Are pilots allowed to do transcon turns?

I thought of a follow-up question too (if you don't mind)

Is it possible for a line-holder to only work turns so that s/he could sleep at home each evening? If so, I'm imagining that would be a VERY senior schedule.

No, that would be over eight hours of flying in a duty period.

I believe JetBlue (or was it Southwest?) once lobbied several years back for a exemption to the 8 hour rule so their pilots could do transcons. It was considered but not ultimately approved. If I recall correctly, they thought they had approval from the FAA guy responsible for that airline (known as the POI: Principal Operations Inspector) and actually did a few such flights before FAA HQ shut it down. There was some talk that there might be some punitive action taken against the airline by the FAA for those flights.

Sure. We call these "day trips" and they are highly prized by pilots who live in their domicile...nice to be in your own home at night. I had a friend at American, based in D.C., who just flew day trips consisting of a round-trip to DFW. Pretty good schedule. However, in my category there are no day trips in our bid package, so even a senior guy can't get any.

So, where are you flying this month? next month?
I have three JFK trips (ok, two on AF metal.). Thought of at last having a flight with you on board (See if I can grab a jump seat for takeoff and landing. Wishful thinking)

LOL...yeah I had a feeling that I was getting a little too involved in this project. To his credit...my Son was running out of ideas on how to get some feedback from a real live pilot..so I decided to lend a hand. Hopefully I can still bypass that circle.

Thank you so much for the response. You've definitely helped us out a great deal. There's one last bit of information that we need to complete his project and that's your full name. If you choose not to post that here, you can email me at mparks37@gmail.com. Or if this is information that must remain confidential all together then we certainly understand. Thanks again for your assistance.

Pretty sure his name is Chuck Yeager. 100% sure that will work for your purposes.

He has already said it, his name is Steve Satre

You obviously worked very hard and made significant sacrifices to achieve your goal. What was your first day like at DL? Or do you even remember it?

W0X0F, just want to thank you for such a great thread. This has been my favourite read on the internet for a while now...

As someone who always enjoyed flying but who never had any interest whatsoever in aviation, I stumbled on this thread soon after it started and have been hooked ever since! You have a real talent for writing and teaching to go along with your other obvious skills.

Anyway, to add something relevant, I just heard about the recent incident involving the Air Canada FO. He apparently initially mistook venus for an aircraft that was known to be in the vicinity and then incorrectly misinterpreted the actual location of the aircraft when he made visual contact and took emergency evasion manouvers sending passengers flying around the cabin.

Article at CNN

Transport Safety Board of Canada Report

Interested in your thoughts and once again, thanks...

The first day at Delta was an orientation for my class of new hires (30 pilots) and their spouse or guest (one young guy from St. Lucia brought his mother who was beaming with pride that night). I don't have clear memories of the entire day, but we had the parade of HR types who came and spoke to us about benefits, making sure we signed all the appropriate documents.

The evening was spent at one of the nice hotels by the airport (Hilton, I think) where we had dinner and speeches by airline brass. It was a very enjoyable evening and, at the end of it, we posed for a class picture.

I had no clue at the time, or reason to believe, that I would be furloughed just 16 months later.

I hadn't heard about this...very interesting. Here's my reactions as I watched the video:

(1) In the early part of the video, they used a graphic showing a silhouette of a plane crossing the ocean. I found it amusing that it's a B-1 bomber silhouette.

(2) The sanctioned rest breaks in the cockpit must be a Canadian thing; the FAA doesn't authorize this practice. My feeling (and I think all pilots agree) is that taking a short rest, with the knowledge and concurrence of the other pilot, makes a lot more sense than fighting the need for sleep. We screw with our inner clocks a lot on this job and you can find yourself in this situation even if you showed up to work rested, especially on back side of the clock flying. The alternative is to ignore the need for rest and then fly the approach at less than 100% of your alertness and capability. [BTW, not really an issue for flights longer than eight hours, having three pilots, but several of our shorter flights to Europe operate with two-man crews. Canadian rules might be different on when augmented crews are required.]

(3) This guy is not the first to see Venus and think it might be another aircraft. But one giveaway is that no planes cruise with landing lights on. We might flash them when ATC calls opposite direction traffic, just so the other guy can pick us out, but normally they're off. [And flashing them is really unnecessary. When ATC calls traffic at altitude, it's really almost a courtesy. They don't let us get anywhere near each other and we're certainly not expected to "see and avoid" up there.]

