You're referring, of course, to the Tenerife disaster. The Captain in that accident was literally the KLM poster boy, appearing in many of their ads. He was a little too "mission oriented" that day and was trying to beat crew duty time limits as they were within minutes of having to cancel the flight. It was a lesson to all of us to take things slowly, in spite of pressures trying to rush us.

Have you ever saw, or heard of a pilot seeing a UFO

Look three posts behind you.

Would it be possible to pull some strings and fly an empty 777 or 747 (alongside a pilot experienced in that aircraft, of course) if you just wanted to fly it once? Or would you have to go through the process of retraining and switching to a different aircraft type?

Thread is great.. Just flew from PHX-CLT recently and while we were in the terminal thing to board the pilot had his hands full with starbucks and I let him go ahead of me.. He said grab that paper off that clip board, and don't lose it, it's the most important thing on the plane. So I follow him and he is handing out his starbucks and is going to the cockpit so I follow and a steward stops me and asks what am I doing.. I tell him the pilot told me to follow him and I had this paper.

Kind of interesting, but what was that paper that he had me grab?

First of all, I have no string pulling capability. None. I am a cog in a machine. A piece of inventory. (I better stop there or I'll get depressed.)

Second, they don't fly these planes around empty just for kicks. The hourly operating cost of a 777 is probably more than what I make in a month.

About the only chance I would have would be if I happened upon a ferry flight of one of these planes and flew as a non-rev on it. Because it's not a revenue flight, I might be able to talk my way in to one of the control seats when up at altitude.

It was probably the Flight Release, which is a portion of the flight plan that the Captain signs and gives to the gate agent once boarding is complete and we've got a passenger count. For some reason, even in this electronic age of everything else being transmitted via ACARS, that's considered a very important document. It's essentially the Captain's statement that the plane as airworthy and he accepts full responsibility for the flight.

Either that or he was just screwing with you, having you carry some random and unimportant sheet from the flight plan.

He seemed pretty serious and I think thats what it might have been. Would it have been printed on just a single sheet then?

Yes, it's a single sheet and has a place for the Captain's signature near the bottom. The top should show the flight number, ship number, date, departure point, destination and release number.

IF something like this did happen and word got back to the CP's office, would everybody on the Flight Deck be in big trouble all round, or would it pass without major comment?

I really don't think anything would come of it, though I doubt it would be heartily endorsed. There's a lot of gray area here. If it's a ferry flight, it could be operating under FAR Part 91 rules (vs. Part 121). The Captain (and the FO too) hold an Airline Transport Pilot license (with the appropriate type rating) and this confers instructor privileges on the holder (iirc). Thus, we could make the case that there was instruction going on.

have you ever booked some time in sims of the planes you'd like to fly? like the 747/777.. I know a pilot who finished his career as a captain of an a330 but had flown the classic 747's and classic 737's.. and he booked some time on a sim to check out the 737NG.. on another note I don't think he was impressed by it at all

I have read a lot of this but I wasn't quite sure on the type of planes you actually get to fly.

I understand like you fly the 767 and would love to fly the 747. Do pilots usually fly the same plane? How come you cannot fly the 747 and is there something you have to do in order to fly that or a 777?

Have you ever heard of an airline pilot having to scrub himself or herself off a flight because he forgot his license? Or passport?

Oh yeah, both have definitely happened.

For international flights, part of our pre-flight planning and briefing includes confirmation that pilots have their passport, but a lot of guys kind of sleep on actually doing the check...the assumption is that we're all adults and able to keep track of our passport.

But I know of one case where an FO forgot his Russian Visa and he was not allowed to clear customs at Moscow and had to return on the outgoing flight. This caused some problems for the next day's flight to JFK (the one that guy was supposed to fly). The company had to deadhead another pilot from somewhere in Europe to Moscow to cover that flight.

I also once had a flight attendant ring us, after we reached cruise flight on a flight from Atlanta to Moscow, to let us know that her new Russian visa was sitting on the nightstand in her bedroom. We were able to communicate with the company and they called her husband who retrieved the visa and they ended up faxing a copy to Moscow. We got the Russian officials to accept this by greasing their palms to the tune of about $150.

To fly any plane for Delta, I have to be "current and qualified." Being qualified means going through training and passing a check ride. Being current means complying with the currency requirements of applicable FARs and the company's operating certificate. Basically, it means that I have made at least three takeoffs and landings within the preceding 90 days and that I have satisfactorily completed recurrent simulator training according to the schedule for the specific fleet type (for the MD-88, recurrent training is once a year; for the 757/767, it's used to be twice a year and now it's once every nine months).

