Comments by "Tony L" (@tlangdon12) on "Mentour Pilot" channel.

I find it incredible that with that much experience in the cockpit, and the stick shaker going, that one of the other pilots didn't demand the Captain perform a stall recovery.
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It is one reason why there are multiple frequencies, e.g. one for Ground, one for Clearance Delivery and one for the Tower, so that the number of aircraft trying to share a frequency is reduced. Pilots learn what overlapping transmissions sound like and should reissue any communication that they think might have been overlapped.
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Older captains are much further away from their own experience of learning to fly, so might not realise the full impact of a mistake that the FO might think is career-limiting. However, allowing the FO to complete the flight would be an example of encouraging the FO (akin to getting straight back on the horse that has just throw you). A supportive debreif, and electing to return as passengers would have been the best route, but the returning flight was made safely. Petter didn't mention who flew the return flight, but I've assuming it was the Captain as he did the walkaround.
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@aaron6806 That's the fundamental issue here. They forgot their most basic training, and yet as professional pilots have been trained to troubleshoot problems. They failed as professional pilots and failed as basic pilots.
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Commercial aviation depends on a team. No one person can do everything, and so it is right that every member of the team respects what the other members bring to it.
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I think that the captain was deficient in assuming that the autothrottle would always work. Watch enough Mentour Pilot videos and you realise that many of the systems have various points at which they are inhibited and many reasons why they might fail. The operation of any button, but especially a critical one such as the TOGA buttons on the throttles, needs to be verified by someone.
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Having some indication of a popped breaker is actually quite a difficult engineering challenge.
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This is one reason why this report by Mentour Pilot is so important - new pilots need to learn that there is no reason why any pilot should have to find themselves in a situation where only extraordinary skill or luck can save the day. It is better to play it safe and be told that you could have done something different to save the company a little money, than take a risk that ends up costing you your job.
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It seems more likely that the chose this airport due to a perceived saving in cost to the company.
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This is an area where Artificial Intelligence (AI) could add a lot of value - if the external camera view was being analysed by AI, it could a) alert the flight crew that looked unusual and b) allow a fast rewind to the start of footage that was anomalous.
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@mlai2546 Mentour Pilot did not say that the pileot went closer to the Airbus for a better look at it. The pilots knew that a plane of that size will create substantial turbulence, but their training would have emphasized that the risk was greatest when taking off after a heavy aircraft. The potential for the A380 to cause problems when passing other aircraft in the cruise wasn't well understood when this incident happened.
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@mlai2546 Very few aircraft pass directly under or over each other, and the winds aloft often blow the vortices to outside of the airway before they can descend to the level of another aircraft. Few aircraft will be the size of the Embraer - most of the few that run into top vortices at height will be large/heavy aircraft rather than mediums, due to the routes the A380s are used on. Plus this incident occurred early in the A380 service life, so I don’t think the pilots did anything wrong.
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When you see the quality of the accident reports produced by certain other countries you realise that the NTSB are very good at what they do.
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There is not much more that ATC can do, other than scramble the emergency equipment, and ATC should know that the pilots don't have ANY time available in this case to do anything other than to fly the plane. If the Pilots need anything, they will evaluate whether they have time to call ATC or not.
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Personally, I don't think it is a good idea to force any form of orientation. Orientation will occur naturally from the point that the F/O and Captain meet on the ground.
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If there is one thing pilot's love, it is banter.
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Again, this is where the company culture has to step up - the captain needs to know that they are going to have a difficult conversation with their boss if they don't do around when the FO calls for it (assuming that there is no justifiable reason that a landing must be made from that approach).
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Learning to read Meteorological Actual Reports (METARs) and Terminal Airfield Forecasts (TAFs) is something that pilots start learning relatively early in their training, often within the first few hours of starting training. After a while, the amazing human brain starts to translate the codes as you read them!
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I'm surprised that the investiation didn't recommend including the visibility in the approach clearance IF it was below the minima for the approach.
