Pilot error blamed for Emirates near disaster at Melbourne Airport

I was a passenger on this plane. The pilots skill actually saved us from being incinerated in a fireball. Even though it was their mistake by inputting the wrong weight, they were also using reduced thrust as it is Emirates policy to save money. The practice of using reduced thrust when taking off should be outlawed. This incident has cost Emirates far more than the cost of the fuel they saved.

Also flames flared from an engine on the right wing while taxiing before the tailstrike occurred. Was this a factor in the tailstrike? No-one has mentioned this.

The most dangerous aspects of any flight are taking off and landing, maybe Emirates and the other airline companies should reconsider the dubious practice of using reduced thrust when taking off.

Emirates

Read the forums on Pprune for info from the horses mouth!Sorry Pilots!

Neither can I. But you don’t see me summarily judging and convicting the pilots.

The original report says the pilots were sacked, so whether or not I summarily judge and convict them after the fact is, ultimately, of little relevance.
As I understand it, one pilot made an elementary error that could have resulted in the loss of the aircraft and the other failed to cross-check the data input. Such is the scale of their error in the sense of possible consequences that I cannot see what ‘mitigating circumstances’ have to do with it.
That said, I would feel very sorry for them on an individual level.

Neither can I. But you don’t see me summarily judging and convicting the pilots.

I think your comments are a little short sighted, considering they may be underlying circumstances.

Perhaps they are, but I can’t help thinking of the consequences of a major crash brought about by ‘pilot error.’

Rather you than me mate, I can’t stand heights.

Me neither, I get someone else to go up in the roof while I stay firmly on the ground! Not only can I not stand heights, but if I fell out of the roof it would do a hell of a lot more damage than 2 tons of speakers.

Paul

As far as me killing people is concerned, I’m more likely to hurt people’s ears than kill them although as I say, we do put a lot of gear in the air above people so we can’t take that lightly.

Rather you than me mate, I can’t stand heights.

No I didn’t say that, you did 🙂

Possibly a fair interpretation though when you say there’s a problem and the airlines take the solution in a slightly different way to those who formulated the solution in the first place? :p

I actually almost changed my post, I realised after asking that question that it wasn’t appropriate for a public forum. As far as me killing people is concerned, I’m more likely to hurt people’s ears than kill them although as I say, we do put a lot of gear in the air above people so we can’t take that lightly. A decent amount of rigging coming out of the air could probably quite easily flatten 40 or more people but yes, you guys certainly have more variables to deal with than we do!

Paul

So what you’re essentially saying is there are fairly major flaws in how the rules work or are made to work by airlines? Admittedly if we’re tired we just have to get on with it (although if I make a mistake through tiredness and 2 tons of PA falls out of the roof, people die which isn’t really very good). How often are you pushed to the limits of your allowed flying time?

Paul

No I didn’t say that, you did :), I’m in no position to start a conversation on this in the public domain, and nor would I want to, for obvious reasons.

In the summer months we’re pushed hard, in the winter months it’s alot easier 🙂

As for making mistakes I guess anyone could make a mistake that ends up with someone dead, I would assume there won’t be that many mistakes you can make that’ll kill people in your line of work, whereas we can make a myriad of mistakes with any one of them killing alot of people.

The problem Paul is not flying the odd trip here and there, and working your socks off here and there. The problem is that there was a recognition that pilot fatigue is a big contributing factor in airline incidents/accidents, so the bigwigs in Europe brought us CAP 371 (and it’s European/International equivalent), this is basically FTLs, or flight time limitations. This governs what we can and cannot work on duty over a given day/week/2 week/month/year, but employers do not view it this way. They view CAP 371 to be a maximum that they can operate their crews to. If you work to your FTLs every 2 weeks/month then you can go months working to this limit. This is why flight crew in particular are susceptible to fatigue.

So what you’re essentially saying is there are fairly major flaws in how the rules work or are made to work by airlines? Admittedly if we’re tired we just have to get on with it (although if I make a mistake through tiredness and 2 tons of PA falls out of the roof, people die which isn’t really very good). How often are you pushed to the limits of your allowed flying time?

Paul

The problem Paul is not flying the odd trip here and there, and working your socks off here and there. The problem is that there was a recognition that pilot fatigue is a big contributing factor in airline incidents/accidents, so the bigwigs in Europe brought us CAP 371 (and it’s European/International equivalent), this is basically FTLs, or flight time limitations. This governs what we can and cannot work on duty over a given day/week/2 week/month/year, but employers do not view it this way. They view CAP 371 to be a maximum that they can operate their crews to. If you work to your FTLs every 2 weeks/month then you can go months working to this limit. This is why flight crew in particular are susceptible to fatigue. It can be very tiring working to FTLs over a long period.

