Ignore O'Leary, he's well known for making outlandish statements just to get the name Ryanair in the media. I think one or two manufacturers and regulatory agencies would have something to say about it, let alone the pilots' unions.

LOL...being redundant is the whole point of having another pilot.

And don`t forget the rare occasions where one pilot slumps over dead and the other continues solo. That would be a bad beat with only one pilot on board.



(I`ll get to the other posts on here later...tonight or tomorrow. I`m in Zurich right now, leaving for the airport in 10 minutes for the flight back to NY.)

Can you use ACARS to connect to the Internet?

I still think there should be a FE on the really big stuff; like the 747. That's one heck of a lump for just two people to fly in an emergency situation.

Zurich is nice. How much opportunity do you get to see a city? Is it often just the taxi ride between airport and hotel? Is there ever any opportunity to pilot a flight out, spend a few days vacation at your destination and then pilot a flight back home?

Why does it matter how big it is? They're not muscling it around the sky.

It's complex so it's almost impossible to be intimately familiar with all its systems so things can get very busy in an emergency. Also if you need to send someone up the back to investigate say a smoke alarm, you can't really spare someone from the FD when it takes two to fly the plane. OP can no doubt add more.

Is this a well-known incident? This is the first I have ever heard of it - seems pretty serious! http://jalopnik.com/5629528/how-i-sa...-from-crashing

Cliffs: In 2003 a Northwest Airlines 747's rear rudder suddenly and unexpectedly goes out of control over the Bering Sea. The plane had ~400 'souls' on board (see, I've been paying attention!).

Of course not. On hundreds of flights every day, someone on board either forgets to turn off their cell phone or purposely ignores the rule (I've done it myself, unintentionally). I don't think any plane has yet fallen out of the sky because of this.

Yes, it is possible but the connection won't last long as the plane flies beyond the coverage of one cell or network in a very short time. The cell networks were designed for limited distance connections by slow moving phones (relative to airplane speeds).

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on this topic. Someone else may be able to chime in with a more educated answer.

True. You hear people call this a Zed fare and it's a reduced fare ticket (not free). The amount of the discount varies depending on agreements between the airlines and can be up to 90%.

As of today, that video has been removed from youtube due to "terms of use violation." But based on your Cliffs, I can tell you that having a broken fuel gauge is not a show-stopper. As long as there's a reliable way of determining the fuel on board the aircraft before departure, you can still go fly.

The airplane's MEL (Minimum Equipment List) will specify the limitations, if any, for a deferred item. In the case of broken fuel gauges, the MEL will specify the procedure for determining fuel on board and will probably also specify that the Fuel Flow indicators must be functioning.

I had this situation more than once on the J-32 (19 seater) many years ago and we would have to "stick the tanks" prior to each departure. I could explain this much better in person and this explanation may just confuse you, but basically we would go under the wings and, using a dime or screwdriver, turn a screw 1/4 turn so that a dripless dipstick would fall from beneath the wing. Then we would lightly raise the dipstick until a magnet on the top of it (inside the wing) would "lock onto" a floating magnet in the fuel. At this point, we could check a calibration scale on the stick and read the number that was flush with the bottom of the wing. That number corresponded to a fuel quantity in the wing. Each wing had 4 or 5 of these sticks (we called them "magna sticks") and you kind of had to know, based on a best guess of how much fuel you had, which one was the right one to check. Like I said, the explanation sounds confusing, but I used this method probably a half dozen times in my 5 years of flying that plane.

Larger planes have similar alternative methods of checking fuel quantity, but that's a job for the mechanics to perform.

I'm a little confused about this part of the scenario. What is the original destination? Somewhere other than LGA or PHL?

Yes, definitely. That's why we now depart Cairo at midnight instead of 10 a.m. We had instances in the past (daytime departures) where, due to rapidly rising temperature, we had to return to the gate to offload some weight (cargo and/or people and bags). Then we'd go out again and the temperature would have gone up another 5 degrees necessitating another return to gate to offload more weight.

Believe it or not, takeoff performance data can vary from airline to airline even if they're flying the same type of plane. It's not like we're all using engineering performance data supplied by the manufacturer.

I remember when I flew the CRJ at ACA, we were more limited out of Colorado Springs than Air Wisconsin flying the same plane. That's because they contracted with a different service for their performance data (a more expensive service) and their data allowed for higher takeoff weights. I know this sounds insane (and I tend to agree), but that's the way it was. It's also possible that the performance data being supplied has an upper temperature limit, i.e. they just don't provide takeoff data for temps exceeding, for example, 45° C (113 ° F). So now if you're somewhere that's reporting a higher temperature (Vegas, Dhubai), you can't go.

Or you may have data for the high temperature, but it shows that you won't have the required single-engine performance (in case of an engine failure on takeoff) at any weight. Again, you can't go in this case.

