Freight dog, I found.

Shuttle check, check running, check runner, you'all moving too fast. Can you fill in a little description?

Well, EASA has now closed the entire European air space to the Max 8 and 9. Probably mostly because there was no country left to cross into or out of it.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Fortunately this knee-jerk bullshit has ZERO affect on American carriers. Just not enough of these...

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:

quote:

Originally posted by tacfoley:
Most of the Canadians and many of the others on board were delegates going to a UN World Health Care conference in Nairobi.

Part 1 of the conference had been in Addis Ababa.

In addition to international events and tourism, Ethiopia is seeking industrial modernization and foreign investment - though also strangling a lot of it throug slow, overbearing bureaucracy. In my last job our office supported an entrepreur from the electoral district of my boss in his endeavor to build an ethanol plant using sugar refinery waste there. Literally for years, as he went there frequently while the process stalled to the point he went nearly bankrupt.

Meanwhile several countries including Ethiopia, but also Brazil, China, Germany and the UK have banned 737 Max 8 flights from their airspace in what looks like kneejerk reactions to me. The German transport minister's move in particular seems to be for scoring cheap political points by being seen to do something on a hyped issue that has actually no local bearing - it was noted that in fact none of this type currently use German airports, but there's sure a lot of them transiting the airspace ...

I just flew out of Frankfurt this morning on one (LOT). Should make getting out of Warsaw challenging but they were definitely being used in German airports.

Freight dog: someone who flies freight. Sometimes called OTSK, or order of the sleepless (k)nights. Remember the line in top gun about flying rubber dogshit out of hong kong? This is that job.

Check running: though checks are getting less common with electronic transactions being the lions share of purchases in the US, the movement of checks for a long time was part of a small segment of the charter flight industry; some companies existed doing nothing but flying cancelled checks in the middle of the night, and a whole network exists across the country doing nothing but that.

I ran into a very hot blonde Lear captain in Denver many years ago who was doing that.

Thanks, Guppy. The 'checks' thing was throwing me. Didn't even think paper checks mattered anymore, as I get a digital image as soon as it is deposited.

I'm nearly under a UPS Air Hub flight path. Some mornings closer than 90 seconds apart is another stout 2-engine plane. When it is particularly overcast the planes fly pretty low.

Real sorry to hear of the crash. Terrorism aside, I cannot help think undertraining is rampant in the airline industry, as it seems to be elsewhere. (Thinking of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 hitting a wall and Lion Air Flight 610 having 'repairs' prior it its crash.)

quote:

Originally posted by Woodman:
The 'checks' thing was throwing me. Didn't even think paper checks mattered anymore, as I get a digital image as soon as it is deposited.

Yeah, one of our MX / Pilots flew checks in the NE for years. Night, bad wx, icing, multiple shitty weather approaches to near mins made for a challenging night in his words, all to keep the checks moving.

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:

quote:

Originally posted by Woodman:
The 'checks' thing was throwing me. Didn't even think paper checks mattered anymore, as I get a digital image as soon as it is deposited.

Yeah, one of our MX / Pilots flew checks in the NE for years. Night, bad wx, icing, multiple shitty weather approaches to near mins made for a challenging night in his words, all to keep the checks moving.

^^^
And maybe this was a company thing or a regional thing, but every check plane I ever saw working summers at BHM were some of the biggest pieces of shit I've ever seen take flight. Everything from Barons, to Senecas, to a Merlin and even a Lear or two. All looked what could be best described as "post-apocalyptic".

It's seemed like every other morning we'd be treated to a new story by the guys coming in of what broke/failed/died on last night's trip.
Most stories ended with "the things we do for hours."

quote:

Originally posted by Snake207:

every check plane I ever saw working summers at BHM were some of the biggest pieces of shit I've ever seen take flight. Everything from Barons, to Senecas, to a Merlin and even a Lear or two. All looked what could be best described as "post-apocalyptic".

It was a real cut-throat business, with small operators underbidding each other to get the contracts. By the time they bought fuel and paid the pilots the lowest possible wage, there wasn't much left for maintenance, so any maintenance that was deferrable did get deferred.

