IN PRAISE OF PROPER QUALIFIED PILOTS. . . . .

[Phil Perry]

This isn’t the first time that I have overheard comments like this ( or similar ) “Modern Airliners nowadays fly themselves,. . . the pilots are only there in case something goes wrong. . . .they’re all automatic now. . . . . ! “ These guys get paid loads of money to just to sit on their backsides doing nothing for hours and hours every day of the week. . . . .”

 

What spurred me to write this piece was as a result of comments I heard earlier this evening at an Aero Club Barbie. . . .after the burgers finished and the beer started flowing and several of the ( non pilot ) visitors came up with the same old line, which tells me that this seems to be a commonly held view amongst Joe public.

 

OK, . . . this does seem to be an attitude which is gaining weight amongst the unedificated public, (and media too it seems. . . ) so I think it is about time that someone ( not me,. . . I’m just a Pleb ) in the general media writes a REALLY well constructed article to shoot down this myth once and for all.

 

We have all seen the movies, and read the books about the Non-Pilot heroes who land the plane after both the pilots get food poisoning or something else which places them out of use,. . . . good movie fodder I guess , although now rather over-used. . . .. . .but let’s analyse it for real shall we. . . ?

 

But. . . before we get into the semantics, perhaps we ought to have a vote on this one,. . ie, how many private pilots believe that they could take the place of an airline crew and land a fully loaded airline transport machine safely ?

 

OK, . . . and how many LSA Pilots ?

 

OK, . . . .and how many expert PC Simulator pilots ?

 

My own personal experience with complex aircraft is limited to being a “freight dog” and the only result of both pilots dropping dead would have been a rather large load of Shell machine oil and maybe a few thousand plastic buckets ending up in the ocean, or buried in a jungle hilltop somewhere, but three hundred and fifty human beings. . . .? Well, this is a rather different and (in my view anyway. . .) an eminently more important payload, just pause and think about this for a moment,. . . . .every person on board will, more than likely,have have a wife / husband, a couple of kids, nans, grandads, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, best friends,. . . ie, the three hundred and fifty odd passenger cargo adds up to a shocking whole new level of responsibility when you think about it like that. . . . .

 

So I feel we need to get real about the point of this thread, and bury any silly media misconceptions regarding what it is that REAL commercial transport pilots actually do for a living.

 

I would like to open this thread with the above questions.. . . .then perhaps we will discuss a “Breakdown” of what the average “Joe” would seriously have to accomplish to place a heavy transport in such a position that it could be “Autolanded “ by the on board automatics.. . . assuming he could even find the radio stack, find a frequency on which he could achieve an answer of some sort,,. . . . and ask some station. . .somewhere,. . . where the hell he was actually flying, and at what level and for how long he could stay there etc. . . .etc. . . .etc. . . .. . . .

 

Ready. . .Steady. . . Go.

 

Phil

 

 

[metalman]

Well, I don't really know if I could, I've got a mate who runs an airline sim and have hit him up for a go, but I know that just about every private pilot lives in hope of that curtain getting flung back and the words" can anyone on board fly a plane" be squealed from a distraught ,but gorgeous ,hostess!

 

And don't be so dismissive of oil and buckets ,,,,someone out there is anxiously waiting for their arrival too!

 

 

[Bandit12]

I wouldn't be surprised if your average PPL with enough fuel (which equals time) and in good VFR conditions couldn't maintain control long enough to be talked through the process on the radio by a decent instructor. I wouldn't like to take a bet on it though. It makes for good reading/television as long as it isn't looked at too closely (like most light entertainment).

 

I flew a B737 flight sim on an IFR night flight in choppy conditions from Melbourne to Sydney, and even under instruction, the workload was intense and my arrival wasn't pretty. But Met is right - who doesn't secretly hope for those words to be squealed!

 

 

[rankamateur]

The gorgeous hostess is probrably fairly familiar with cockpit procedures in the absence of an eager PPL.

 

 

[winsor68]

This question was answered on MythBusters...

 

A non qualified and totally unprepared and untrained person was able to land a 747 with only spoken assistance no problem.

 

 

[rankamateur]

who doesn't secretly hope for those words to be squealed!

Probrably more likely to hear "is there a doctor on the flight?" anyway!

 

 

[ahlocks]

.... who doesn't secretly hope for those words to be squealed!

Ewww! ...and have all the wannabee riff raff trample through first class to get there??!!

 

 

[Head in the clouds]

Of course I could fly an airliner, no problem.

 

Well that's what I thought until I had a go a few times at something way bigger than I was used to.

