally learn to take off and fly around in one easy lesson (I have about 140 hours that I logged years ago), and solo between in around 10-20 hours. What does take longer is learning about airspace, weather, emergency procedures, navigation, regulations, etc., etc. For the vast majority of flights, it's as simple as a bus ride. The training pays off when the unusual happens, and you know what to do.
Most engineers have as much if not more training than the average airline pilot, so IMHO $200k is way out of line. I know their compensation is a complicated topic...seniority is lost if you change airlines, or it goes bankrupt. But the airline industry as a whole has issues...why can you buy a $99 ticket x-country, but one to the next state costs $400? The colusion between airlines for ticket pricing is scandalous as well.
From FAR 61.129:
For an airplane multi engine rating:
If you are applying for a commercial pilot certificate with an airplane category and multi engine class rating, you must log at least 250 hours of flight time as a pilot (of which 50 hours, or in accordance with FAA Part 142, a maximum of 100 hours may have been accomplished in an approved flight simulator or approved flight training device that represents a multi engine airplane) that consists of at least:
100 hours in powered aircraft, of which 50 hours must be in airplanes.
100 hours of pilot in command flight time, which includes at least 50 hours in airplanes, and 50 hours in cross-country flight in airplanes.
20 hours of training on the areas of operation as listed for this rating, that includes at least 10 hours of instrument training of which at least 5 hours must be in a multi engine airplane, 10 hours of training in a multi engine airplane that has a retractable landing gear, flaps, and controllable pitch propellers, or is turbine-powered, one cross-country flight of at least 2 hours in a multi engine airplane in day VFR conditions, consisting of a total straight-line distance of more than 100 nautical miles from the original point of departure, one cross-country flight of at least 2 hours in a multi engine airplane in night VFR conditions, consisting of a total straight-line distance of more than 100 nautical miles from the original point of departure.
10 hours of flight time performing the duties of a pilot in command in a multi engine airplane with an authorized instructor on the areas of operation as listed for this rating, which includes at least one cross-country flight of not less than 300 nautical miles total distance and as specified, and 5 hours in night VFR conditions with 10 takeoffs and 10 landings (with each landing involving a flight in the traffic pattern) at an airport with an operating control tower.
Just another day in Paradise
I agree with your points about the problems with automation - I avoid driving much with cruise control for the same reason - having to micro-manage my speed helps keep me alert. Sure, I could pay more attention to other things without having to do it, but in reality I'd pay less attention.
I'm not sure that firing pilots who fall asleep is going to help either.
I liked something I saw for airport security screeners - who face similar problems (they screen thousands of packages and 99.99999% of the time there is nothing to see). It was an x-ray machine that would add in images of contraband for the operator to spot - if an operator didn't hit a button when one was spotted then it would alert a supervisor. It gave the operator something to actually do, and thus it kept them alert.
Maybe the plane needs to trigger a random simulated failure (caution light or whatever) that requires a button to be hit to clear the condition (FMS would avoid triggering it at critical moments, and the operator would have plenty of time to deal with other stuff first). Or, maybe the cockpit should have officially-sanctioned ways to do things like check email/etc which will do things like pop up occasional messages to do a visual scan and which will blank the screen the instant an alert of some kind occurs. Or, maybe there is some task the crew could perform that is more mentally stimulating than staring out the window at blue sky.
The human brain is a machine - a complex one, but a machine nonetheless. It has certain limitations. In particular, it gets bored if you don't give it something to do. This is biology, and simply telling pilots not to be bored doesn't fix the problem. Likewise, the human brain requires sleep, and if people are overworked they won't get enough of that.
If he was flying, he'd probably be on WoW ;)
$200K for the decades of training and experience
Getting your commercial license does not take "decades of training"
If only you'd kept reading for just two more words! :)
The most-senior pilots who fly the big jets for the biggest commercial airlines make $200K. They got there by climbing the seniority ladder for 30+ years.
See the links in my original post for more details.