I don't think so. The temperatures at which contrails appear are down in the neighborhood of -40°C (which, coincidentally, is -40°F) or colder. But besides temperature, the ambient air pressure plays a role in contrail formation. While you may be able to find -40°C somewhere on the planet, you'll never find a surface pressure as low as what we have at cruise altitude.

The closest I've ever been to zero/zero was a landing in the MD-88 at Pensacola, Florida. We saw the runway at about 50' and the viz was about 600'. No HUD on that airplane (and I've never flown a plane equipped with a HUD).

No.

That's a fun fact I learned during the winter of 2005-2006 in Moscow.. always entertaining to refer to a temperature conversion chart and realize that you're within ~5 degrees of a weather factoid you NEVER thought you'd see in person. Even the hardened Muscovites moaned about that record setting cold snap.. :/

I worked in Edmonton for a couple of years. I remember one "brisk" winter day where the actual temperature was -39°C. I was flying on a NW 320 and they told us if the temperature reached -40°C at YEG that we wouldn't be flying. I've heard of being grounded at the upper levels (120°F?) but never where it was too cold to fly. What's the problem if it's too cold?

I don't know if you already google'd this information, but if you didn't then yes, the Faroe Islands are indeed inhabited

There are approx. 48K people spread around the 18 beautiful islands, though most people (20k) live in the capital called Tórshavn.

The language being spoken is Faroese.

Our primary industry is the fishing industry. We have all sorts of ships and boats varying from small boats to large trawlers.

The islands are "owned" or "ruled" by Denmark, but we do most of the governing ourself's.

Vagar Airport, Faeroe Islands. Not a great diversionary for a 767.

WOXOF- hoping you are not in Amsterdam right now.

this is by far my most favourite thread on the entire 2+2 forums, great stuff

I'm about halfway through the thread so apologies if this has been asked already, but I'm flying this Saturday and would like to hear your thoughts beforehand.

Do you have any tricks to help make your ears pop during descent? I generally don't have a problem with this, but about four years ago on a flight back from Vegas they just wouldn't pop. I tried gum, yawning, blowing my nose while pinching my nose shut, and for whatever reason, they just wouldn't pop. The pain was absolutely excruciating. They finally popped the day after the flight during a sneeze.

I've flown since and it has yet to happen again, but every time I fly I get super nervous during the descent that they won't pop again. Any tips? Thanks and great thread.

I know it seems that way, but the size is not really an issue. Flight engineers were required when planes had complex systems that required time and attention during flight. But on modern planes, those systems (e.g. fuel, pressurization, electric) are much more sophisticated and operate automatically for the most part. While it's always nice to have an extra person in an emergency, two pilots can handle things just fine.

On international flights, we usually get at least 24 hours and sometimes 48 or 72. Domestically, it's often much less...sometimes as little as 10 hours (just time to get to the hotel, grab a bite and get to bed).

How much you use the time to see the city is strictly a personal decision. There are people who don't venture out at all (the "slam-clickers"), but I think most crew members enjoy the opportunity to see the world.

There was a day when the training did require us to be "intimately familiar" with the systems, to the point of absurdity (like knowing exact EGT operating ranges or the exact pressures in the hydraulic and pressurization systems). The move in the last 10-20 years has been away from this "build the airplane" mindset of training and now we know are trained just to the depth we need to operate and troubleshoot the systems.

For example, I no longer need to know that the max EGT during an engine start is 723°C on my plane (that's a made up number); instead I just see a red line on the gauge and I know that it shouldn't be exceeded during engine start.

The scenario you mention about the inherent limitations of two pilots would apply to any airliner. The size of the 747 doesn't make it any more critical. In any emergency, we always make sure one pilot is concentrating on flying the plane...that's always Job #1 (Aviate, Navigate, Communicate) and it's typical to also give the flying pilot the communication duties so that the other guy can concentrate on the problem at hand (talking to FAs, running abnormal checklists, etc).

Wow...I never heard of this and it's a fascinating story. Thanks for posting it. I'm going to ask around on my next trip to see if other pilots know of this incident...maybe I just missed class that day.

Your country is beautiful...I've flown over it a number of times on the way to Iceland and would love love love to visit one day.

Something else that occurred to me after I answered this question is that contrails (condensation trails) exist because the plane is moving through the air fast enough to leave the condensation (from the exhaust) streaming behind the plane. So even if ambient conditions were conducive to the condensation, it would be hard to leave a trail at taxi speeds.

Wox, here's some humour for you.

One of my friends who will believe every conspiracy going came up with an all time low recently.

"Do you know what the trail behind a plane is that you can only see for a certain time"?

"dunno, condensation or something"?

"nope, poison gas, government controlling us"!

He was being serious too, i was speechless.

Thanks for the thread, amazing it's still going.