Explanation of the Asiana SF crash by a former UAL captain
pprune.org
pprune.org
RTO: Rejected take-off, when you have to abort a take-off (though it seems in the context of the post, the exercise described involved an edge case when you should go ahead with the take-off)
AGL: Above ground level
CAVOK: Ceiling and Visibility are OK: no clouds < 5000 ft AGL, with >10 km visibility
VOR approach: VHF omnidirectional radio range: navigating based on a radio signal, considered "non-precision"
IAF: Initial approach fix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_approach_fix
LNAV/VNAV: lateral/vertical navigation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNAV
FAF: Final approach fix
UNSAT: unsatisfactory rating (paperwork)
FCOM: Flight crew operating manual
CRM/CLR: Cockpit resource management, a set of NASA-originating practices to limit and contain human error http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_Resource_Management
RTO is basically when you abort the takeoff by not taking-off, that is, hitting the brakes before the aircraft leaves the ground
The other option is taking off and returning to the airport, when a problem happens later
The pilots he was training were coming from an aircraft with a V1 around 80 knots fully laden. V1 for a 737-400 is around 120 knots so if he triggers an aft cargo door warning at 100 knots then the pilots should abort the takeoff.
He was doing this deliberately to emphasise to the trainees this particular difference between their old aircraft and the new one.
This interpretation is at least consistent, but I'm not sure whether it's correct or not.
Perhaps the point is that an Aft Cargo Bay warning isn't sufficient reason to risk aborting the take-off (which presumably carries it's own risks). So the warning alarm would go off & the pilots would abort because they were used to having such minor alarms being disabled about 80knots on their previous aircraft, therefore any alarm at speeds > 80 knots but < V1 is would previously have been cause to abort but on the new aircraft this was no longer the case.
Makes sense? (Although personally I'd have thought that an open cargo bay door would be reason enough to abort a take-off - so that bit doesn't make sense to me at all.)
It's a little bit like spilling your coffee while merging onto an interstate in a car. Slamming on your brakes so you can take care of your coffee will likely make things worse. Instead, merge, get stabilized, then figure out what to do with the coffee.
It´s known that pilots are oversensitive to warnings during take off. A rejected take off is a dangerous maneuver that must be avoided if unnecessary, and is trained in each simulator session. This is more important in wide body airliners like the 747, 777, A340 or A380, as their take off weight is so high that a RTO (rejected take off) will blowout some tires (of the main landing gear) due to the stress or the temperature increase inside the tire created by the brakes. Once the plane is stopped, it has to wait isolated at the taxiway because there are temperature plugs at the tires that may blow out, nobody can get close during that time. If the weight is too high they will even burn as the brakes will be white hot. Look at youtube for a certification RTO of a big plane to see it, or some brake energy absorption test at the laboratory, to see how much energy they have to mannage.
In this case(the simulator story) a after cargo door is one of those warnings that you have to ignore as the plane will flight without problems, then you may turn around and make a landing after dumping some fuel(to decrease the weight).
Hope this helps
Edit: some clarification
Below 80 it is possible to RTO without problems as the speed is still low. Once you reach V1 you will NEVER RTO! as this speed is calculated taking in to account the runway length, and in such a manner that if you RTO at V1, the runway remaining once you have stopped is just a couple dozen of meters. The V1 is so high because that way, when you become airborne, you´ll have a better climb gradient even with an engine fail. All this stuff is calculated with an engine fail, after all it is the most important and probable fail you will encounter (the reverse deployment on take-off is much more severe but thankfully very very rare), and that will affect your climb capability.
Edit 2: added-improved some punctuation.
An example of the braking test - stopping a 288 tonne 777 travelling at 200mph. The disc brakes were on fire, and they then had to taxi around on wheels at a temp of 3000 deg for five minutes to simulate the time it took for fire trucks to arrive.
Cool
It was on PBS, called "21st Century Jet"
I really hope next time they go shopping for Air Force One they take budget into consideration, and the end of the cold war, and ETOPS, and seriously consider a twin engine (ideally a 787 with a reduction in passengers, but probably they'd go with a 777 and continue taking way too many people.) Outside of cargo and the military, four engine passenger jets seem to be a dying species. (and obviously the A380 and other airbus products aren't in the running for AF1. I still haven't gotten a chance to fly on an A380.)
I don't know about the other stuff, but I do know that the structure of an aircraft must not be designed to depend on something like a door being closed. That is, if the door is carrying load when closed, "you're doing it wrong". The door frame might carry load, but that wouldn't care whether the door is open.
Generally, something on an aircraft is either intended to carry structural load, or it's designed for such loads to bypass it entirely.
It would definitely hurt the aerodynamics for a door to fly open, but that would probably be a minor concern relative to the other hazards it introduces.
-400: Likely the 747-400. One of the variants of the 747
UAL: United Airlines
Asiana: This is the airline of the plane that crashed at SFO.
Right Seat: First Officer / Co-pilot's seat.
Left Seat: Captain / Pilot's seat.
Standards Captain: Probably means he was one of the people who would have final say in whether or not a pilot was certified to fly a specific aircraft. I believe there are two different standards, one for pilot and one for copilot, but I'm not sure.
Upgraded by Phenomenal Growth: The airline grew so fast they didn't have enough pilots so they had to promote copilots to pilots faster than they were probably qualified.
*edited to correct information based on the comment below.