 

Many years ago it was pretty common to spend some time on the flight deck on long haul flights and somewhere over Burma in the middle of the night I was allowed about a minute 'stick' time on an early 747 at FL390. The plane was full of sleeping pax so I was restricted to very tiny control movements and was astounded to find that you can point the nose up a bit but the plane doesn't climb it just changes attitude, the air is so thin the thing is just hanging there about 1.3 Vsi. If you want to manoeuvre you have to use power to do so. Similarly rolling the thing is a wishy-washy affair and you have to actively stop the rolling once it's started or it just keeps on going. Not pleasant and rather disappointing.

 

Years later and with about three thousand hours in small stuff I delivered a Jetranger to Broome for a service and hitched a lift back to Kununurra on a plane being returned from a service, RFDS King-Air IIRC. This was not a flight level thing of course so I couldn't blame thin air. I was allowed hands-on for most of the flight including the circuit and approach and am sorry to say that I very much doubt I could've landed it successfully and that's even with the very experienced pilot sitting next to me and talking me through it. Perhaps with fuel enough for a number of circuits I might have made it but it wasn't at all easy, I was constantly overcontrolling, and way behind the thing.

 

Even later I tendered for a job I couldn't actually do but had in mind a means to get it done with a profit to boot. A mining exploration company wanted some heavy drilling equipment to be moved into a very remote area. I quoted to do the job with a large helicopter and when I won the tender I sub-contracted the job out to one of the offshore helicopter operators that I got along well with, and with the proviso that I got the co-pilot position. They agreed and sent a machine with single pilot IFR capability and onboard mechanic so I got the left seat (command is RHS).

 

I had quite a bit of external load experience so was reasonably confident of my ability to fly the loads should the Capt be sufficiently accommodating. Gladly he was and I started by just getting some basic hands-on on this big twin-pack. Most people think the smaller a machine is the more sensitive it is, well that's not always the case. A Robinson R22, for example, is way less sensitive than a Jetranger (particularly in roll) and it turned out that the Bell222 was way more sensitive than the Jetranger I was used to. It took me about ten minutes to be able to keep it still in a hover, I felt like a new student again.

 

When it came to flying loads on the hook that was yet another matter for embarrassment. Once you get the load swinging it can be mighty hard to stop it. The tendency is to fight the control forces and that only makes it worse, in fact you have to go with it, add to the control forces and that's very hard to do when you're being dragged around the sky by a heavy load 100ft below you. I recall asking Peter (the Capt) at what stage you would decide the swing was getting too dangerous and 'ping it off' (drop the load - the ultimate disgrace), his wry comment was "well if you ever see it coming in the side door ...".

 

It took me a couple of days of loads before we were able to fly with any degree of comfort and in a relatively straight line and it only added to my discomfort to have Peter take over at the other end and hover so steady above the rig that he was able to drop the pieces, a tonne at a time, right onto their mounting bolts for re-assembly.

 

He'd then let me do the un-encumbered landing in a series of jerks and judders of course.

 

In short Phil, I think the average PPL would have a lot of trouble getting a 'heavy' down successfully but if they were lucky enough or skilled enough to do so I doubt if it would be pretty.

 

 

[metalman]

Of course I could fly an airliner, no problem.Well that's what I thought until I had a go a few times at something way bigger than I was used to.

 

Many years ago it was pretty common to spend some time on the flight deck on long haul flights and somewhere over Burma in the middle of the night I was allowed about a minute 'stick' time on an early 747 at FL390. The plane was full of sleeping pax so I was restricted to very tiny control movements and was astounded to find that you can point the nose up a bit but the plane doesn't climb it just changes attitude, the air is so thin the thing is just hanging there about 1.3 Vsi. If you want to manoeuvre you have to use power to do so. Similarly rolling the thing is a wishy-washy affair and you have to actively stop the rolling once it's started or it just keeps on going. Not pleasant and rather disappointing.

 

Years later and with about three thousand hours in small stuff I delivered a Jetranger to Broome for a service and hitched a lift back to Kununurra on a plane being returned from a service, RFDS King-Air IIRC. This was not a flight level thing of course so I couldn't blame thin air. I was allowed hands-on for most of the flight including the circuit and approach and am sorry to say that I very much doubt I could've landed it successfully and that's even with the very experienced pilot sitting next to me and talking me through it. Perhaps with fuel enough for a number of circuits I might have made it but it wasn't at all easy, I was constantly overcontrolling, and way behind the thing.