It does indeed affect people in different ways.
But to be fair, in all of your touring have you been called upon to make fuel, weight and speed calculations on the back of a 1 to 2 hour, fairly dry session of pre-flight when you’ve not had much sleep beforehand.
Are you confident that you would be able to perform such duties without a mistake?.

I’m not confident I could do that regardless of how tired I was and it’s something I’ll never have to do, so asking me that question doesn’t really work. I have, however, have been required to get on stage and perform, sort out huge technical problems on massively complex systems and other such things that require a hell of a lot of thought. I’m not trying to directly compare what I do to flying a plane and if you think I am then you completely missed my point. I’ve never flown a plane and the majority of pilots will never mix or play concerts to thousands of people, so neither of us are in a position to directly compare. I’m simply pointing out that tiredness affects people in different ways.

Paul

I think all of us that fly commercially have made a mistake reading analysis from time to time. I´ve done so myself and been found out by the other member of crew.(

Likewise, and likewise for me picking missed info up. So long as there’s human intervention, there will be mistakes.

Deano, can I question this in a manner that is made understandable to those on this forum not familiar with aircraft weight and balance, and which is no way meant to question or undermine your professional standing.

My confusion lies in not knowing the onboard system used to calculate the desired weights and I stand to be corrected on my assumptions. This incident does however appear to highlight a failure of automated cross checking.

Unless I am very much mistaken, the three main weights used for aircraft operations are Zero Fuel Weight (ZFW) , Take-Off Weight (TOW) and Landing Weight (LW)

During the manual calculation of loadsheets, the ZFW is derived by taking the Aircraft Prepared for Service Weight (APS – Basically, the weight of the a/c as it stands including catering and any spares carried, but without fuel, passengers, baggage or cargo) and adding to it the Traffic / Payload (passengers, baggage or cargo).

To this you add the fuel weight minus the weight of fuel used for taxying to give you your Take-Off weight.

From this figure you then subtract the Burn-Off (Fuel used during flight) to give the Landing weight

In an automated system, the variables that need to be manually imputed as the weights vary are APS, Traffic/Payload, Fuel and Burn-Off. From these inputs the required three weights can be calculated and displayed

During the incident in question we are told that “The investigation has determined that the pre-flight take-off performance calculations were based on an incorrect take-off weight (262.9 tonnes, instead of 362.9 tonnes) that was inadvertently entered into the take-off performance software on a laptop computer used by the flight crew”. It was the Take-Off weight and not the Traffic Load tnat was a hundred tons less than it should have been, but why was the need to manually input this figure and even more so, how is it possible to do so? Doesn’t the system calculate this figure based on the explanation above.

OK, it was a human error that caused this incident but surely it is a fundamental error that the FMS did not pick it up.

Am I being too simplistic and missing something?

Jethro

Yes you are right, but ours calculate the ZFW for us, and our FMS is quite antiquated in relation to the rest of the aircraft.
As galdri has cleared up his FMS seems to work similar to ours where we can enter the APS weight, invariably it is already there but it is cross checked. We enter the Block fuel minus the taxi, then the traffic load and it will automatically calculate our ZFW. I’m sure the newer FMGC on the airbus does this too. The landing weight is determined by a manual calculation of a fuel check in flight using the OFP data. The FMS will give a LW figure but it is not to be relied upon. The arbiter is the OFP but the 2 should be reasonably similar.

Our FMS won’t calculate V speeds either, the Vr & V2 is done by using TOLD cards and Runway Analysis Charts with the V1 being determined by the charts (not the TOLD cards).
Flap settings, flex settings, Acceleration Altitude & RTOM is taken from the RACs

Galdri I am led to believe that the FMGC on the newer Airbus series will calculate V speeds etc, all the temperatures, flex, flap settings etc can be entered and it’ll spit out the V speeds and bug them along with the flap retract schedule on the PFDs.

This type of error is what brought down the MK 747-200 in Nova Scotia a few years ago, using a laptop to calculate performance data and not being cross checked by the crew.

The net result is tired crews, stressed and over worked. The sheer number of little mistakes being made in recent times is evidence of this dangerous situation.

How true. Once we took off without clearance due to fatigue, and there were 4 in the cockpit including the chief pilot in the jumpseat, all on headsets. Nobody picked up the omission. Very red faces afterwards.

Hmm… I have to admit me saying that was based on a fairly hefty amount of touring experience working ridiculous and irregular hours, crossing time zones, stupid numbers of flights and general travelling, etc (a certain recent gigging trip through Russia/Turkey/Hungary springs to mind) and I’ve generally found a couple of days is enough to return to relative normality. You can still feel it, obviously, but I’ve always been able to function normally again after a couple of days. Admittedly it isn’t flying a plane but I can almost guarantee what I’ve done at times is far more fatiguing involving far less sleep, and I’ve still been fine after a couple of days. I guess things affect people in different ways.