Commercial pilots begin flying small planes like Cessna 172, then they fly a small multiengine with instruments, they also take lessons in small simulators. After this you must have a good (or very good) manual handling in visual and instrumental flight to obtain the commercial pilot license. Once you get more flight experience flying small cargo or aerotaxi, you get to flight medium turboprop commuters like a ATR-72, and then if you are lucky you get to fly in a mayor airline with 737 or airbus 320 before you can fly the big birds like 777, 747, 767, A340 or A380.
Once you are on a big plane, flying manually is almost optional as you can have the autopilot engaged from shortly after take off on climb, to 1000´ to the touchdown. Usually pilots enjoy flying manually, we do it whenever we have the opportunity, of course if there is a lot of traffic congestion and/or bad weather we keep the autopilot connected because the workload builds quickly (other traffics, avoiding thunderstorms, checking all the instruments for an auto-land, control instructions, etc..). In my case I was lucky to be able to start flying a B737 when I had only 200 total flight hours. My instructor was afraid that I will not be able to deliver due to my lack of experience, but I had no problem doing so (thankfully!)
It seems that in the Korean instruction method, obedience and memorization is more important than situation awareness and flying the plane. When this instructor tried to teach and measure the performance using the proper and internationally accepted method he was chased and punished by the airline establishment.
Just to give you some flavor of the difference between flying manually or with the autopilot I have this analogy, is not perfect but it transmits a bit the sensation between one and the other: Flying manually is somehow similar to how you ride a bicycle, you have to "feel" it, if you are going to be able to take a curve, or to brake on time, etc.. once you are comfortable with that, you don´t even have to think consciously any more about it. Going with autopilot, well is like going on rails, if the rail is not broken you know where is going and how, you only have to advance how to brake and accelerate (I Know that driving trains is more than that, I just mean a straight simple railway). Autopilots are a huge advantage in aviation, it allows to fly in much more congested airspace with much more safety, and with all the computerized systems, we are relieved from a lot of tedious monitoring.
It seems that the Korean pilots (this is the OP´s version, I don´t really know) have very limited experience and proficiency flying manually. He is surprised because most of the senior pilots were ex-military with experience in F4, F5, F16 fighters, etc.. I am not very surprised. I have flown with ex-military (Spanish) and the kind of plane they had flied previously wasn´t an indicator of dexterity. After all, combat flights can be very technical and planed (all points prearranged and studied). Thankfully I never had an experience nearly as bad as the ones he describes.
The flight data released by the NTSB shows a high approach (above the normal flight slope), first when you flight a ILS is very unusual to have a situation like that (constant 3º descend) because everything is controlled step by step 12 miles out of the airport. Second, if you are used (and like) to flight manually, disconnecting the A/P(Auto pilot) is what you are going to do (and enjoy), probably also the A/T (auto-throttle for boeing, the thrust levers move; or auto-thrust for airbus, levers doesn´t move), above all this, if you have normal skills flying you are perfectly capable of flying an approach from above or from below, is not a big deal, if you see you can´t do it you just turn around and try it again. But a pilot that is afraid and insecure of his capabilities, will try to do it with the A/P or with all the automatic systems available till the last moment.
Technically if you are above the normal slope, you have an excess of energy (altitude), to correct it you set the throttles manually back, that way you are able to descend faster (higher vertical speed) and capture the glide slope "visually" with the VASIS (white and red lights that let´s you know when you are high or low on the glide).
But it´s dangerous to land with the engines at idle, it is recommended that at 1000´ you must be on the glide slope and fully configured to land (gear down, full flap, speed at Vref[Vref is the reference speed for landing, is the minimum speed you will flight]). If not you must go around and try again.
DISCLAIMER, this is my opinion based on previous similar accident reports, the OP thoughts, and my own experience. The investigation may tell a very different situation.
It seems that the crew at the Asiana flight, kept trying to set the A/P or at least the flight guidance + A/T to descend and catch the visual path, this is very dangerous at low altitude, because you loose the situation awareness, AND you put all your attention inside. In that moment it becomes more important for you to see what´s happening at the panel (which is a big mistake), than to what´s happening to the aircraft trajectory (which is of course much more important). I can imagine a kind of fight against the flight guidance buttons to try to descend the plane. Once they got it on descend mode (I don´t know the 777 modes, but it´s not that important in this situation, in fact you must avoid them and flight manually), they realized that they had to slow the descend for the landing. But once you are outside the loop (flight awareness) it´s very difficult to get in again.
Once they started pulling back, the speed decreased, usually (this is surely what they expected), the autothrust would have engaged to keep the speed at the normal Vref (landing speed). But as they had touched the modes, the A/T didn´t engage and the speed started decreasing towards the stall. Then it becomes a matter of managing your energy, if you want to keep altitude you are going to end stalling, and if you want to keep speed you´ll descend too soon and too fast. Surely they started noticing something was odd (too high nose, too low trajectory) but when they finally realized that they where going to crash and/or stall, and/or fall short (not necessarily knowing why), they set the throttles to full power and tried to go around, but big engines need a lot of time to go from idle to full power (usually you engage them slightly in advance to when you are going to need them), and it was too late to avoid the crash.
This may happen even to good manual flyers, if you are not comfortable flying like that it´s much more probable to have an accident.
Edit: added some explanation to acronyms, and improved a bit the text.