 

Even later I tendered for a job I couldn't actually do but had in mind a means to get it done with a profit to boot. A mining exploration company wanted some heavy drilling equipment to be moved into a very remote area. I quoted to do the job with a large helicopter and when I won the tender I sub-contracted the job out to one of the offshore helicopter operators that I got along well with, and with the proviso that I got the co-pilot position. They agreed and sent a machine with single pilot IFR capability and onboard mechanic so I got the left seat (command is RHS).

 

I had quite a bit of external load experience so was reasonably confident of my ability to fly the loads should the Capt be sufficiently accommodating. Gladly he was and I started by just getting some basic hands-on on this big twin-pack. Most people think the smaller a machine is the more sensitive it is, well that's not always the case. A Robinson R22, for example, is way less sensitive than a Jetranger (particularly in roll) and it turned out that the Bell222 was way more sensitive than the Jetranger I was used to. It took me about ten minutes to be able to keep it still in a hover, I felt like a new student again.

 

When it came to flying loads on the hook that was yet another matter for embarrassment. Once you get the load swinging it can be mighty hard to stop it. The tendency is to fight the control forces and that only makes it worse, in fact you have to go with it, add to the control forces and that's very hard to do when you're being dragged around the sky by a heavy load 100ft below you. I recall asking Peter (the Capt) at what stage you would decide the swing was getting too dangerous and 'ping it off' (drop the load - the ultimate disgrace), his wry comment was "well if you ever see it coming in the side door ...".

 

It took me a couple of days of loads before we were able to fly with any degree of comfort and in a relatively straight line and it only added to my discomfort to have Peter take over at the other end and hover so steady above the rig that he was able to drop the pieces, two tonnes at a time, right onto their mounting bolts for re-assembly.

 

He'd then let me do the un-encumbered landing in a series of jerks and judders of course.

 

In short Phil, I think the average PPL would have a lot of trouble getting a 'heavy' down successfully but if they were lucky enough or skilled enough to do so I doubt if it would be pretty.

All that and having an airbus call you a "retarde" just as you go to round out,,,just to much!

 

 

[cooperplace]

This isn’t the first time that I have overheard comments like this ( or similar ) “Modern Airliners nowadays fly themselves,. . . the pilots are only there in case something goes wrong. . . .they’re all automatic now. . . . .

 

Phil

one of the problems with this "they are only there in case something goes wrong" idea is that we don't know how many times something didn't go wrong BECAUSE of the pilot's intervention. I want a highly experienced person in front at all times, so they can anticipate and avoid problems. All pilots can think of times something "would have happened if I hadn't done x"

 

 

[rankamateur]

Isn't it better that a enough goes wrong to keep them sharp and keep them current, so they can play for keeps when it matters?

 

 

[jeffd]

Of course I could fly an airliner, no problem.Well that's what I thought until I had a go a few times at something way bigger than I was used to.

 

Many years ago it was pretty common to spend some time on the flight deck on long haul flights and somewhere over Burma in the middle of the night I was allowed about a minute 'stick' time on an early 747 at FL390. The plane was full of sleeping pax so I was restricted to very tiny control movements and was astounded to find that you can point the nose up a bit but the plane doesn't climb it just changes attitude, the air is so thin the thing is just hanging there about 1.3 Vsi. If you want to manoeuvre you have to use power to do so. Similarly rolling the thing is a wishy-washy affair and you have to actively stop the rolling once it's started or it just keeps on going. Not pleasant and rather disappointing.

 

Years later and with about three thousand hours in small stuff I delivered a Jetranger to Broome for a service and hitched a lift back to Kununurra on a plane being returned from a service, RFDS King-Air IIRC. This was not a flight level thing of course so I couldn't blame thin air. I was allowed hands-on for most of the flight including the circuit and approach and am sorry to say that I very much doubt I could've landed it successfully and that's even with the very experienced pilot sitting next to me and talking me through it. Perhaps with fuel enough for a number of circuits I might have made it but it wasn't at all easy, I was constantly overcontrolling, and way behind the thing.

 

Even later I tendered for a job I couldn't actually do but had in mind a means to get it done with a profit to boot. A mining exploration company wanted some heavy drilling equipment to be moved into a very remote area. I quoted to do the job with a large helicopter and when I won the tender I sub-contracted the job out to one of the offshore helicopter operators that I got along well with, and with the proviso that I got the co-pilot position. They agreed and sent a machine with single pilot IFR capability and onboard mechanic so I got the left seat (command is RHS).

 

I had quite a bit of external load experience so was reasonably confident of my ability to fly the loads should the Capt be sufficiently accommodating. Gladly he was and I started by just getting some basic hands-on on this big twin-pack. Most people think the smaller a machine is the more sensitive it is, well that's not always the case. A Robinson R22, for example, is way less sensitive than a Jetranger (particularly in roll) and it turned out that the Bell222 was way more sensitive than the Jetranger I was used to. It took me about ten minutes to be able to keep it still in a hover, I felt like a new student again.