When Venus is low on the horizon, there is an added optical illusion of other colors. You could swear you see twinkling red in that light and it's easy to wonder if that's another airplane's anti-collision light. Still, it's a little hard to give this pilot a pass. Taking that kind of evasive action based solely on the perception of a light is probably not going to be effective even if it was another plane. It is so hard to judge the relative position of another plane based on lights alone. I've often seen other planes up at altitude that clearly appear to be at our level and the TCAS shows we have 2000' of separation. The opposite occurs too, where a plane seems to be clearly above or below our altitude, but TCAS shows we are at the same flight level.

I had one similar "landing light" illusion once, which I think I related already itt. The Marines were doing night exercises at Quantico, Virginia and they had dropped some very bright para-flares, which slowly descend while casting the light they need for their operations. I was flying in a light airplane near Manassas that night and a group of three extremely bright flares looked to me like the landing lights on a very large plane. This was plausible since I was just south of Dulles airport. The flares weren't moving relative to me which indicates a potential collision course. I was getting pretty concerned and even descended to an altitude that I felt would be below any arrival path.

(4) The passenger being interviewed was thrown from her seat to the ceiling. Well, maybe she should have been wearing her seat belt as she has been told several times (and, according to the Canadian TSB report, the Captain had just turned the seat belt sign on a little before this incident). People should keep in mind that this isn't a buggy ride through Central Park, no matter how smooth it might be at times.

Wow! I had severe withdrawal issues while this forum was unavailable...

Hi, WOXOF!

Hey w0x0f, glad (and grateful) to see you're still doing this. Ever since I've started watching tv again, i've been watching a lot more aircraft crash documentaries. Am fresh from watching one about autopilot errors as related to radio altimeter discrepancies and after watching this and reading a bit on wikipedia, I have to say I'm thoroughly confused and a bit concerned that airplanes are allowed to fly with known issues. The documentary presented a couple of crashes and one non-crash incident relating to this and at one point they stated that this was a known issue and that it hadn't caused any problems.

But what about looking ahead? Like why would they wait to take any action only after an incident occurs? From my limited viewing of other documentaries, usually after a crash caused by a fault with the aircraft, the aircraft are called back to have said fault remedied. But in this case, it was a known issue so why not remedy it before a fatal crash occurs?

But what I'm more curious about is: How common is this type of thing and if it does happen what kind of steps would be taken to ensure the safety of passengers going forward? I mean, I would think not it's very rare, but then again hearing about planes flying with malfunctioning instruments was pretty shocking to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish...es_Flight_1951



ummm ok, but how about fixing your planes' faulty instruments?

I was reading through the final investigation report and this is a quote that worries me

So my question to you here is: Is it normal for something like this to be ignored? At the very least I'd expect simulations to have been run allowing for this instrument fault so that they might better understand what this radio altimeter fault could affect, if anything. I would think if that had happened, pilots would know to be very cautious when landing on autopilot wrt monitoring the speed, pitch etc

Obviously I could be horribly wrong, which is why I'm asking you about all of this

Hey WOXOF!

Man, thank god this is finally back up. I checked everyday for weeks.

Anyways, I was up late one night and browsing on youtube. I eventually found these training videos of these pilots in NASA training in a pod that simulates G-Forces. There are a few videos where the trainee actually passes out cause due to the forces. So my question is, how do they stay awake in real life when they're flying in combat or up in the air?

Hope all has been well! Thanks for your time.

I can't speak with authority on this particular accident or the issue with the 737-800. Pilots are always cautious about monitoring airspeed, descent rate and pitch attitude on every landing, not just when on autopilot. This is the primary responsibility of the non-flying pilot (aka the "pilot montoring" or PM) but, of course, the guy flying is also continuously cross-checking all of this and making necessary corrections.

If there's a known problem with the radar altimeter that could adversely affect auto-throttle function, I'm a little surprised that they wouldn't just require the crews to not use the auto-throttles, i.e. to manually adjust throttles during all phases of flight.