Took me a while, but I figured A/P = autopilot, and A/T = auto throttle?
Vref = Landing reference speed or threshold crossing speed. Huge table of "V speeds" here including extra info about Vref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_speeds
Here is a list of the likely factors that contributed to the crash, based on my reading of the comments at pprune.com:
poor piloting skills, specifically not monitoring speed during landing, a very basic skill
recent switchover of flight pilot from Airbus to Boeing (Boeing planes have throttles that physically move when the thottle setting is changed by automatic systems, Airbus doesn't)
misunderstanding of details of automatic thrust control
inexperience of pilot conducting the training (new to being trainer, 1st flight apparently)
glide slope system on the runway was inoperable, otherwise would have possibly been used and the crash wouldn't have occurred
possible crew social status issues, a known flight-deck issue in some cultures, where those of lower status are hesitant to correct those of high status, but it doesn't seem likely a big factor here
FLCH 'trap', where if you use a certain type of autopilot setting, you might expect the thrust to keep the speed at or above a certain level with automatic throttle adjustments, but it doesn't happen
To summarize, it appears the two pilots at the control thought the jet was in a mode where it automatic thrust control would maintain an approach speed, but when they increased angle of attack just before landing (basically gliding decent up until then), the speed fell off and the throttles did not move automatically, and they failed to note the falling speed until it was too late to avoid crashing. (once you command full throttle from idle, it takes five seconds for the engines to spin back up.)
If they had actually had the plane in the mode they thought it was in, they would have had a perfect landing of the most routine kind.
Finally, I'll get off my box and talk about the total flight hours they claim. I do accept that there are a few talented and free-thinking pilots that I met and trained in Korea. Some are still in contact and I consider them friends. They were a joy! But, they were few and far between and certainly not the norm.
Actually, this is a worldwide problem involving automation and the auto-flight concept. Take one of these new first officers that got his ratings in the US or Australia and came to KAL or Asiana with 225 flight hours. After takeoff, in accordance with their SOP, he calls for the autopilot to be engaged after takeoff. How much actual flight time is that? Hardly one minute. Then he might fly for hours on the autopilot and finally disengage it (MAYBE?) below 800 ft after the gear was down, flaps extended and on airspeed (autothrottle). Then he might bring it in to land. Again, how much real flight time or real experience did he get. Minutes! Of course, on the 777 or 747, its the same only they get more inflated logbooks.
So, when I hear that a 10,000 hour Korean captain was vectored in for a 17-mile final and cleared for a visual approach in CAVOK weather, it raises the hair on the back of my neck.
We should neither censor ourselves (exclude something) or leap to conclusions before the full verdict is in.
As I know less than fk-all about airlines and airplanes, I'm just reading this stuff, and am trusting in others to make sure the truth comes out, whether it's un-PC or completely innocent.
In fact, I'm amazed at how few plane crashes seem to occur (knock on wood). If any nation produced truly incompetent pilots, it's less likely this would be true.
The degradation of basic flying skills and over-reliance on autopilot-like systems has been a factor in most recent catastrophes, and in countries where pilots have little chance to practice a lot in small planes (such as Korea, basically no civilian aircraft) you might expect an even greater lack of manual stick/rudder/throttle flying skills.
You seem to be accusing the author and your fellow HN members of racism. I think you didn't read the post carefully. The author goes out of his way to make the point that there were some Korean students he thought did very well -- but they were a small minority.
We need to be able to criticize organizations and their cultures frankly, without that being taken as some kind of ad hominem against the people who work in those organizations. And to the extent that organizational culture is colored by national or regional culture, as it often is, that's fair game too.
Some people never make the transition to independent work, and those are handed their ass fairly quickly, at least in a working lab. If what the fellow writes in this article is true, KAL and friends have some work to do.
I wonder if the Airline had laid off their veteran (and hence high earning) pilots earlier (which would have exacerbated such a situation with inexperienced pilots); it's certainly not unheard of in the industry.
Lastly, apparently the Asiana Air CEO has been quoted as saying that all responsibility lies with the pilots and that he and/or the company are not responsible. Great to know that your boss has your back >_>
So who is responsible for hiring good pilots?
So who is responsible for hiring a good board?
So who is responsible for getting good owners?
So where does the buck stop?
The training pilot had 3220 hours on the 777, that's pretty experienced I would say. It's probably more time than I've spent walking. It was his first flight as a training captain, though
I'm guessing it will be about the same time that human surgeons are significantly less effective than fully automated systems.
30 years? 50 years?
It's probably already reached the case that for the non-corner case scenario (cross winds, flight emergency, exceptions) - that a fully automated system probably meets the performance of a human pilot, and the human pilot's major contribution is the ability to exercise executive judgement in the event of exception cases.
Given the pretty resounding lack of positive news from biofuel replacement projects (where is that MASBI report that's due out this year). Ah, here we go: http://www.masbi.org/content/assets/MASBI_Report.pdf
US commercial and military aviation consumes 20 billion gallons of jet fuel annually.
Best biofuel generation from crop seeds (canola) runs 80-120 gallons/acre/year. Let's call it 100 gallons even.
Replacing that fuel would require 200 million acres of land. The US has 409 acres of arable land.
Would you prefer to eat as much as you are now, and stick to ground (or airship) transport, or go on a 50% calorie reduction but retain the ability to fly at speeds over 130 MPH?