I do not like interesting flights; I like boring flights. One of the most interesting was a trip to ferry a clapped out AeroStar that been used for check running, under-maintained, and sold at auction. The airplane was a real piece of crap but I did not know how bad it really was until we got in the air. It had to be repositioned from Florida to Arkansas. Took off into a fairly low overcast and watched the DG (Directional Gyro, what we used to call the "Gyro Compass") start to spin in lazy circles. Bouncing around in choppy air, so the magnetic compass was next to useless. Fortunately there were two of us on board, because the other piece of the contract was to bring two airplanes back to Florida from Arkansas, so I said to the other pilot, "How 'bout you keep us right side up and sort of pointed in the right direction while I see if I can do some problem solving."

I pulled out my portable GPS, but there was no cigarette lighter to plug it into. OK, let me try to use the ADF (Automatic Direction Finder) as sort of a makeshift compass. Nope, that radio was not working.

So there we were, sort of floundering around in weather, with at best an approximate idea of what direction we were heading. Told ATC (Air Traffic Control) that we needed no-gyro vectors to the nearest airport that had at least the minimum weather required for an approach. For the non-pilots, no-gyro service can be provided by ATC telling us to "start turn" and "stop turn," based on us doing a standard-rate turn, which will change heading by three degrees each second. This got us to an airport, where the airplane sat for a couple of days until the weather improved enough that we could get to Arkansas by eyeballing rivers, highways, etc.

quote:

Originally posted by Snake207:

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:

quote:

Originally posted by Woodman:
The 'checks' thing was throwing me. Didn't even think paper checks mattered anymore, as I get a digital image as soon as it is deposited.

Yeah, one of our MX / Pilots flew checks in the NE for years. Night, bad wx, icing, multiple shitty weather approaches to near mins made for a challenging night in his words, all to keep the checks moving.

^^^
And maybe this was a company thing or a regional thing, but every check plane I ever saw working summers at BHM were some of the biggest pieces of shit I've ever seen take flight. Everything from Barons, to Senecas, to a Merlin and even a Lear or two. All looked what could be best described as "post-apocalyptic".

It's seemed like every other morning we'd be treated to a new story by the guys coming in of what broke/failed/died on last night's trip.
Most stories ended with "the things we do for hours."

Yeah, this guy said that management would say "I don't know why you are checking the weather, you are flying anyway". He said it was brutal flying those POS in the clag, night after night.

He has so many great stories, I can't do them justice but you can imagine they deal with (1) broke ass airplanes (2) horrible weather and (3) surviving only due to skill and or dumb luck.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by Snake207:

every check plane I ever saw working summers at BHM were some of the biggest pieces of shit I've ever seen take flight. Everything from Barons, to Senecas, to a Merlin and even a Lear or two. All looked what could be best described as "post-apocalyptic".

It was a real cut-throat business, with small operators underbidding each other to get the contracts. By the time they bought fuel and paid the pilots the lowest possible wage, there wasn't much left for maintenance, so any maintenance that was deferrable did get deferred.

I do not like interesting flights; I like boring flights. One of the most interesting was a trip to ferry a clapped out AeroStar that been used for check running, under-maintained, and sold at auction. The airplane was a real piece of crap but I did not know how bad it really was until we got in the air. It had to be repositioned from Florida to Arkansas. Took off into a fairly low overcast and watched the DG (Directional Gyro, what we used to call the "Gyro Compass") start to spin in lazy circles. Bouncing around in choppy air, so the magnetic compass was next to useless. Fortunately there were two of us on board, because the other piece of the contract was to bring two airplanes back to Florida from Arkansas, so I said to the other pilot, "How 'bout you keep us right side up and sort of pointed in the right direction while I see if I can do some problem solving."

I pulled out my portable GPS, but there was no cigarette lighter to plug it into. OK, let me try to use the ADF (Automatic Direction Finder) as sort of a makeshift compass. Nope, that radio was not working.

So there we were, sort of floundering around in weather, with at best an approximate idea of what direction we were heading. Told ATC (Air Traffic Control) that we needed no-gyro vectors to the nearest airport that had at least the minimum weather required for an approach. For the non-pilots, no-gyro service can be provided by ATC telling us to "start turn" and "stop turn," based on us doing a standard-rate turn, which will change heading by three degrees each second. This got us to an airport, where the airplane sat for a couple of days until the weather improved enough that we could get to Arkansas by eyeballing rivers, highways, etc.