 

When it came to flying loads on the hook that was yet another matter for embarrassment. Once you get the load swinging it can be mighty hard to stop it. The tendency is to fight the control forces and that only makes it worse, in fact you have to go with it, add to the control forces and that's very hard to do when you're being dragged around the sky by a heavy load 100ft below you. I recall asking Peter (the Capt) at what stage you would decide the swing was getting too dangerous and 'ping it off' (drop the load - the ultimate disgrace), his wry comment was "well if you ever see it coming in the side door ...".

 

It took me a couple of days of loads before we were able to fly with any degree of comfort and in a relatively straight line and it only added to my discomfort to have Peter take over at the other end and hover so steady above the rig that he was able to drop the pieces, a tonne at a time, right onto their mounting bolts for re-assembly.

 

He'd then let me do the un-encumbered landing in a series of jerks and judders of course.

 

In short Phil, I think the average PPL would have a lot of trouble getting a 'heavy' down successfully but if they were lucky enough or skilled enough to do so I doubt if it would be pretty.

thats a great experience to read about .

 

 

[facthunter]

I wouldn't trust mythbusters for a factual assessment as they are there to entertain basically.

 

Once you are experienced in a line flying environment on one type of aircraft it takes (if you are transitioning to a new type)

 

About two weeks of theory classes, probably 20hours on a procedures trainer . called a "cardboard" simulator . 7 x 4 hour full visual and motion simulator,(incl final check out) and real local say 2 hours min) plus whatever line training is common to the airlines's practice.

 

Initial command would usually be 100hours of line experience and otherwise say 10 hours followed by a specified number of sectors being checked. ( normally 8 plus unless you fly long sectors where there might be pressure to reduce because of the time it takes (weeks or even months. These are usually minimum as the standard must be reached or you are out of a job usually.

 

Hand flying the big stuff at altitude is quite difficult and tiring. you tend to overcontrol and wander through the altitude because as Bex says the air is thin but you may be only a few knots from buffet (local shock stall with parts of the wing going supersonic and conventional stall. You have to have extra vertical separation provided in the event of not having a serviceable autopilot.

 

Flying at low level is the same . You would tend to over control. when the wheels touch you would want the spoilers deployed quickly or you might skip 1500 feet or so if you are unlucky. Nev

 

 

[Marty_d]

I can highly recommend "QF32" by Captain Richard De Crespigny, about the Qantas A380 that blew an engine over Indonesia just over 3 years ago.

 

After reading about the amount of sh*t he, the copilot, 2 check pilots AND a dead-heading second officer had to deal with bringing that plane down safely, my secret wish to have that pretty stewardess asking for any pilots on board has diminished markedly.

 

Don't want to spoil a good read, but they had to land that plane at between 165 - 168 knots in order to keep the aircraft flying and still have enough runway to stop (the explosion had disabled 50% of spoilers and ailerons, one of the two engines which has reverse thrust, and 36% of brakes). This is in an aircraft which was 42 tonnes over maximum landing weight, tail heavy, had lost 75% of hydraulic pumps, two generators, 50% of AC buses, the APU and a heap more.

 

Over the 2 hours from the explosion to landing they had 130 minor faults logged and 120 master caution alarms.

 

Added to which, when they did stop, they were sitting in a lake of fuel which was leaking from all the holes in the wing, and the brake temperature was over 1000 degrees celcius.

 

Quite happy to leave the big jobs to the professional professionals!!

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

one of the problems with this "they are only there in case something goes wrong" idea is that we don't know how many times something didn't go wrong BECAUSE of the pilot's intervention.

Or did - Air France 447...

 

 

[rankamateur]

Or did - Air France 447...

I thought they rode it to the ground because the computer couldn't be wrong, could it?

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

Nah, apparently the co-pilot held his stick hard back the whole time, locked in stall.

 

 

[rankamateur]

Didn't want to wake the captain, was that the one?

 

 

[facthunter]

Goes right back to the topic. Proper(ly) qualified pilots means appropriately trained and knowing the aeroplane. The people left in charge of that cockpit didn't meet that standard. But let's not get entirely distracted by the one issue. The question is general.