Many are forced to fly half way around the country before they even begin work. Others sleep in trailers at the back of Los Angeles airport, in airline lounges across the country or even on the floors of their own planes. Some co-pilots, who typically take home about $20,000 (£12,500) a year, hold down second jobs to make ends meet.
A commodity is any good or service ("products" of "activities") produced by human labour and offered as a product for general sale on the market. Some other priced goods are also treated as commodities, e.g. human labor-power, works of art and natural resources, even although they may not be produced specifically for the market, or be non-reproducible goods.
The obvious lesson: A profitable company, whether UPS, FedEx or Southwest, can pay its workers more.
Source for that quote: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/11/pilot-exhausting...
Cheap petroleum will never run out. If the price goes up a new energy source will be used, nuclear probably.
If necessary we can use nuclear power to synthesize liquid hydrocarbon fuel directly from air. And even easier from wood or coal+water.
So don't sit around waiting for the petroleum to run out - it's won't, not even after centuries.
Nuclear-powered aircraft aren't particularly viable.
As I've noted above, _solar_ powered airships are:
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/aMioevA7... https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/aMioevA7...
For the Graf Zeppelin, at 776' x 100' (7209 meter^2), and with 20% efficient solar PV (higher efficiencies are possible), 1.4 mW (1.8 million HP) of power are available. The original Graf sported 5 V12 diesel engines of 550 HP max (450 HP cruise) power. Solar would be able to deliver over 1 _million_ horsepower (unless I'm goofing my math badly here). Enough that reducing the cell coverage and including batteries or combustible fuel for backup would be viable.
For what? Making liquid fuels? See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tropsch_process and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngas
It's not hard. Just need some energy.
> Nuclear-powered aircraft aren't particularly viable.
Sure they are - just use the nuclear power to make hydrocarbon fuels for them.
> As I've noted above, _solar_ powered airships are:
Solar powered airships are also very silly and wasteful (they are heavy which wastes energy, they can't be pointed optimally, they are out of service a lot (i.e. not flying), and when the airship wears out you wasted the solar cells which can last longer than an airship). Put the solar cells on the ground where they can do the most good, and power the airship with liquid hydrocarbons.
You also need feedstocks. And a source of CO2. And limits on fossil CO2 emissions. That last pretty much rules out any use of fossil (or methane hydrate) sources and requires you stick to present cycling carbon within the carbon cycle (biomass, atmosphere).
If your time horizon is more than decades to a century or so, feedstocks rules out petroleum (which doesn't make sense anyway), natural gas, or coal.
Conventional non-breeder uranium reactors will suffer from fuel shortages if used for significant amounts of power generation well within a century. Thorium breeders offer a possible alternative, though the technology is unproven. Fusion is even more unproven.
Which leaves solar, wind, wave, and geothermal, all of which have distinctly limited upper bounds, and very considerable infrastructure requirements. Yes, we could get all the energy we need from solar by covering 0.5 - 1% of the Earth's surface with collectors. It's helpful to note that the built environment -- cities, towns, and villages, is on the order of this size. So we're talking about effectively doubling the size of the built environment (though in some cases solar infrastructure can be built over existing structures), with a much more technically complex instance (solar PV arrays, inverters, and power transmission infrastructure are more complex and demanding than ordinary buildings and structures). That's ... a pretty major undertaking, even if we grant ourselves several decades to complete it.
Energy is the problem.
On top of that, Fischer-Tropsch plant and capital are expensive and would take a long time and vast investments (trillions of dollars) to replace the 20 million barrels of oil consumed daily in the US.
Nuclear powered aircraft You're side-stepping your original statement. Producing hydrocarbons at that scale from electricity is unproven. Producing hydrogen might work, and for aircraft (limited in number, limited in servicing points) could prove viable, though with significantly more airframe volume devoted to fuel storage, and with much more complex storage parameters -- most likely LH2 -- than existing fuels.
Solar powered airships I'd suspect that either PV costs would come down, or array designs would be designed to be transferrable between airships, or both. My point was to demonstrate that where solar powered heavier-than-air craft are only just feasible (see the Solar Impulse, with the wingspan of a 747 but just able to carry a pilot), solar-powered airships are highly feasible. Of course, any fuel which would work for an HTA craft would also work for an airship.
You can use wood, coal, or CO2 from the air. The carbon from all the stuff we burned didn't go away, it's all still here. Most of it is in the ocean or in plants.
If you "extended" coal by adding hydrogen then you can quintuple the energy content (since each atom of carbon gets 4 of hydrogen, for longer chain hydrocarbons the ratio is less, but at a minimum it's tripled). So instead of the estimated 100 years of coal we now have, we'd have 500 years.
And on top of that most of the coal is used for electrical production (with the rest of steel making), if we stopped doing that and used nuclear power for electricity and saved the coal to make liquid fuel we would have at least 10,000 years of coal left.
> Conventional non-breeder uranium reactors will suffer from fuel shortages if used for significant amounts of power generation well within a century. Thorium breeders offer a possible alternative, though the technology is unproven.
So don't use non-breeder and switch to breeders. I once calculated that if we used breeding reactors, plus thorium, we have enough energy in those two elements alone for 10,000 to 100,000 years! (The range is because energy consumption will inevitably go up.)
So no, energy is NOT the problem. We have enough for longer than recorded history.
