What is the designation for a flight engineer? Do any airlines that still fly those airframes have a specific job description designated "Flight Engineer" or does the pilot pool just flip a coin to see who rides "sideways"?

I know more about the airbus and it systems than I do the Boeing as I know an ex-captain on the a330 and I would annoy him with questions.. it really isn't as automated as people tend to think when it comes to certain aspects of it.. thanks for putting all this effort in to answering these questions!

It's getting harder to think of questions which haven't been asked already

Some airlines have PFEs: Professional Flight Engineers. These guys are on a separate seniority list from the pilots and will never move to a control seat. They don't even have to be pilots.

FedEx had some pilots who became PFEs after reaching mandatory retirement age for pilots. I don't know if they still do that but I remember in the late 1980s, a friend of mine at FedEx told me of one PFE they had who was in his late 70s. That guy had actually flown in the Battle of Britain!

It's more common for the FEs to be just junior guys on the pilot seniority list. There's no coin flipping for the job; it's just another choice made by individuals based on what their seniority can hold. When hiring is stagnant, someone might find themselves sitting sideways for years. I was an FE for about six months and logged about 400 hours of FE time (which still goes in the logbook and counts toward "Total Time").

On long flights over the oceans, do planes always take the most direct route, or are the flight paths designed so that you'd fly nearer to some islands or whatever so that in case something goes wrong you'd have a potential landing site more often?

Does the size of the plane (talking 100+ person carrying airliners) correlate with safety; i.e. are the jumbo jets somehow even more safe than the regular Airbuses/Boeings?

What's the skill level of air traffic controllers in 3rd world countries in 2012? I've read quite a bit of the wikis of some older plane accidents and at least in a few cases it seems one big factor in the crash has been the communication issues between ATC and pilots and I think they were all in Africa or in the poorer South American countries. If you fly over like Afghanistan or something do you ever have any issues with the ATC?

Do you ever have problems understanding what the ATC are saying in countries with heavy accents like France or Japan (where they pronounce the r's differently etc)?

Please don't finish the well, it's the best thing on 2+2!

The islands thing depends on the ETOPS certification (for two engine jets like the 757 and 767 -- doesn't apply to the A380, 747, A340, etc). Planes can be certified to fly up to a certain distance from airstrips that the plane can land at -- just having an island doesn't do much good, it's about airstrips. Like the ETOPS 180 certification means the plane can fly with one engine for three hours (180 minutes) to some qualified airstrip so that's the farthest that the plane can be from any given qualified airstrip at any given time.

My infant daughter and wife are flying from boston to orlando in a few weeks.Do you recommend seating the baby in a car seat or on the lap would be fine.I am terrified of flying and i am not going to go with them this trip.The more i read your thread i am feeling a little bit more comfortable but not ready yet thanks

See N 82 50 24's answer to this (post 4385). I don't think I can improve on that.

All the planes you fly when you buy an airline ticket are certified under FAR Part 25 AIRWORTHINESS STANDARDS: TRANSPORT CATEGORY AIRPLANES. Some designs exceed this standard or implement some of the requirements in ways that someone might consider "safer," but I'm not sure this is quantifiable.

One example is the hydraulic systems. Every Part 25 airplane will have redundancy here, but some planes are designed with two hydraulic systems and some with three. But this doesn't necessarily correlate with the size of the plane. The MD-88 has two systems; the smaller CRJ has three.

We obviously have redundancy in the electrical systems, with a separate generator being driven by each engine. Many airplanes also have a RAT (Ram Air Turbine, aka ADG or Auxiliary Drive Generator on some planes), which is a small propeller-driven electrical generator that extends into the slipstream in the case of a complete electrical failure. This generator can power the essential subset of components to get the plane on the ground safely. Some models of the 767 (the ER, for example) also have an extra component called an HDG (Hydraulic Driven Generator) which will use hydraulics to turn a small backup electrical generator.

Ram Air Turbine deployed


If every electrical generator and all the backups fail, the ship's battery is required to provide power to essential items for at least 30 minutes. This would be enough time to get on the ground (unless you're over the middle of the ocean, in which case you're just having a really bad day).

Long-winded response, I know. But the bottom line is that the size of the plane doesn't necessarily correlate to safety. Larger aircraft have the luxury of more redundancy in some cases, but even small planes have redundancy as required by Part 25.

Services in some parts of the world can only be described as "adequate." If you stick to the script and use standard phraseology, you get through it. I've flown in many areas that are non-radar environments and we have procedures to enhance our safety in these cases (e.g. flying in Africa, we use a common air-to-air frequency to announce position and altitude in the blind when crossing airway intersections).

I've never had any serious issues with ATC, but I wouldn't want to put it to the test in some places I've flown. Flying over North America, talking to U.S. and Canadian controllers, gives me much more of a warm, fuzzy feeling. European controllers are also very good for the most part, but sometimes the heavily accented English can cause some confusion.

I haven't flown into Asia yet, so I can't comment on that, but it's funny you mentioned France because that's the accent I used to have the most trouble with when flying to Europe, especially with female controllers. I overcame this by learning to anticipate what was coming. (This is the same thing I used to teach my flying students. A big part of a low-time pilot's problem with understanding ATC comes from not knowing what to expect. Once you know the normal sequence and cadence of an ATC transmission, it's very easy to follow.) To do this, I'd follow our course on the en route chart and I could see where we crossed the next ATC boundary. Most of the time, this would be the fix that the controller would clear us to, so now I could recognize it when the clearance came.

I hate to say it, because of how cumbersome they are to deal with when getting on and off the plane, but the safety seat is the way to go. You should be aware, though, that not every car seat is allowed on an airplane. I found this article with a Google search and here's an excerpt (bold is mine):

Please thread no die. Best on 2+2 by a mile.

Any info/insights/scuttlebutt with regard to the Southwest/AirTran merger? Am an AirTran elite and am not looking forward to the adoption of Southwest's seating policy, though I hear that no further operations integration is happening in 2012 (but who knows what is happening behind the scenes).

Sorry. I know absolutely nothing about that merger. There are guys in this profession who make a point of knowing everything going on in the industry, but I'm not one of them. I'm happy to get a schedule and fly that schedule, and then leave it all behind when I finish a trip. Every once in a while I get some industry rumors from the guy I'm flying with or the occasional jumpseater, but I haven't heard anything about this particular merger.

I wish them luck with the integration of seniority lists. The Delta/NW merger went about as well as could be expected and the two groups are working and playing well together. The same can't be said for the USAir/America West merger and the American/TWA merger/acquistion (in which TWA guys got royally screwed). Any time you combine seniority lists, the result is not going to please anyone except the guys at the top of the list.

Thank you for taking the time to answer, and no need to apologize!

FYP

Ah, but it's a labor of love.

What is the hardest Airport to land at in your personal opinion? Also have you ever landed in the cayman islands? The landing strip is feels incredibly small.

Also thank you so much for this thread I have a huge fear of flying and this thread has helped me tremendeously

GCM isn't THAT small. BA flies a 767 into there for their LHR-NAS-GCM route.

It is a 7000 ft runway though, which is shorter than major airports in the US (typically in the 9-10,000 range I think, although obviously the major int'l ones have significantly longer ones).

I'm actually flying into there on Sunday. I love the typical approach into there. They fly right down the coast off of Seven Mile Beach and then hang a left to land eastbound.