Pilots can bid to change airplanes at specific times announced by the company. There is no set schedule for this; the company decides when they need to open up certain seats for bid. It's expensive to train pilots (a month in Atlanta) and they don't want guys just jumping around willy-nilly. (I think that's the first time I've worked "willy-nilly" into this thread.)

There's a bid period coming up right now and I could bid for any plane and any seat and any domicile I want, e.g. 777 Captain in New York. I will get whatever my seniority can hold (and it won't be 777 Captain). We have some very senior guys in the right seat of the 757/767 who could hold Captain on that plane (and could hold senior Captain on the MD-88), but each person makes their own decision and, for some, the quality of life in being senior as an FO and choosing their trips exceeds the allure of being a junior Captain (perhaps sitting on reserve) and the pay bump that comes with it.

I dare say I could derive this information by trawling the entire thread but what has your own personal upgrade path been since becoming a commercial airline pilot? I know you've flown the JS31 (and maybe the 41) and the MD-80 series before moving up to the 757/767. You've mentioned several times that it's not currently attractive to move to the LH seat, was it as big a deal to move from turboprops to jets?

Hi!
Id like to thank you w0f0x for this thread, ive spent quite a while reading this.

I am curious what do you think about this tragic incident: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/re...-crash/846565/

I mean, how the f*ck do you forget to release the "parking brake" in aeroplane with 50 souls on board?

Take care

I don't even know how you'd do it if you were the only person on board. On most planes, it would take so much power to move if the parking brake is set, that it would be immediately obvious as the airplane skids along. And most modern planes have a takeoff configuration warning system which sounds if the plane is not configured properly for takeoff. A set parking brake is one of the items it checks.

This story sounds suspicious to me. I feel like there's got to be more to it.

Have your Google Translator ready but this article says that there was no evidence of any skid marks or rubber

http://ria.ru/inquest/20110914/437261121.html

I believe you have mentioned a few trips to SVO. Considering the rather poor state of Russian commercial aviation, aging Russian aircraft, and apparent lack of infrastructure to correct these issues, do you begin to worry about what kinds of surprises you might face while in Russian airspace (especially during arrival and departure)?

I haven't seen any responses, which I will take as a collective "no."

And as a challenge.

They're rusty, but I think I still have the perl/curl skills to do this myself via the trusty "screen scrape" method. A few hours of work to write the script and I think I'll end up with an easy automatic means to produce exactly what I talk about above. (one BIG pdf/html document that collates all of W0X0F's posts in this thread)

In the spirit of "paying it forward", I'll make the resulting document available to others.

(and of course I'm writing this post to help guarantee that I actually get it done this year! :-)

hi, you might have missed this question , thanks

So for the one or two (or zero, maybe I'm the only one...) people who might be interested, this is done.

Each of the links below takes you to a single long document (PDF or HTML) that collects EVERY post on this thread from W0X0F. (and ONLY those posts) These documents were produced by way of this forum's "printable version" capability. The upside of this is the lack of ads or visual clutter, but the downside is that embedded photos are not shown. :-(

Once again, thank you W0X0F for so diligently quoting the questions you're answering - otherwise this task would've been ugly enough I don't think I would've bothered....

PDF link - 956(!) pages

HTML link

I've flown to Moscow maybe seven or eight times and I've never really worried about flying in their airspace. There aren't nearly as many planes flying around as we have over here and there's not a lot of chatter on the radio. It's like being in a private school vs. PS101 -- you feel like you're getting more individual attention.

Airspace constraints around Moscow are taken very seriously by the crew and we're all on our toes about complying with the restrictions. We also make sure to stick to standard phraseology and I've never had a problem with ATC. For the most part, their English is good and understandable, though I've occasionally had a controller with a thick accent that required the occasional "Say again" on my part.

The one thing that's really different over there is that they use meters instead of feet, so once we cross the boundary from Finland into Russia we consult a conversion chart every time we're issued a new altitude. The chart is rounded to the nearest 100' and the assigned altitude is confirmed by both crew members at each change.

Another difference is that the airport uses QFE rather than QNH* for the altimeter setting, which means that our altimeter will read zero on the ground rather than field elevation as it does in the western world. I've heard this is going to change (and may have already, afaik, since I haven't been to Moscow in over a year).



*From Wikipedia:

Sorry about that...

I've never paid for any sim time and I can't imagine I ever will. Other than the cockpit configuration and the visuals, there's not much difference between one Class D sim (i.e. full motion simulator) and the next...certainly not enough that I'd want to spend money to see it.

If I was at the schoolhouse and some time in the 777 or 747 sim was offered to me because it was sitting there unused, I'd like to do that. And I'd absolutely jump at the chance to fly a simulator for a high performance fighter jet (I'd actually prefer a hop in the real thing, of course, but that's never going to happen).