> On top of that, Fischer-Tropsch plant and capital are expensive and would take a long time and vast investments (trillions of dollars) to replace the 20 million barrels of oil consumed daily in the US.
Sure. But have you seen the unbelievable size of the equipment used today for petroleum production? If there was demand for these fuels, it would get built. No problem at all. No one is expecting this to happen overnight - I think it would take 20 to 50 years.
> You're side-stepping your original statement. Producing hydrocarbons at that scale from electricity is unproven.
Of course it's proven. And you don't make it from electricity, you make it directly from heat. The only reason it's not done right now is that it's not needed. But the technology is there.
> Producing hydrogen might work
?? Why would this work if producing hydrocarbons won't? You could make hydrogen the same way - by heating water. But hydrogen is extremely hard to transport or store. It leaks right through everything, and damages most metals if stored under pressure. You need special materials to store hydrogen, and those are expensive and not plentiful. Hydrogen is not the fuel of the future - methane is.
> My point was to demonstrate that where solar powered heavier-than-air craft are only just feasible
If I'm understanding you right, your argument is that we won't be able to fly anymore because we'll run out of energy (or fuel), and your proof is that solar powered airships are only just barely workable.
You mistake is a: thinking that we'll run out of energy, and we won't. And b: that we would use solar power for an air transport, and we won't do that either.
It's actually 21.7 kHp. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=776+m+*+%28100+m*Pi%29+...
That's still enough to power the ship, but not with the margins you were suggesting.
(What is 1.4mW? 1.4 milliwatt? mega watt? None of those match 1.8 million HP.)
Units: dimensions in feet multiplied to give surface area. Convert to meters. Insolation at 1 kW/m^2, PV efficiency of 20%. Oh. I got kW and MW confused. Wups.
I'm actually getting 1900 HP now, which is closer to my original results. Brain damage....
mW == megawatt.
Also, the dimensions for the zeppelin are diameter (not radius) and length, so multiply by Pi - and then divide by 3 since not all of it will be visible to the sun at once.
Converting feet^3 to meter^3 is non obvious because of the ^3 - that would be my guess for where you had an error.
> mW == megawatt.
1.4 MW is not 1.8 million HP, it's 1.8 thousand hp.
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/CEq8xTH3...
You have: 117.075 peta watt hours / (325 days * 8 hours/day * 1 kilo watt/meter^2) You want: km^2 * 45028.846
<ribbing>So if it's so great why did you get your calculations wrong? :)</ribbing>
Are you kidding? Have you seen the numbers for fracking and methane hydrates? The age of cheap hydrocarbon fuel seems to be beginning, not ending.
What that means for the environment I don't know, but the numbers, if they bear out (and they certainly are for fracking) are stunning.
I just don't think we have the ability to stop ourselves huffing at that hydrocarbon crack pipe so I think we'll have to switch to management rather than prevention in this generation.
Methane hydrates are yet unproven, and present their own very serious challenges.
In either case, the prospects for global warming and emissions management attack the other side of my statement: cheap abundant fossil fuels. While coal exist to supply needs for (depending on whom you talk to) 100-1000 years, the evidence suggests that the climate and our economy won't tolerate the emissions resulting from its consumption.
Coal-to-liquids infrastructure is very expensive and takes a long time to ramp up.
What are your source(s) for fracking production? Sincerely interested.
Low-down on Korean pilots, (From a friend).
After I retired from UAL as a Standards Captain on the -400, I got a job as a simulator instructor working for Alteon (a Boeing subsidiary) at Asiana. When I first got there, I was shocked and surprised by the lack of basic piloting skills shown by most of the pilots. It is not a normal situation with normal progression from new hire, right seat, left seat taking a decade or two. One big difference is that ex-Military pilots are given super-seniority and progress to the left seat much faster. Compared to the US, they also upgrade fairly rapidly because of the phenomenal growth by all Asian air carriers. By the way, after about six months at Asiana, I was moved over to KAL and found them to be identical. The only difference was the color of the uniforms and airplanes. I worked in Korea for 5 long years and although I found most of the people to be very pleasant, it is a minefield of a work environment ... for them and for us expats.
One of the first things I learned was that the pilots kept a web-site and reported on every training session. I dont think this was officially sanctioned by the company, but after one or two simulator periods, a database was building on me (and everyone else) that told them exactly how I ran the sessions, what to expect on checks, and what to look out for. For example; I used to open an aft cargo door at 100 knots to get them to initiate an RTO and I would brief them on it during the briefing. This was on the B-737 NG and many of the captains were coming off the 777 or B744 and they were used to the Master Caution System being inhibited at 80 kts. Well, for the first few days after I started that, EVERYONE rejected the takeoff. Then, all of a sudden they all got it; and continued the takeoff (in accordance with their manuals). The word had gotten out. I figured it was an overall PLUS for the training program.
We expat instructors were forced upon them after the amount of fatal accidents (most of the them totally avoidable) over a decade began to be noticed by the outside world. They were basically given an ultimatum by the FAA, Transport Canada, and the EU to totally rebuild and rethink their training program or face being banned from the skies all over the world. They hired Boeing and Airbus to staff the training centers. KAL has one center and Asiana has another. When I was there (2003-2008) we had about 60 expats conducting training KAL and about 40 at Asiana. Most instructors were from the USA, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand with a few stuffed in from Europe and Asia. Boeing also operated training centers in Singapore and China so they did hire some instructors from there.
