I have listed to a lot of ATC chatter, and when it comes to International Airline Pilots, I am not so sure

Have you ever had critical trouble understanding a foreign ATC direction?

I used to pop bottles of wine on planes and was told by a stewardess once that this was a "major crime." What are the legalities of popping vintage vino and making the party happen while high in the skies?

I read an article that the FO had ~2800 hours of flight time. Isn't that very few to be flying a 777? Would there be anyone in the right hand seat of an American or any other reputable company's 777?

Thought of one other question. If the pilots were somehow involved in this plane disappearance what is chance that they were able to be carrying more fuel than a trip to Beijing would have required?

What are the chances that a Cessna Caravan or smaller/similar could land safely in an empty grass field if there was engine failure?

Although English is the standard language, you'll hear the local language on the frequency too. For example, flying into Sao Paulo, I'll hear Portuguese being spoken by the control tower to local airlines (e.g. TAM). I don't know if that's some kind of ICAO "violation", but it does have the possible negative consequence of making it hard for other pilots on the frequency to maintain situational awareness.

Plenty of times. Heavily accented English can be difficult to understand sometimes. My biggest problems have been with female French controllers and sometimes with the controllers in Brazil. One thing we do to mitigate this problem is stick to standard ICAO phraseology. Check out this pdf if you want to read more about this:

http://www.skybrary.aero/bookshelf/books/115.pdf

W0X0F,

why is there a control in the cockpit that lets the pilot turn the transponder off? Is there any rational reason you'd ever want to do this under normal operations? It seems to me that in the post 9/11 period where cockpit doors were being reinforced etc they would have just gone ahead and also made it impossible to manually deactivate the transponder, unless I'm missing something.

thnx

Why isn't that a surprise?

.

nice, thnx

I think it's against the law for you to drink any alcohol other than what is given to you (or sold to you) by the airline. In other words, you're not supposed to BYOB. But a "major crime?" Hardly. I think this one gets violated a lot.

It could easily happen. 2800 hours is at the low end of experience to get hired at a major carrier (i.e. the ones who might be flying 777s), but it's not unheard of. In my new hire class of 30 pilots, we had a range of 1900 to 12,000 hours. The low time pilot was ex-Air Force with most of her time in C-130s. The airlines tend to give added weight to military time (and I can see the logic in that).

Could a new hire get assigned to the 777? Definitely. Back in 2007, we were putting new hires right into the 767-ER, flying international routes. That's because the company was stepping up the use of these planes and it was cheaper and easier for them to put new hires in those seats rather than go through the whole bid process for the pilot group.

So, yes it could happen at a U.S. carrier although the typical 777 FO at a U.S. carrier probably has much more experience on average. Many foreign airlines are bigger on ab initio hiring (i.e. taking someone off the street and training them from zero hours).

We always take more fuel than is required to actually get to our destination. But we don't want to carry too much more than we need. That's because there's a cost associated with carrying extra weight. The minimum requirement is to have enough fuel to get to the destination and then fly for at least another 45 minutes. If the weather is forecast to require an instrument approach, then more fuel is required.

The chances are excellent, depending on the condition of the field. If the field is flat, clear of obstacles and not too soft, a competent would almost certainly be able to land safely on it.

I was going to answer this by quoting my answer in the Malaysian Air thread, but I see that jjshabado beat me to it. (Thanks jj!)

Do you know much about tilt rotors? (i.e. Osprey) Have you ever flown one?

Although this kinda got mentioned before, if you have your transponder on on the runway the controller sees tons of a/c on their scope when they've actually not taken off yet. It's a huge pain in the ass as a controller.

Also, there are times where having your transponder off or on standby (formation flying for military for example) is necessary.

a) see the "weight in wheels" concept in the previous answer, deadman's switch is an old concept and is perfect for this type of situation, completely removes the human factor here.

B) clearly we're discussing this in the context of commercial air liners. Military flights have all sorts of obvious reasons to not transmit this sort of information at times.

Now, back on topic a bit, some of the reports I read implied that while it's possible for the pilot to turn off the transponder, it would have required him to access a maintenance panel (by like removing screws or something) and physically yanking circuit breakers, whereas other reports imply that it's just a matter of flipping the correct switch on the standard control panel. If this is true then that would imply there is some sort of effort being made to tamper-proof the device?

Another thing I've read is that getting any sort of change made to any already-flying plane takes an insane amount of FAA approval, but I would expect that we'll see that streamlined a bit in the aftermath of this.

From my extensive Mayday watching experience (so take this for what it's worth...) pulling a circuit breaker is trivially easy in most planes. And it kind of makes sense to me since I assume pilots may actually need to pull them/reset them in various emergency situations.

I know next to nothing about them (though I think the concept is pretty cool). Never flown one.

The transponder on the 757/767 has a rotary switch with six positions (iirc):

• OFF
• STBY - power is on but transponder will not reply to radar interrogation
• ON - reply to radar interrogation with 4-digit octal code
• ALT - reply to radar interrogation with code and altitude
• TA ONLY - provide TCAS Threat Advisories (incl. ALT replies)
• TA/RA - provide TCAS Threat Advisories and Resolution Advisories (incl. ALT replies)

We select TA/RA when pushing back from the gate and keep it there until parking at the destination gate.

There is truth to that. For an item to be blessed by the FAA for installation in an aircraft requires a TSO (Technical Service Order), the culmination of the engineering, testing and approval process, which is lengthy and costly.

Of course it is, and with good reason. If we are having electrical or system problems and need to isolate various components, there's no better way than removing power from that component. The circuit breakers are those large panels over the pilots' heads which contains several rows of what look like buttons, but are actually breakers that can be pulled.

The tires on aircraft do not seem to be designed to minimize hydroplaning or grip on less than dry runways.

How do you keep from loosing control during take off and landing if the runways are slick?

How much snow can you safely land in?

I don't know a thing about tire design, but I'm sure that aircraft tires are no more prone to hydroplaning that other tires. The only thing I remember about hydroplaning is that it can occur at speeds that are 9 times the square root of the tire pressure (iirc), but I don't know what our tire pressure is.

The important thing for us is that we continue to "fly" the plane even after landing. We have reverse thrust (most effective at higher speeds; diminishing effect as the plane slows) and anti-skid braking. We continue to use ailerons and rudders to maintain directional control until slowed below 80 kts. Ailerons are needed in strong crosswinds to keep the plane firmly planted on the ground.

We have the following limitations we must observe (these may vary from one airline to the next):

• Do not takeoff or land if dry snow exceeds 4 inches

• Do not takeoff if water/slush/wet snow exceeds ½ inch

• Do not land if water/slush/wet snow exceeds 1 inch

I am awful at searching for things, I'm positive this has been asked but...

1) scariest situation you've been in?

1A) during said situation, what would you have guessed the chances of crashing were? If asked at scariest point in time, not after the fact.

Would % chance would you give the average person of landing a 777 with 0 deaths resulting from said landing, if only given a brief explanation of the process they have to go through?

I.E. They know everything they're supposed to do, just 0 experience, until being handed over the controls when the plane is ~2 mins from landing