Typical for a lot of piston freight outfits. Those who come out of those outfits, however, tend to be rock solid when it comes to IFR and instrument flying, and a lot more confident in what they can do, and when they say something is unsafe (weather, for example), one had best listen.

A lot of us had that experience coming up through the ranks, flying junk in ice and storms. It's an unfortunate shortcoming in many of those in the cockpit today, who have no experience behind them when they go to the airlines, except perhaps a little flight instructing. They've never dealt with a real emergency. Never seen ice that can't be shed. Never felt a thunderstorm first hand. Never had to fly partial panel. Don't really grasp the concept of flying to minimums by hand, and what it's like not having radar. The experience that comes from that kind of flying leaves an impression and is some experience that can't be replicated or taught in the sim, and that will never be gained flying the line with an airline.

quote:

Originally posted by Woodman:

Real sorry to hear of the crash. Terrorism aside, I cannot help think undertraining is rampant in the airline industry, as it seems to be elsewhere. (Thinking of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 hitting a wall and Lion Air Flight 610 having 'repairs' prior it its crash.)

The Asiana flight wasn't a lack of training. The captain was experienced, and there was a check airman on board, sitting in the jump seat.

The problem at Asiana was cultural. Everyone on the flight deck knew the aircraft was low, below glideslope, but no one spoke against the captain, who was flying, because it's an asian airline and an asian culture issue. There are some operations there where captains still slap first officers; one doesn't speak back to the ultimate authority in the cockpit, but defers and respects. It's very dangerous. It was part of the cockpit culture in the US for decades, but began phasing out about 30 years ago and for the last 20 or so, has been strongly discouraged.

In the US, a crew member would be not only encouraged, but required to speak out, and the F/O (first officer: copilot) would have called out "glideslope" when the flight was low. The captain would have immediately responded with "correcting," and had he not responded, or corrected, the F/O would have called it again. Lacking a response the second call, the F/O would be required to take control.

This is rare. I've done it twice in my career, and I've made corrections a few times, twice as first officer when the captain became disoriented (once over the Persian Gulf and once in Europe). But in general, what happened with Asiana in San Fransisco would be unthinkable here.

I've taught a number of Chinese students, however, and it's ingrained into them, as with many other asian nations and cultures. I've spent enough time in the classroom and simulator and aircraft with Chinese students that I'll do my level best to avoid flying on an aircraft piloted by them.

The training that many of them receive isn't bad training, but how they receive it and what they do with it may be another matter. I recall running a simulator with a Chinese crew on board, with the takeoff conducted at SFO, as a matter of fact, in which the student in the left seat (captain) lost control on takeoff and departed the runway, accelerating toward the passenger terminal. I froze the simulation and asked what happened.

"Engine failure!" the student pronounced.

No, I told him. I didn't set up a failure. The engines were running fine. I set up the takeoff with no malfunctions, winds calm, clear below an overcast, no tricks. I reset the airplane to the end of the runway, put it back on motion. They ran their before takeoff checklist and started the takeoff roll. This time the aircraft departed the runway in the other direction, and I froze the sim again.

Same thing. "Engine failure!" Except I hadn't given him an engine failure. There was nothing wrong with the airplane. He lost control of a perfectly fine, functioning airplane with no emergencies, nothing abnormal. I'd like to say this was unusual. It wasn't.

A rejected takeoff, which is what he should have done if he thought he was experiencing an engine failure, requires retarding all engines to idle, maximum braking, and following a procedure to stop the aircraft. He didn't do any of that, but kept takeoff power in, accelerating toward the passenger terminal, out of control.

It's very common for airlines around the world to have low-time pilots in the cockpit. In nearly all cases, except prior military, the pilots have no experience outside of airline flying, from the time they got their primary flight training. A number of airlines around the world do "ab-initio" training in which their pilots start with zero experience and get trained for a couple hundred hours in light airplanes, then moved into airline equipment. Some of the top operators globally do this, such as Qantas and Lufthansa.

The US is fairly unique in that we have a thriving general aviation system that enables pilots who have a background in crop dusting, night cargo, flying jumpers and towing banners and gliders, instructing, doing charter, air ambulance, fractional and corporate, etc...something other than just airline flying (which is a fairly narrow skill set). The regionals tend to have pilots who have often one job long enough to get their 1,500 hours, but still a very narrow, limited background or scope of experience, but I've flown with a lot of pilots with broad, varied backgrounds that have done all kinds of flying. This is something you see very little of, when flying abroad.