This solution has only been partially successful but still faces ingrained resistance from the Koreans. I lost track of the number of highly qualified instructors I worked with who were fired because they tried to enforce normal standards of performance. By normal standards, I would include being able to master basic tasks like successfully shoot a visual approach with 10 kt crosswind and the weather CAVOK. I am not kidding when I tell you that requiring them to shoot a visual approach struck fear in their hearts ... with good reason. Like this Asiana crew, it didnt compute that you needed to be a 1000 AGL at 3 miles and your sink rate should be 600-800 Ft/Min. But, after 5 years, they finally nailed me. I still had to sign my name to their training and sometimes if I just couldnt pass someone on a check, I had no choice but to fail them. I usually busted about 3-5 crews a year and the resistance against me built. I finally failed an extremely incompetent crew and it turned out he was the a high-ranking captain who was the Chief Line Check pilot on the fleet I was teaching on. I found out on my next monthly trip home that KAL was not going to renew my Visa. The crew I failed was given another check and continued a fly while talking about how unfair Captain so-and-so was.
Any of you Boeing glass-cockpit guys will know what I mean when I describe these events. I gave them a VOR approach with an 15 mile arc from the IAF. By the way, KAL dictated the profiles for all sessions and we just administered them. He requested two turns in holding at the IAF to get set up for the approach. When he finally got his nerve up, he requested Radar Vectors to final. He could have just said he was ready for the approach and I would have cleared him to the IAF and then Cleared for the approach and he could have selected Exit Hold and been on his way. He was already in LNAV/VNAV PATH. So, I gave him vectors to final with a 30 degree intercept. Of course, he failed to Extend the FAF and he couldnt understand why it would not intercept the LNAV magenta line when he punched LNAV and VNAV. He made three approaches and missed approaches before he figured out that his active waypoint was Hold at XYZ. Every time he punched LNAV, it would try to go back to the IAF ... just like it was supposed to do. Since it was a check, I was not allowed (by their own rules) to offer him any help. That was just one of about half dozen major errors I documented in his UNSAT paperwork. He also failed to put in ANY aileron on takeoff with a 30-knot direct crosswind (again, the weather was dictated by KAL).
This Asiana SFO accident makes me sick and while I am surprised there are not more, I expect that there will be many more of the same type accidents in the future unless some drastic steps are taken. They are already required to hire a certain percentage of expats to try to ingrain more flying expertise in them, but more likely, they will eventually be fired too. One of the best trainees I ever had was a Korean/American (he grew up and went to school in the USA) who flew C-141s in the USAF. When he got out, he moved back to Korea and got hired by KAL. I met him when I gave him some training and a check on the B-737 and of course, he breezed through the training. I give him annual PCs for a few years and he was always a good pilot. Then, he got involved with trying to start a pilots union and when they tired to enforce some sort of duty rigs on international flights, he was fired after being arrested and JAILED!
The Koreans are very very bright and smart so I was puzzled by their inability to fly an airplane well. They would show up on Day 1 of training (an hour before the scheduled briefing time, in a 3-piece suit, and shined shoes) with the entire contents of the FCOM and Flight Manual totally memorized. But, putting that information to actual use was many times impossible. Crosswind landings are also an unsolvable puzzle for most of them. I never did figure it out completely, but I think I did uncover a few clues. Here is my best guess. First off, their educational system emphasizes ROTE memorization from the first day of school as little kids. As you know, that is the lowest form of learning and they act like robots. They are also taught to NEVER challenge authority and in spite of the flight training heavily emphasizing CRM/CLR, it still exists either on the surface or very subtly. You just cant change 3000 years of culture.
The other thing that I think plays an important role is the fact that there is virtually NO civil aircraft flying in Korea. Its actually illegal to own a Cessna-152 and just go learn to fly. Ultra-lights and Powered Hang Gliders are Ok. I guess they dont trust the people to not start WW III by flying 35 miles north of Inchon into North Korea. But, they dont get the kids who grew up flying (and thinking for themselves) and hanging around airports. They do recruit some kids from college and send then to the US or Australia and get them their tickets. Generally, I had better experience with them than with the ex-Military pilots. This was a surprise to me as I spent years as a Naval Aviator flying fighters after getting my private in light airplanes. I would get experienced F-4, F-5, F-15, and F-16 pilots who were actually terrible pilots if they had to hand fly the airplane. What a shock!
Finally, I'll get off my box and talk about the total flight hours they claim. I do accept that there are a few talented and free-thinking pilots that I met and trained in Korea. Some are still in contact and I consider them friends. They were a joy! But, they were few and far between and certainly not the norm.
Actually, this is a worldwide problem involving automation and the auto-flight concept. Take one of these new first officers that got his ratings in the US or Australia and came to KAL or Asiana with 225 flight hours. After takeoff, in accordance with their SOP, he calls for the autopilot to be engaged after takeoff. How much actual flight time is that? Hardly one minute. Then he might fly for hours on the autopilot and finally disengage it (MAYBE?) below 800 ft after the gear was down, flaps extended and on airspeed (autothrottle). Then he might bring it in to land. Again, how much real flight time or real experience did he get. Minutes! Of course, on the 777 or 747, its the same only they get more inflated logbooks.