Paul

It does indeed affect people in different ways.
But to be fair, in all of your touring have you been called upon to make fuel, weight and speed calculations on the back of a 1 to 2 hour, fairly dry session of pre-flight when you’ve not had much sleep beforehand.
Are you confident that you would be able to perform such duties without a mistake?

Exactly. Although not recently but I spent many years working bizarre hours across time zones in a stress inducing job. I am not comparing it with flying but the point is that we all react quite differently to disturbed work and rest patterns as well as time zone crossing. The bodyclock symptom has become over-used as an excuse for taking a few hours or days “off”.

Same question to you.
Also, it’s all very good judging that a viable reason has been overused from the comfort of your own home, but you have no real idea the pressure some pilots are under.
Airlines are tightening their belts. Most only have just enough crew to operate their schedules. Those crews are worked to the absolute legal limit and turned around in the minimal of time required by aviation laws.
Crews know they can’t quit as jobs are few and far between. They also don’t want to crew waves. Whistleblowers and those who do stand up for themselves always seem to quietly loose their jobs (I’ve spoken to a number of pilots from a few big and some small airlines who all know someone that did).

The net result is tired crews, stressed and over worked. The sheer number of little mistakes being made in recent times is evidence of this dangerous situation.
At least, that’s how I see it from what I’ve read and have been told.

MrTrotty,

Yes, they were indeed flying an airplane, not driving a bus, but if we were to fire every crew guilty of an honest mistake, not only ones that snowball into a full blown tragedy, I can tell you you’d have to ground every current operating airline crew. The truth is, with all the procedures, checklists, calls and crosschecks deemed as required on any typical flight…even before attempting to weave them into the reality of an actual “A” to “B” flight, with vargaries of weather/ATC/MEL/delays/ and an occasional snag or malfunction thrown in…. then the typical flight presents more than enough opportunities to easily miss/overlook or forget any number these mandated duties, to the point where I have never in my own flying had what I would call a “perfect flight”, from the human performance end. Nor have I witnessed one yet over quite a few years observing others operating in my capacity as a Training Captain.

It is simply that most mistakes are not life threatening to begin with and the aircraft are operated with many layers of redundancy thrown in (sytems and procedural). And, of course, today’s aircraft are immensely forgiving and reliable for the most part. But also, the system is not designed to function safely only in the total abscence of human error, but to be pliant and robust enough to continue to work safely even with some degradation thrown in. In this case, the system of checks and balances that should have been in place failed somewhere, and the easy thing to do is blame the crew. Easy, but not totally honest.

Short of cases of wanton disrespect for basic airmanship or intentionally negligent operation of an aircraft, I believe that a crew with a basically safe operating record and proficiency that is not engaged in repeated incidents and has a proven track record of respect for SOP’s and safe, professioal conduct (as is easily verified by their training files and evaluations), deserve the chance to learn from their error… just as surely as the flight ops department have had to review the practices in place that failed to catch this error and were allowed to revamp/fortify their procedures accordingly.

To coarsly punish the crew seems reflexive and results from a need on managements’ part to be seen to have “done something” about the incident..in the way any self preserving bureacracy will be prone naturally to do. To say nothing of the way in which this crew was handled…Call them in, close the door behind them and coerce them into signing sham resignation letters. They weren’t even “fired” honestly, were they?

Along with the necessary procedural fixes and review of operating practices in place at the Airline as a whole, I would like to have seen the question of repeated, continual and cumulative disruption to one’s circadian system caused by years of long haul flying (a question not yet even remotely considered, to my knowedge) and it’s possible effects to long term health and cognitive abilities addressed. The crew, barring any finding of gross negilgence or disregard for established operating practices, should be returned to the Sim, given a thorough work over, undergo line training and be released to line duty when/if found competent. I believe they would have been a better crew for having had the experience, and the airline a better place to fly with had they honestly aired their laundry.

Wonder where the pilots are now?:D

RyanAir by any chance:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8427830.stm

lol

Thanks galdri. It’s all perfectly clear now, cheers

Ohhh, and I forgot to add. Normally figures (both for V speeds and Flex) should be checked by both crew members before entry into the FMS.

I think all of us that fly commercially have made a mistake reading analysis from time to time. I´ve done so myself and been found out by the other member of crew. I´ve also stopped a few bugcards that have come my way for scrutiny before entry into the FMS. It is after all human to make errors, wether we like the fact or not:(