Hi W0x0f,

I was reading this 'candy for the crew' thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-c...h-may-2-a.html

Whilst this is a nice and well meaning initiative, am I right in thinking that pilots would be prohibited from joining the fun, at least on the same flight? I'm actually kind of surprised that FAs are apparently allowed to eat food based gifts from their passengers to be honest!

Cheers,

Paul.

You are right. We are strictly prohibited from consuming anything provided by a passenger. (But it's a nice gesture.)

Near the end of this video you can see the elevation change at an airport near where I grew up. I'm pretty sure one end of the runway isn't even visible from the terminal it's so much lower!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdtscj5rNcE

The runway at State College, Pennsylvania was kind of like that. When taking off from either end (Runway 24 or 6), you couldn't see the opposite end. Because it was an uncontrolled field, you could have planes lining up for take-off at both ends, unable to see each other. You could only hope that the other traffic was monitoring the unicom frequency (and also announcing their intentions).

Did you hear the one about the crocodile and the CG?

http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/le...ile-crash.html

Could you picture a pot bellied pig (carry on as an emotional support animal) running around the cabin?

LOL, there's a comment on that story about people lighting a fire in the cabin. I find some of that stuff hard to believe but I mean... f'in Africa, who the **** knows.

Yes, I did hear about the crocodile accident. The movement of all the passengers fore or aft would definitely be noticeable on any airplane. When I flew the J-32 (19 seat turboprop with max takeoff weight of 16,204 lbs) I could always tell when someone was walking around in back. That plane had no autopilot and after I got it perfectly trimmed, any movement in back would affect the trim.

This whole "emotional support animal" thing kind of irritates me. Seems to be a dodge to get a pet on board and I see it abused from time to time. Kind of like the physically capable people who manage to get a handicap tag for their car so they can park close to the entrance everywhere they go. (I know that not all handicaps are readily apparent, but I also personally know of several cases of people who have these tags who don't need them.)

Finally caught up and I have that heart sore feeling that you have when you finish an epic novel! Enjoyed that so much and it answered so many questions I have always wanted to ask. Thank you, thank you.

My one story is from a flight from my home airport Dublin Ireland to Atlanta. Wand the se were told not to be alarmed by the line of fire trucks on arrival, spraying the plane with water. This was because the pilot was completing his last flight and was retiring. Great to see but even greater was the panic on my colleagues face when he woke up to the 'view'..... having slept through the announcement!

Hoping to be here for many more of your insights Woxof.

First post, first typos! I meant 'We were told'

Haven't seen this posted so far....the wonderful Dillie Keane and Fascinating Aida giving O'Leary some back!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAg0lUYHHFc

I was wondering about that phrase. Thought maybe it was Gaelic.

I enjoyed the video. Thanks.

Were they pilots (of other airlines of course) trying to get better parking at airports?

On another note:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101119/...uperjumbo_woes

This made it seemed like it was a much closer call than it appeared. Someone at Airbus must be thanking the pilots they landed safely.

The local charter company at the airport I work at did this with a Cheyenne they retired.

Thanks for the comments on the FLL runway plan. By the way, here is the image that was printed in the Sun Sentinel (FLL Newspaper). I hope the car isn't the only thing not to scale!!



As a frequent passenger for your company, I think your flight attendants are awesome, and I thought I would get a little gift for the 7 (MD8 and 752) flight attendants on my scheduled trips right before Christmas. The most common recommendation I have seen is Starbucks gift cards. You have any better suggestions?

I don't think I can improve on that idea. It's nice because it's gender-neutral and there are Starbucks in every airport. That's a very nice gesture and will be greatly appreciated, I'm sure.

Just (5 minutes ago) had an aircraft divert in to my local airport (East Midlands - EGNX) calling Mayday with an engine failure. Fortunately it was a 757 so stacks of power to spare on the one good engine and it was a positioning flight so it was light and had just the two FD crew on board (they landed without further incident btw). It's just prompted a few questions;
1) They seemed to follow the normal descent profile, would you only tend to stay high in the case of a forced landing on to unprepared terrain? (I hesitate to use the term 'crash landing')
2) Having successfully completed a real emergency landing, I guess that particular subject wouldn't be on the agenda for your next few visits to the sim?
3) With the 757 having such a good power to weight ratio, is the yaw effect of a single engine landing any more noticeable than with any other aircraft?