So, when I hear that a 10,000 hour Korean captain was vectored in for a 17-mile final and cleared for a visual approach in CAVOK weather, it raises the hair on the back of my neck.
http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/foreign-airline-safety
There are also a lot of articles about AF447 which crashed while in a stall with symptoms which should have been recognized by any pilot, even a low hour PPL.
Windshear are huge changes in directions and speed of wind when flying close to the ground (not at 35000´), but is one of the more trained maneuver as it is a very dangerous situation. If you analize the actions of the pilot flying, you´ll see that he reacts as it´s supposed to react to a windshear advice, full throttle and the sidestick full back, he stayed like that for almost 2 minutes. When you are close to the ground the engines have the power to make you climb fast and the flight envelope protections keep the plane from entering in to a stall. That´s why he didn´t understand what was happening, in his point of view he was making the right think to get out of the thunderstorm. The problem is that he had a totally different situation, a instrument failure. When you have those you only have to keep your thrust and attitude constant and check a specific table that we have for this situation. In that table it´s specified the thurst position and attitude (degrees of nose up seen on the artificial horizont) that you must maintain to keep a cruise speed at a given level. If he had managed to do just that, staying as they were, they wouldn´t had any problem.
Once they where in a stall, the normal reaction is to pitch down and increase slowly the thrust, once you have enough speed you recover the horizontal attitude. Another problem is that they couldn´t understand that they were in a stall, in normal mode the Airbus can not get in a stall, but as the instrument failed they were able to get below the protections and once they were there the computer didn´t have the possibility to react, it sensed the situation as a data failure and didn´t give alarms some of the times.
There has been too much training involving the automatic safety measures (they are indeed great, but they are not all that it takes to fly) and too little involving normal and abnormal manual flight maneuvers. We have lost the touch of how to flight a plane.
There is also fast wind changes at cruise altitude, jet streams bends usually have. But you only notice them as turbulence, when they are very severe you may even loose several thousand feet. It´s not pretty and may result in some nasty injuries to the people that doesn´t have the seat bealt. But is not as big an issue as the low altitude wind shear. Also clear air turbulence is not predictable and is little that you may do beyond recovering the plane control as soon as you suffer it (as opposed to thunderstorms, where you have radar echos to avoid).
To Greenspun's argument that north-american pilots typically have extensive hours on smaller airplanes (being flight instructor and bush pilots to build up the hours), where they had to fly them manually. In other part of the world, those opportunities are just not there.
He said in the simulator he would fail one engine at rotation (when the pilot lifts the nose to take off from the runway--a big "point of no return"). The correct action (IIRC) is to declare an emergency, punch the throttle on the other engine, reduce the angle of attack, get off the runway and climb slowly. Instead a lot of the Japanese pilots would take their hands off the yoke and say "no no, very bad, impossible."
What should happen here is that the FAA, EU, and other countries that were originally involved in getting the Koreans to hire these expat instructors in the first place -- these countries should demand final say over all instructor personnel decisions.
This will mean the Koreans basically giving up control of their training program, which will be a huge piece of humble pie for them to eat. But there is no other solution. Either the pilots will be trained properly or they will continue making entirely preventable mistakes and killing people.
EDITED to add clarification: I know nothing about flying planes. My comment is about organizational dysfunction.
OH, and another thought: I don't know anything about this forum except that it calls itself a "Rumour Network". The fact that this post was deleted makes me wonder -- who is keeping issues like this from being aired? It's clear that the author has nothing against Koreans per se -- he just doesn't like to see incompetent pilots flying aircraft.
It is very easy to sue under UK libel law, and pprune has been compelled to identify OPs before.
And yes, GA airports are getting shut down, but GA is still more popular in the US than in a lot of other countries. Alaska has a huge amount that is never going to go away, too.
Anecdotally, my third grade teacher didn't understand long division, my eighth grade history teacher didn't know what an annotated bibliography was, and my 9th grade geometry teacher was debilitatingly dyslexic. While this didn't kill me, millions of Americans graduating college are crippled by debt - perhaps because they couldn't do the simple math required to make a budget and understand what would be required to pay it back?
I suspect the people falling into the college debt trap are by and large not doing so because they couldn't do the math. I suspect they are doing so because they didn't realize in the first place that they should make the decision with the part of their brain that does math calculations rather than the part that does social status calculations.
A/T by itself will simply hold a specified airspeed by adjusting the Thrust Levers.
A/T + FL/CH + V/S + Alititude Hold: (Auto-Thrust + Flight Level Change + Vertical Speed + Altitude Hold) climb or descend to the set altitude by the set vertical speed at the specified airspeed. The thrust levers are maniplated by the system. Generally once the altitude is attained, V/S and FL/CH will turn off.
A/T + “V/S”: The same as the above but with no set altitude.
A/T + Thrust Hold: I looked at the 777 main control panel and I couldn’t find the setting for Thrust Hold, however it seems to be referred to in various things on the internet and I just don’t know what to look for. This setting is normally used for takeoff (maybe landing?) where the pilot sets an airspeed and a thrust (via the thrust levers) and the airspeed is regulated by pitching the aircraft up or down.
A/T + Thrust Hold + FL/CH + Altitude Hold: This setting is similar to the one above, but without setting a vertical speed. The indicated airspeed is controlled via pitching the aircraft up or down until the specified altitude is reached. I believe once the altitude is reached FL/CH mode is switched off as well as Thrust Hold.