 

The difference between a private pilot and the PIC of a modern large jet is specialised training and a fair bit of it. ALL aeroplanes fly much the same in principle, but a large heavy plane takes a lot of energy to make it change what it is doing so nothing happens suddenly. It takes something like 20 miles to get from cruise speed to flap extend speed in level flight with power at idle dropping stuff out when possible like speed brakes and U/C.ext. Nev

 

 

[dutchroll]

The mythbusters episode in 2007 didn't involve a B747. They tried several times to land the generic NASA advanced concepts flight simulator unsupervised, and crashed horribly each time. They managed to land successfully when talked down by an experienced NASA flight instructor. Adam couldn't even find the landing gear lever until he got instruction. They rated it as "plausible". I'd probably agree with this, but the instruction would have to be very good to avoid any traumas.

 

Just a couple of many pitfalls for someone with no big jet experience:

 

1) Both the Boeing and the Airbus can be prone to trying to exceed Vmo/Mmo when commencing descent from cruise altitude in certain wind conditions and in certain modes, because they cruise fairly close to these speeds anyway. It requires particular actions to be swiftly taken, or a particular technique and mode selection entering the descent. The unqualified pilot would find sirens and lights blaring at them if they were caught out by this.

 

2) Avoiding getting the Airbus too slow and activating its protection modes, which throws up a real can of worms if you don't understand what it's doing and why.

 

3) With both types, slowing the plane up at the right time. You need to slow these things from 250kts at a minimum of about 15nm distance to run to have a stable approach - and that's in level or near-level flight. Try to do that in an Airbus while still descending and it simply won't slow down. If you haven't already reduced speed to 250kts and are still descending at descent speed (280kts or more), you'll need even more distance.

 

4) Flap selection - at some settings if you try to select the flap at too higher speed, it will simply not run, or will auto-retract to its previous setting, defeating the purpose in the first place.

 

5) If you expect to do an autoland you need to fly down an ILS. Boeing will capture glideslope without having the localiser captured. Airbus will not. Food for thought!

 

6) Neither will capture anything at all if you don't manually arm the correct modes before starting the approach.

 

With AF447, the computer was doing exactly what it was supposed to do. It correctly told them it had changed to alternate law, which means they have no stall protection anymore. It also correctly told them the plane was stalled ("stall" aural warning going off) pretty much the whole way down. It gave them correct attitude and altitude indications throughout too. They just didn't understand what it was telling them (poor training), and didn't understand they were stalled (poor training). It was only a brief period before they stalled it that they had the airspeed indication problems due to icing. It's a horrible CVR transcript to read, and AF have a lot to answer for in their training department.

 

 

[Marty_d]

Didn't want to wake the captain, was that the one?

My question is, what was the captain on which allowed him to stay asleep during a 10,000 + fpm mushing descent from FL350 with the stall warning blaring and the plane in stall buffet for over 3 minutes?

 

And yes, once the copilots realised they had lost control, surely it was time for pride to be swallowed and wake the captain?

 

 

[facthunter]

Are we going to drift off to AF 447? Nev

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

Then with all that said lets look at the other end of the spectrum.....

 

Its a few years old now but I was told that those defence pilots who were selected to become test pilots (and we are talking the 2-3 best of the best per year) were sent to the USA Airforce for the course.......At the end of the course each potential graduate is provided the keys and the manuals for a random aircraft that has or is flying in the US Airforce inventory and told to take it for a spin and map its characteristics as a test pilot.....The aircraft are not all smaller fighter size but could be, at one end of the spectrum say a C17 which is a "heavey" by any definition!

 

The point, is that these guys will never have flown the aircraft they are assigned to and were (and probably still are) expected to take it off, put it through its paces and bring it back in one piece having flown it at or close to beyond the flight envelope..... Of course if the aircraft is a multi flight crew aircraft then the flight isn't a 1 up exercise, the remainder of the crew, who are experienced at their roles, are along for the ride.

 

This was told to me by a former RAAF Test pilot who was aware that I fly lighties. I have skipped over the fact that time between being handed the keys and manuals and take off isn't, as inferred instantaneous, but rather there is lots of time for the pilot under test to read everything there is on the aircraft, but it doesn't change that the first flight is indeed the first flight......

 

So.....it all comes down to your belief and the reality converging, if you are indeed the best of the best... then despite a few sweaty brows, it'll be a walk in the park.....if, like me, the best you can claim is I'm probably average in skill and will survive as a result of effective training, then time to send up a few prayers probably......

 

Andy

 

 

[Marty_d]

 

Back to topic.

 

Give me a plane in perfect flying order, with a type instructor on the radio telling me what to do, plenty of time and height to practice approaches, a massive runway nowhere near a built up area and perfect weather, and I'd have a crack if there was no-one else who could. But the pucker factor would be huuuuuge.

 

 

[turboplanner]

If you think you could, take a very sobering LH seat in the Qantas 747 parked at Longreach and see what you think about judgement factors.