It's mind numbing listening to these pundits and ignorant politicians talk about grounding these aircrafts as if they're experts.

Now they're screaming breaking news about pilots having complained about the manual. The freakin' manual! Like they're college students building an Ikea bed frame in their dormroom with crap directions or something and therefore have no idea what they're doing because of a shitty manual. These pilots don't just hop into these jets, read the manual, and then say ok good to go.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
These pilots don't just hop into these jets, read the manual, and then say ok good to go.

Or hop into a jet, look at the manual, say, “I don’t understand a dam’ thing that it’s trying to tell me, but let’s go anyway.” Not that I am an authority, but I would hope not anyway.

We live and die by the manual.

We used to carry a lot of them; now most guys get issued an ipad; I have something like 40 gigs of manuals on an ipad and I don't know how many tens of thousands of pages between them for everything from hazmat to deicing to systems to emergency procedures.

Standardization is a big, big thing in commercial aviation. I've had sim instructors stop the box when I used the world "thanks" or "please," because it wasn't standard. Everything gets done exactly per the manual, and we're expected to know the manual, all two thousand pages of it, and we're grilled and quizzed on it regularly. We spend a lot of hours absorbing it, over and over to stay current, and on any changes. It really is a big deal.

If a system isn't included in the manual, it's not a small concern or minor problem.

It used to be that when we went in for an "oral" (the verbal exam on systems that may take 4-8 hours in some cases), we were to "build the airplane," and draw out the systems, components, functions, everything, by hand, on a chalk board (or dry erase these days). The trend has moved away from that somewhat, but we're still expected to know the systems, and we absolutely expect that the manufacturer will provide us with all the information.

You want to see me get my hackles up in a ground school, tell me "you don't need to know that." I do. I'm alive because I do. People have died because they didn't. It's a big, big deal.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:

These pilots don't just hop into these jets, read the manual, and then say ok good to go.

Sure they do. I've done it. Well, OK, not a jet, but I've done it a couple of times in piston powered airplanes.

Once, when I was living in Puerto Rico, I was contacted by a gentleman who had just bought a Stinson. He wanted me to teach him to fly it. I was not familiar with the airplane and suggested that he might do well to find an instructor who knew Stinsons. He told me that there was nobody on the island who did. The previous owner delivered the airplane, took the money, and departed on Pan Am.

I told him OK, give me the manual and the key, I'll learn it and when I'm comfortable, I'll teach you. I taught him and his son, and -- small world story -- in a totally unrelated chain of events, twenty-five years later, my wife wound up working for the man's daughter, here in the Orlando area.

Another time, here in the Orlando area, I got a call from the FBO manager. One of his client's pilots called in sick and he needed somebody to take the client's airplane, an Aztec, out to the Bahamas to pick up the client and bring him back. I had never flown an Aztec, never even been in one. I studied the manual over a slow lunch, flew to Freeport, retrieved the client, and returned.

Think of it this way: Wilbur and Orville didn't even have a manual to read!

Wilbur and Orville also crashed a lot in between extorting the Smithsonian to name them as first in flight.

You can get away with a certain amount in a small airplane (it will still kill you, just more slowly), but the last groundschool I attended for a type rating was two months, full time. I head back to recurrent tomorrow, and it's five days.

I'm fairly confident that someone who hadn't been trained on type would struggle to open the door, let alone start engines or fly.

That said, it's sometimes noted that the difference between a rookie and an experienced pilot is that the former says "What's it doing now?" while the latter says "It's doing that thing again."

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by mrw:
I am posting this while sitting in seat 3F on the ground of a Southwest 737....

Did you survive?

It gave me a Calvert flashback.

Yeah, it's all well and good to say hey just read it and fly it in General Aviation. But then again GA pilots are always killing themselves by running out of fuel, flying crappy approaches, or just crashing. At least compared to what the military or airlines does.

Comprehensive initial training, standardization, and periodic refresher training is the reason why a 250hr total time pilot can land an F18 on the deck of an aircraft carrier, day or night. Heck most military aviators flying combat missions today have 1000hrs or less (ie, first tour aviators). An old hand may have 2000+, but not many get past 3000 these days. But due to training, sims, culture, and debriefing it is accomplished safely and effectively.