By "descent profile" I'm assuming you mean the angle of the glide path. In the aviation world "descent profile" is a term which encompasses all of the actions taken during the descent and landing (e.g. the amount of flaps that are used, the point in the approach at which gear and flaps are selected down, the point at which speed reductions are made, etc).

The glide path angle does not vary as a function of the type of landing and is always right around 3°+/- 0.2°. Even if we're just landing visually (without an electronic glideslope), we'll be right around this number, because anything different will look very shallow or steep to us. A 4° glideslope feels extremely steep, like you're diving for the runway.

Wouldn't that be nice? But you don't get any kind of credit for having a real one.

Of course I haven't flown them all, but in general the airplanes with wing mounted engines will have more asymmetric thrust than fuselage mounted engines (pretty obvious, since there's a longer moment arm about the C.G.). The 757 does have a great power to weight ratio and it's noticeable when flying on one engine, but I can't really say it's any worse. It's all about the rudder, and if you have enough rudder authority on a plane, the asymmetric thrust can be handled.

Yes, basically I meant it looked they still followed the normal glideslope. I didn't know whether the procedure was to maintain as much height as possible until you'd decided you were definitely going for a landing.

Interesting. I would have thought with sim time being so much in demand they would have used the time to concentrate on something you hadn't seen recently.

One other thing... if you experience an engine failure, do you call your wife once you're safely on the ground, tell her once you're back home from the trip or say nothing at all?

I would just try to make sure she hears from me before she hears about it elsewhere. So if it's going to be breaking news on CNN, I call her immediately. Otherwise, I wait until I get home (and, of course, I would downplay the seriousness of the situation).

After my "incident", when taking a "re-check" ride with the FAA examiner, he said "I guess we can skip the emergency procedures, huh?"...

That was a close call. Shrapnel flying through the wing is a major major no no situation. An unencapsulated engine failure is not something any pilot ever wants to go through in their career.

This article seems to be in line with all the sensationalistic ones I have read in the local newspapers covering this particular incident. They mention the "lucky" fact that two additional pilots were on board, yet they don't answer the question, if the standard crew would have sufficed (I assume yes, since the two extras only seemed to help handle announcements and warnings). Also there is a listing of diverse failures and the mention, that redundant systems malfunctioned, but there is no explanation as to the consequences of all this on the flying ability of the plane / actual danger.

Well if that isn't a profound statement.

Flight 232 had an uncontained engine failure that resulted in shrapnel destroying all 3 hydraulic systems. The plane became completely uncontrollable and by some luck and intuition the pilots were able to somewhat stabilize the airplane and direct the airplane off thrust vectoring alone. The plane had a spectacular crash landing and by a total miracle or favorable circumstances nearly 2/3 of the passengers survived.

An uncontained engine failure is no different than a grenade going off under the wing. What systems it takes out and how much structural integrity remains is completely by chance. Major fuel leakage, fire, jammed control surfaces, etc are all possible consequences. Scary scary stuff.

Yes, I have read about flight 232 and the story is mindboggling, especially considering the graphs of their "flight path". Given the uncontrollable state of this aircraft and the seemingly controlled landing of the Qantas A380, I wonder how large the effects on the pilot's chances to securely land the airplane really were.
Anyways, I was just confused by the (local) press' urge to criticize a new aircraft (which was not long ago hyped by the same newspapers) without providing reasonable facts.

The three main things to do in any emergency, in order of importance, is to aviate, navigate and communicate. We would typically have one pilot doing these important duties while the other guy runs checklists, talks to the FAs, makes a PA if appropriate and talks to the company. We often brief that the FO will take care of the flying and talking while the Captain does the rest so he can manage the situation without the distraction of flying the plane (after all, we're both trained to fly the plane). Having one or more extra pilots just allows the situation manager (the Captain) to delegate more duties, not to mention the potential added value of help in trouble-shooting the situation and that was the biggest "value added" in this particular situation.

The A380 is a brand new airplane and this incident involved several system problems (I think the article said that they had over 50 system status messages to deal with). You can't foresee every possible type of emergency and this one, where critical wiring in the wing was severed by shrapnel leading to compound problems, is not the kind of thing we train for. So it's nice to have more heads to figure out what to do, because the abnormal checklists probably won't directly address the situation.

It may well be that two pilots alone would have had the same (safe) outcome, but in a situation that's unprecedented I'd love to have the extra help.

I don't know any more than what's in this article, so I can't shed any light on this.