Want to know the truth. The truth is that it is a highly competitive market where there are ALOT more people who want to be flying for pay then there are places paying. If it were not for the power of the Unions they would be paid less and still there would be no shortage of pilots.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
not the first time, sure. the second time, certainly. the loss would be worth it.
- Bus driver texting rear-ends a car
Who do you think the bus driver rear ended? People like you! thats who who get squished by the bus. You are not safe anywhere. But the bus passengers were safe, and the "I am in charge of my own destiny" car driver got crushed.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
has to be win 7 on vm 3 on a macbook!
Well, since you are only training, you must have an accurate view on what all experienced pilots are like. Not explaining what acronyms are doesn't make you an expert, either.
A good pilot would have landed it on the runway instead of ditching in the river.
I go to high school in a small town about an hour south of the Twin Cities in Minnesota. My teacher said that one of his other students has a parent who works in Northwest headquarters here, and the word on the street is that both pilots are gay, and that that possibly could of had something to do with it. Just thought I'd mention that.
Microsoft Flight Simulator.
"5. There is an automatic system called TCAS " Yep, and it's there to assist/aid in traffic avoidance, it does NOT absolve the pilots of responsibility. "9. Firing them is a bit excessive" I call bullshit. They are responsible for the lives of dozens of passengers. The PICs primary job is safety of the flight. Period. Go read the FARs you make your living by again. Your job is to do everything within your power to not kill me and anybody else in your aircraft. Having EVERYBODY in the cocpit fucking around with their "toys," ignoring radio calls and paying no attention to where the aircraft they are responsible for is and relying on technology to do their fucking job for them is inexcusable. That's GROSS negligence. The fact that they were luck enough for nothing to go completely wrong while they were playing/arguing/sucking each other off is immaterial. The mentality of "it's ok if i screw with my cell phone, if anything goes wrong there's airbags and a seatbelt to save me" is a bullshit attitude.
.. that we are in 2009 and airplane software cannot tell that the plane is off course and alert pilot.
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Both pilots in a passenger airliner did fall asleep a few years ago. An Aloha Air (?) flying from one Hawaiian island to another went past the destination. Control couldn't reach them and than eventually the 2 pilots that had dozed off woke up and turned their plane around.
It's happened before. They fell asleep.
The simplest explanation is usually the answer.
These 2 pilots failed to answer around 10 different air traffic controllers as they were flying through different ATC zones, over a time period of 77 minutes. Either they had the comm turned off, they were out of the cockpit or they were sleeping. Either way the real answer will probably get them fired so they will never admit to it. At first they said that they were arguing over NTSB policy which is a comical excuse, so they changed it to the laptop excuse. The laptop excuse might be plausible for a one pilot plane, but it is not believable for 2 pilots approaching a destination and flying right by it. My guess is that they were sleeping. Because the pilots are the only ones who know what occurred in the cockpit that day, they probably won't ever admit the truth.
According to CNN, their licenses have been revoked Way to piss away your careers, wankers... I hear McDonald's is hiring.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
...but not the first to think it:
They were having gay sex.
There is an automatic system called TCAS (Traffic Collision and Avoiding System) that would warn them if there was any chance of colliding with another aircraft. This system is mandatory (at least in Europe) and is why those 2 aircraft over Brazil collided some years ago.
Two aircraft collided over Brazil because of a collision avoidance system? That must be one really shitty system, if it succeeds at doing the exact opposite of what it is designed to do.
... and then they built the supercollider.
OK, ignoring the fact that you appear to have little more than a pocket calculator for a brain, let's go over what happened. The pilots (well, flight attendant really) realized that they missed the start of their descent after going 110 miles past the point where they should have come to a complete stop on the ground, not 110 miles past the start of their descent (descents tend to be at an angle of somewhat less than 90 degrees off horizontal). They were out of contact for 90 minutes. This 90 minutes includes the 110 mile overshoot, the time they should have spent descending, and a good chunk of time prior to that (the 90 minute figure is probably only based on their last recorded contact, so they stopped paying attention to ATC sometime between the start of the 90 minute window and the expected start of their descent somewhere around halfway through). Nowhere is it being claimed that they cruised for 90 minutes after passing the airport, nor did they start their descent only ~10 minutes late. There, now run along and have fun standing on your head to see boobs.