Passing out from high G forces occurs as a result of blood being drawn down from the brain. Sustained high G forces in air combat maneuvering can lead to brief "brown out" or "black out" periods, but the effect is minimized by having the pilot wear a G-suit. This special flight suit, which has air bladders around the legs and midriff, connects to the airplane's pneumatic system and inflates during high G maneuvers to prevent blood from pooling in the lower body. Pilots will also constrict their abdominal muscles during high-G maneuvers by long, loud grunts (or so I've been told...never done it myself).

From what I've been told by fighter pilots, a short, stocky build is more resistant to the effects of G forces, but the tolerance level can vary greatly from one individual to the next and a G suit won't prevent black outs during sustained, very high-G maneuvers.

Glad this is back!

I have noticed on most planes parked at the gate they have the rudder all the way to one side. Why is that?

I saw where Denny Fitch, the off-duty pilot of United 232 passed. Did you like 3 engine aircraft? Was United 232 ever apart of training?

I don't think this is the case on the 757/767. I do a lot of preflight, walkaround inspections and I don't recall noticing this. You may see this on DC-9 variants (MD-80, MD-88), which have control surfaces which are actuated by control tabs rather than hydraulics. If the rudder is hard over to one side, that would probably be due to the wind. There is no action taken by the crew to intentionally put it in this configuration.

I never flew a 3 engine plane, but any redundancy on an airplane is welcome. As an old friend of mine from Hawaii (retired Air Force LtCol Gary Ward) used to say: "One engine by day, two engines by night, four engines over water.")

Yes, United 232 was a case study for CRM training but I haven't heard it brought up for several years now.

As resident 2p2 pilot, your thoughts on this bet?
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/34...t-try-1200028/

Essentially, this guy is making a prop bet that he can take off and land a plane completely unassisted on his first attempt (in fact, his first time in an actual airplane). He bases this on his extensive experience with flight simulators. The way the bet has evolved, he will have an instructor in the seat next to him to take care of all other functions (preflight, engine start, ATC comms) and who will take over if an accident is imminent. It would have been a much more interesting bet if he really did it solo, in which case the stakes would be extremely high. In my opinion, he would have a good chance of killing himself.

As good as he might be with the simulator, the real world is much more dynamic. Dead calm winds are unlikely and even the controls feel different when you apply real aerodynamic loads on them. He will have no real experience with the actual feel of the controls and the effect of trim. His attention will likely fixate on one instrument (airspeed, pitch attitude, power) to the detriment of the others. If the nose dips down a little due to inattention, the speed will build (accompanied by a change in the slipstream noise and the feel of the yoke) and he will likely raise the nose too much or cut too much power. Then he will reverse the mistake and most likely start a pilot induced oscillation (so common that it's referred to by its own acronym in the flying world: PIO)

I remember my youngest brother once saying to me, as we flew into Leesburg airport in my Cherokee 180, that it didn't look so hard and that he was sure he could land the plane. I gave him the controls while we were in stable flight on downwind. By the time we turned base leg, he was already in a PIO that would have led to an accident and he was begging me to take the controls. Of course, he didn't have the extensive flight simulator experience of this poster so this is probably not a fair example.

I would be stunned if this guy managed to successfully take off and land the plane. I'd have to see video of it to believe it (to ensure that the instructor wasn't giving any kind of help, whether verbal or otherwise).

Flying home yesterday, we were at FL400 and another aircraft passed us in the opposite direction at what I assume was FL390. I was able to see the contrail for quite a while. Is it true that if the contrail is not straight as an arrow, so to speak, that means it was flying through turbulence?

I'm just making an assumption but I think the poster mixed two different Florida based airlines. I think the poster meant the Air Florida crash at Washington National.

W0X0F:

I was watching a documentary on British Mid-lands 092. I'm not sure if you are familiar with the incident but it was an, at the time, new 734 that had an engine issue and the crew shut down the incorrect engine.

Eventually the plane went down and as part of the investigation, the AAIB recommended that cabin crew (and pax) feel more empowered to provide input to pilots regarding things that can be seen or heard in the cabin, but not on the flight deck.

Just was curious if you have had experience with passengers in particular passing along message through the cabin crew regarding potential problems, or if you have heard stories from your colleagues where such messages proved helpful during difficulties.

Great to have this thread back by the way.