This is my best guess as to what the 5 modes the NTSB says the 777 has. If any pilots could correct anything I’m missing or that is simply wrong, that would be great.
Switching between modes is really not intuitive because you’re fiddling with settings and it’s hard to know what button press is actually going to tell the system to do something. If you’re interested in how confusing it can actually be, I’d recommend installing the x-plane trial and trying to mess with these settings.
If you want to give it a go, the beginner’s tutorial for x-plane & the 777 has you do a visual landing on 28L @ KSFO
http://wiki.x-plane.com/777_beginners_tutorial#Landing_the_7...
I have a commercial drivers license, I've driven semi tractors, large straight trucks, and a wide variety of passenger vehicles.
Is it safe to presume that flying one type of widebody airliner is the same as flying any other kind of widebody airliner?
I can drive a Pete, Freightliner or International and they all largely drive in the same broad generalities.
Just as I can drive any full size car, and they all drive the same.
Would two similar classes or aircraft be the same?
Bigger aircraft (any commercial flights aircraft basically) have a different training and type rating from each other.
This means even flying a 777 is different from flying a 737 (and even between 737 versions there are some differences to merit a retraining of crew)
So, no, even if you fly the 767 or the A330 you can't fly the 777 without going on training again (they're all aircraft though, so most of the principles apply)
For example, Boeing vs Airbus do many things differently.
And within a specific mfgr, there are differences in cockpit layout. Even within the same model but different releases, eg: 747-400,500,600,700 all have slightly differences.
This distinction shows up not just in the law. I have many hours flying a Cessna 172, but when I recently bought a 182, some insurance quotes required as much as 10 hours of instruction, even though I could legally fly the 182 without any at all.
(Disclaimer: I haven't actually flown large airplanes or driven tractor trailers - someone more experienced is welcome correct what comes below)
Tractor trucks are all pretty similar. Hydraulic power steering, air breaks, unsynchronized transmissions, one engine, 18 wheels. They have similar stopping distance, similar handling around turns, and nearly identical controls.
Large planes on the other hand can have very different handling characteristics and controls. Different approach speeds, different after-takeoff checklists, different emergency procedures. Different navigation and autopilot systems. Fly-by-wire systems even change the basic relationship between control inputs and their effect on the plane.
Source: FAA Advisory Circular 61-89E http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgAdvisor...
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/07/malcolm-glad...
Turns out to be true for most X as long as: 1. The speaker does not belong to group X 2. Speaker has one data point to support said inability.
Humans error. Humans that program machines error. Machines error.
Buckle your seatbelt.
If we trust him, the OP is a flight instructor with many years of experience training X. So, your dismissal is completely invalid.
> The speaker does not belong to group X
Clearly, your are subtly accusing the instructor of at least some kind of racial prejudice; otherwise, this point would be completely irrelevant. And that accusation doesn't seem warranted.
But what seems clear is that the moment that the pilot turned off auto-pilot, the flight was doomed to crash as the auto-throttle was not in the right mode for landing. As in, a mode that would actually use thrust vs elevators to maintain airspeed.
NTSB also revealed that course corrections were being done not at the latest moment of 500 feet, but at 4000 feet 2.5 minutes before landing the plane was off course, in which case supervision, and correction would have been appropriate in a training scenario.
I hate to draw conclusions like this, but in today's modern aircraft pilots only fly about 20-30 mins of a flight, takeoff and landing at most with autopilot managing most of the rest under normal conditions.
The inability to hand fly an airliner, is a disqualifier to be a professional pilot.
NTSB revealed that several modes on autopilot and autothrottle were being cycled in the last 2.5 minutes of the Asiana descent perhaps indicating a reluctance to hand-fly the plane and an over-reliance on automation.
Any commercial pilot that cant hand-fly a 777 on a perfectly clear day at SFO should never see a commercial cockpit again.
(b) As I understand it, commercial pilots get paid on the basis of a rather paltry salary, topped up to a much higher rate per flying hour. So there's a strong wage incentive for them to jump in the cockpit of a real plane as fast as possible and get their experience that way rather than spending lots of time training in the simulators.
(c) Modern airliners spend a lot, or even most, of their time on autopilot. Which is not "the plane flies itself" -- it's more like a very complicated cruise control system in a car: you still need to observe and monitor what's going on around you and periodically change some settings governing the vehicle's behaviour. (Just as cruise control won't save you from a bend in the road or an idiot on the other side of the highway crossing the central divider, autopilots need constant supervision.)
But this is not "hand flying". Hand flying mostly comes down to take-off, landing, and brown-pants moments, which is a small fraction of the time a long-haul jet spends in operation. And most commercial airlines are going to take a dim view of pilots who spill the drinks in business class by playing at being a stick-and-rudder hero.
Relying on the autopilot there would have avoided the crash. Of course, not overreacting to minor turbulence would have avoided it too.
I think that puts the emphasis in the wrong place. It's true that the flight was probably doomed the moment the autopilot was turned off, but it's not because the auto-throttle was in the wrong mode. It's because the pilots apparently didn't actually know the basics of how to fly an airplane.
> The inability to hand fly an airliner, is a disqualifier to be a professional pilot.
Not in Korea, apparently.
Here was the best I could find:
http://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/1hz2hc/former_ual_pi...
Also this: http://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1hyd5b/an_interest...