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:
We live and die by the manual.

.

I can certainly appreciate that point.

But what are you saying then? That a sloppy or incomplete manual could be responsible or partly responsible for bringing down this aircraft?

I don't speculate on the cause of mishaps, and I do not guess.

It's not really relevant, though.

Boeing made changes to the aircraft and failed to include the relevant information in the Flight Crew Operating Manual, which is typically several volumes thick and comprehensive. It's a detailed account of every system in the aircraft, as well as how they interact, what failures can occur and how they're handled, as well as all the relevant information about abnormal situations, and normal operations.

If pilots are complaining that information was not provided them, they have a legitimate point.

If pilots were unaware of a system operation with the Max, and were in a condition in which multiple issues were happening at once, and at least one of those conditions was not recognizable or known, then it's certainly possible to contribute to an outcome in a negative manner.

The 737 has been around for a long time. In that interval, it's grown bigger, heavier, longer, and has been re-engined, with significant changes in instrumentation and avionics. When one is trained on a particular aircraft, one gets a "type rating," which is a certification for that specific make and model. When moving to other versions of the aircraft, differences training is given. Differences training should be comprehensive and cover any specifics that are not the same as the aircraft already qualified in.

The complaint regarding the manuals is specific to MCAS, which is the system that's receiving a lot of attention right now. It involves software that takes input from the angle of attack vanes on the side of the fuselage; these vanes tell the system what the angle is between the airstream and the wing, and as the wing will stall at a particular angle of attack, use this to determine when the aircraft is close to a stall.

Aircraft presently use a stick shaker, which is a box attached to the control column, that shakes the controls with a tactile and audible motion, warning that the aircraft is getting close to a stall. If the shaker is ignored, a "pusher" will move the controls forward, lowering the nose, and decreasing angle of attack.

MCAS does this by trimming the flight controls to get the nose down: trim meaning to make it harder for the pilot to pull back and raise the nose: the idea is to get the nose coming down and decrease that angle between the airstream and the wing, to prevent a stall.

With MCAS, the stab trim motion can be interrupted by electronic switches on the control yoke (steering wheel, of sorts), but once those switches are released, it will begin trimming again. Normally use of the control wheel pitch trim will interrupt other systems, such as the autopilot, and disconnect it, similar to the way tapping the brake disconnects the cruise control in a car.

The problem is that it doesn't work that way here, and there is a procedure to disconnect the stabilizer trim (which also disconnects other features, such as autopilot, etc, and it also runs on it's own. It also starts moving on it's own after it's been stopped. These are significant differences that can be worked with if known, but which could prove dangerous if unknown, especially if compounded by other issues.

In each case, preliminary reports are suggesting commonalities in the events that include bad data in the cockpit, and the potential for bad angle of attack sensors, loss of airspeed data or incorrect data, etc. There is speculation that these are connected, though presently insufficient data is available to make a clear, definitive statement. There are also conflicting reports and eyewitness statements.

There are many cases in aircraft in which lack of knowledge, or doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, can have catastrophic results. What may have worked in one aircraft could be very dangerous in another. It's critical to have the correct information.

Regarding the light aircraft mentioned earlier; there are several light airplanes in which one can mismanage fuel in an emergency, and move considerable fuel to a tank from which it can't be used again. In that case, the airplane can be made to run out of fuel by not understanding where the "bypass fuel" goes when crossfeeding. The aircraft can end up with a dual engine failure land or crash due to fuel starvation, when there's still plenty of fuel on board. It's an example of a case in which aircraft knowledge can save or kill you.

In the Cessna 200 series, there is a fuel boost pump switch that is in two halves; both together make for a high fuel flow, one half is a lower fuel flow. The airplane can experience something called a "fuel flow fluctuation," and the procedure in the aircraft manual, still wrong after all these years, is to turn on the boost pump on the high setting, and adjust the throttle and mixture, and switch tanks. Doing that can guarantee an unrecoverable engine failure.

If instead, the throttle should be retarded, and fuel tanks switched. In most cases, that will solve the problem. Understanding why it occurs is critical, though, and having a correct procedure on board can quite literally be a matter of life or death.

When it comes to aircraft systems and procedures, words matter.