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I think Petter is of the same opinion - he mentioned that he thought the FO was pre-occupied with juggling the throttles to execute the rolling take off correctly, so would have been focused on the near-distance view, not the view to the end of runway and beyond.
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@sandeepmehta5311 TCAS would provide a second safety net, but the first safety net should have been a prompt call to ATC.
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The manhours figures given in this video mean that an aircraft needs to earn enough revenue to pay for 1000 hours of maintenance per month, on average. Imagine that a licensed aircraft engineer costs the same as the mechanic at your car dealer - upwards of £60 in the UK in 2018 and you can see how much the airlines spends on maintenance for one aircraft, more than £60,000 per month. And if you need a replacement part, aviation quality parts are a lot more expensive than parts for your car.
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The non-judgmental approach to accident investigation in aviation is and should be a model to all forms of accident/near-miss investigation, so that lessons can be learned.
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@Stettafire The challenge here is that the pilot can't look at the button they are pressing, and locking the button out runs the risk of the lock failing at a very inopportune moment. Some sort of throttle shaker might work to communicate that if you want TOGA thrust you are going to have to move the throttle levers to get it!
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The A320 airspeed in the initial climb to 5000 feet will be about 200mph. Even if you see a flock of birds a mile away, which would be a miracle, you would be in the flock within 15 seconds or so, and a pilot's initial reaction would be to turn way to avoid birds being ingested into the engine rather than adjust the engines. Remember that these engines are certified to be able to take a bird strike from something like a pigeon with minimal damage.
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@marhawkman303 Agreed - the Captain seems to have failed to model the correct behaviours for CRM. They should have called STOP and watched the FO to check that they were stopping expeditiously. I suspect the Captain's actions were also prompted by being startled.
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As a result of my own PPL training, even when flying on commercal flights I always wear shoes and clothes that cover my body as much as possible. The clothes I wear are chosen for their high natural fibre content, as I don't want melted polyester/viscose/etc adhering to my skin in the event of a fire. I always study the safety card to see how the doors are opened, where the lifevest is stowed and how it is fastened. I also mantain a 'sterile' seat for takeoff and landings, with my bag as far under the seat in front as possible, nothing plugged into the entertainment system (if any) and my shoes on. That way I am ready to get out, and nothing will impede anyone sat outboard of me getting to the aisle.
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For me the most surprising part of this story is the lack of Wig-Wag lights at the entrance to the runway. In my experience, if an airfield has any lighting at all, it has these lights.
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There is such a display on the Boeing 737 800 - you can see it on the co-pilot's side of the cockpit at 1:54 in this video. It's the screen to the left of the co-pilot's Primary Flying Display. If you look closely you can see an area of green to the left of the centreline on that display. This is the terrain being displayed.
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In your company and on your aircraft, are you able to talk to your operations center, and if so, how do you do this?
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As an ex Private Pilot, and having spent hours practising for engine failures after take-off, I find it extremely worrying that the commercial aviation world wasn't training Airbus pilots for double engine failures after take-off. While single engine failure after take-off is clearly an emergency that needs to be trained for, to not train for a double engine failure seems absurd. It is an extremely unlikely event, but given the likely outcome of a complete failure is so dangerous it is incredible to me that that this was not practiced for. Perhaps it is a hang-over from commercial aviation's earlier days when all Air Transport aircraft had four engines? With a four engine configuration, the chance of losing all four engines on take-off due to striking a single flock of birds would have been so low enough to reasonably ignore it, and system redundancy would have avoided a complete failure of thrust due to faults on the aircraft.
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Videoing the Q&A session is probably very useful to the cadets who might not have taken in all of the detail in Petter's answers.
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While a return was possible, to do so would have been against all their training and US Airways SOPs, so that was never going to happen.
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The wingtip vortices are very powerful.