While not necessarily the cause of this particular mishap, sleep deprivation is a problem for pilots, air traffic controllers and truckers, among others. And why is it a problem? Because they get shitty pay and have to work long hours. Some commercial pilots are paid so little that they qualify for food stamps while others take second jobs.
One of the reasons the air traffic controllers went on strike during the 80's was the fact that they wanted a 32 hour work week - because it's easier to keep a high level of alertness. But Reagan fixed that little union problem, and now ATC's get as little as two hours sleep between shifts. If there's two groups of people we don't want to fall asleep on the job and have to work at coffee shops (like the co-pilot of the plane that went down in Buffalo into an apartment building), it's pilots and air traffic controllers.
The wonder of the free market in action....
I see that real estate agents are on the list ... It's not a job I'm jealous of in any way
I don't have any sympathy for real-estate agents. In 1999 I shopped around for a house, and prices were on the rise but they were under $200,000 for average homes. Three years later, the prices were more than double in spite of the same demographics. Regardless that people were stupid enough to buy at such inflated prices, the agents that I talked to just tried to tell me that I had to play along. I refused to be a sucker. If someone was willing to outbid me, let them.
If a real-estate agent complains of hard work, well why was there so much work? If they didn't hype hype hype the market was a sure way of self enrichment - prices are always going to go up so get in now now now or you'll never get in (so how is any youngster going to get in now, according to that logic?). If I didn't call the agents I talked to, they were always calling me.
They show the crappiest houses, but they know where the good ones are. "Can you show me some better houses?" I would ask. There answer was always "This is about as good as it gets." Barefaced lies, because I did see better ones, but their strategy is to move the crap at inflated prices so that of course the best houses will attract outrageous crazy gotta have it bids.
I didn't trust their sleazy ways, and I didn't want to operate at their level, but for a few years, that was such a way to make no-brainer money.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
...the pilots were checking-out Google Earth maps.
Sorry, I omitted that one of the aircraft had the system turned off, and the system requires all aircraft with it turned on....
Jesus Christ, I hate those christians!!
While I agree with you all the way, I agree more when you said "overblown". Oh and better is the explanation in the letter to the pilots from FAA - "You do not have the qualifications necessary ...". Qualification? So, how can they explain the 31000 flight hours - the pilots' instructors from school were in the child-seat?
Civilian autopilots are not immune to interference from classified sources: http://www.cyberspaceorbit.com/phikent/haarp/Haarp.ra
All Rights Reserve Without Prejudice, Angela Kahealani. All information + transactions nonnegotiable + private.
2) 110 miles in a jet? really? big detour? How long does it take a jet to travel 110 miles? This extended the flight what, a whole 15 minutes counting backtrack time? For a jet that's like a bus driver missing an exit and having to drive another 4 miles to the next cloverleaf and do a 180. Though it probably had a few more exaggerated side-effects, like passengers missing connecting flights (which happens too much anyway even when planes are on time) plus the cost of a few hundred pounds of fuel. But still, seems like its being overblown.
IIRC There was a crash where the pilots accidently disengaged the autopilot while arguing over a lightbulb.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Of course I was being facetious. I bet you've heard that excuse before. It's like firefighting, a good day is a boring day. That's the way we like it, a nice boring flight.
But your comment about remote control makes me thing of all the remote control aircraft we have flying over Afganistan. Surely if terrorists were going to hack, that would be the prime target. So, instead of taking out wedding parties, the strikes would take out the people we like.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
They lost track of time playing with new time scheduling software?
Before you design for reuse, make sure to design it for use.