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Petter makes the point in other videos that humans make mistakes all the time, but commercial aviation has developed ways to make sure that these mistakes should always be trapped by a specific role or by procedure. The development of these methods is due, in large part, to the non-judgemental approach taken to accident investigations. By seeking to understand the cause, and then to close off that cause from causing further accidents, commercial aviation becomes safer and safer. However, humans are very good at finding new ways to screw up, so training flight crews to be vigilent is also important.
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@NiekEdeling Yes. This why it is so important that the CRM culture is embedded across the entire organisation, so that if a FO annoys a captain with how they handle a dangerous situation, the FO is fully supported by the company. The time for arguments is when everyone is safely on the ground. If the FO has over-reacted, then this can be the subject of further training, but the correctness of speaking up and taking action needs to be reinforced.
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A great analysis, with great detail and insight. However, on your point about the APU/Ramair/Normal/Alt Laws, it seemed that because Sully started the APU, the aircraft was only able to follow the Normal Law, so Sully could not achieve the nose-high attitude he wanted. Consequently the landing speed and kinetic energy was greater than he wanted or was necessary to retain control of the aircraft. I am curious as to whether you think this was a good think that he could not do this, or do you think the aircraft would have been less damaged if he had been able to have full control over the aircraft?
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It's also the job of the senior crew members to mentor the junior crew members. Training captains need to be sure that they have the capacity to teach their first officers during every flight - flying below minimums means that the captain isn't modelling the correct behavior and has set themselves up (at best) with a situation where they can't teach the first officer anything because their own workload is so high.
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I would imagine that it was at least as common for Air Traffic Controllers as it is for pilots. Thank you to all controllers for persevering with their training.
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This is why Petter recommends studiying the procedures before flying them, and using any time you get with the instructor before you enter the simulator to check on any points that aren't clear, because there are going points on more or less every procedure that new pilots won't be familiar with.
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The role of the Monitoring Pilot is not only to monitor the flight but also the Pilot Flying. While this incapacitation was subtle, it was the captain's job as Pilot Monitoring to spot this and intervene effectively.
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This is an aspect of the accident that Petter didn't give an opinion on, but I can understand the airline's difficultly in dismissing a captain that kept scrapping through their mandated checks. Normal HR procedures would require an employee to be given informal, and then formal warnings that their performance was not acceptable, before they could be dismissed. It's difficult to prove that the captain's performance is not adequate if they ultimately pass their checks! However, to protect the fare-paying passengers I think that ALL airlines and pilots need to accept that HR for pilots has to be a bit different. (Petter's video on Atlas Air Flight 3591 and the PRIA Act in the USA indicates that the law makers in the USA agree with this view). I think that it must become possible for an airline to dismiss a pilot if they keep slipping back into their old habits. As employees, pilots deserve to be told when their lack of improvement is going to result in them being dismissed, so warnings would still have to be given, but they could be given as a result of slipping back to often, even if they are able to pass a check at a point in time.
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If you have taken a decision to do something you know is wrong and are caught out, the only defence likely to have any success is to reflect on why you made the decision; by being honest that it was misconduct, showing that you know how you made the bad decision (what factors you were influenced by), have learned how to handle these factors better, and are sincere about never doing it again, you may survive. This is an example of a situation where one event might be forgiven, but two events starts to look like a pattern...
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It ceratinly hints at the range of knowledge that pilots need to arrive in the cockpit with to begin learning what is being taught and practiced.
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When the captain called "My aircraft" and didn't get a response from the First Officer, this should have prompted him to hit the red button. I'm suprised that this experienced captain did not do this.
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While CRM is enormously important, this incident isn't principally an issue of CRM. It is an issue with the Monitoring Pilot not effectively assessing that the Pilot Flying has become incapacitated. The speed at which this incapacitation happened clearly caught the Monitoring Pilot by surprise.
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Was fascinated to see that the First Officer had time on a HAL Pushpak. This is an aircraft type that I also have time on. 😀
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Pilots can get quite a bit of rest between duties. Petter's situation is different though as he has plenty of other responsibilties at work. It is amazing how he fits in the work of making his excellent content.
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