It's a mistake that's easy to make. Each pilot has a comm panel which is used to select the appropriate channel to transmit on. We have two VHF radios, two HF radios, PA and crew intercom.

Just last night on the way across the Atlantic, I heard a guy broadcast on Guard (the emergency frequency, 121.5 MHz): "Gander Radio, American 107 with a position report." Of course, he meant to select his HF radio but didn't push the button. Typically in these cases, some wise guy will then answer him: "Go ahead with your position report" and let the guy spit out the whole report. Last night, I just said "Push another button."

This topic sounded familiar to me so I searched this thread and found Post #966 which covers it pretty well.

Have you ever been in a situation flying a commercial plane where you have become really frightened or worried due to external factors like weather or plane fault etc?

The only really scary situation I've had on a commercial flight was extreme turbulence on a flight from IAD to ALB. I told the story in Post #164.

I know there are limits to how much of a tailwind or crosswind you can handle during take off. Are there any limits to how much headwind thee could be or do you just say the more the better?

No, there isn't any limitation on headwind. But extremely strong winds can cause problems with controllability during taxi.

Coincidentally, just this morning my father was telling me of a flight where he landed a P-2V on an icy runway in Keflavik, Iceland with winds so strong (right down the runway) that he couldn't turn the plane off of the runway. The P-2V has a very large vertical stabilizer and the weather-vaning effect made it impossible to turn on the slick surface, even using asymmetric thrust. He ended up advising the tower that he couldn't exit the runway and they shut down the plane there and it was towed in later.

how dangerous is an icy runway? do they not grit it?

An icy runway will be treated with chemicals or sand. The important thing to the pilot is the reported braking action for the runway. In the U.S., this is reported as Good, Fair, Poor or Nil, and the determination is made by a ground vehicle testing the surface or from pilot reports. If braking action is reported as nil, we won't use that runway or taxiway. For fair or poor braking action, we would take this into account when determining stopping distance (and, thus, the runway length required for current winds and our landing weight).

In Europe, braking action is reported as a mu value. Mu (the Greek letter) represents the coefficient of friction for the surface being described. A mu value greater than 0.4 is considered good; a mu of zero is equivalent to nil.

Probably a silly question...
Has anyone ever tried taking off in a headwind equal or close to takeoff velocity to the effect taking off with extremely low ground speed?

Friends and I were just talking about this on the weekend:



Not sure if this is the exact right video - but basically a Hercules taking off into a strong head wind and without any cargo weighing it down made a pretty crazy take off.

I've seen videos of light planes, such as a Piper J3 Cub, taking off in little more than the length of the plane. If the wind is strong enough, those wings will generate lift while the plane is motionless on the ground. This is why light planes should always be securely tied down, using the three tiedown points (one under each wing, and one under the tail).

Years ago, I flew my Cherokee 180 into a little airport in New Jersey, just east of Philadelphia. I was visiting my Aunt and Uncle there, and that night the wind was howling. The next morning when I went to fly home, I saw several planes that had been blown over. Those strong winds generated lift and those planes weren't tied down.

5* Thread by the way thanks for answering all these questions

Following on from this is landing into a strong headwind a difficult thing to do in a commercial airliner? are there limits in which the plane is capable of landing due to wind speed?

I love landing in a strong, steady headwind. The low groundspeed makes it feel like you could just walk the plane down to the runway. This is even more pronounced when landing a light, general aviation plane in a strong headwind.

There is no limit, but it's rare to have really high winds that are also steady.

Listening to JFK Tower, I keep hearing them issue clearance to aircraft landing on 13L that includes taking "the high speed" to either taxiway A or B. Is that just an indication of the gentle turn-off of the runway that looks like ZA on the airport diagram? Or is that something else completely?

The high speed turn-offs are the ones that require a turn of 45 degrees or less and, as you might guess, they can be taken at a speed greater than a normal taxi speed. You can take a high speed turnoff at 60 kts, vs. slowing to less than 10 kts for a 90 degree turn.

Awesome idea, probably helps out a lot at congested airports. Probably hard to retro-fit those though.

Listening to ORD ATC, heard a few things I hadn't heard before:

1) "Your going to go on the back side of the gap, so be ready."
2) "Please advise the aircraft behind to leave some space, I need to do a cross bleed."

Can you interpret? Thx!

The first one is not something I've heard and I'd have to know the context to give an opinion. Is it the tower talking to an airplane holding short of the runway? Perhaps he's telling that crew to be ready for an immediate takeoff clearance once there's a gap in the landing traffic, but going "on the back side of the gap" is a little confusing.

The second one is pretty common. This crew has taxied out using one engine, which is standard as a fuel conservation measure, and now needs to start the second engine.

When we start the first engine, we use bleed air from the APU to turn the starter. After the first engine is running, we usually shut down the APU (again, to conserve fuel). So when it's time to start the second engine, we use bleed air from the running engine to turn the starter on the other engine. This is called a crossbleed start (crossing the bleed air from one side to the other).

When doing a crossbleed start, we have to increase the power on the running engine in order to get sufficient air pressure to turn the starter (in the 757/767, we use a minimum of 30 psi). This high power setting can cause problems for airplanes too close behind us. If a light, general aviation airplane was behind us, we could actually blow it over. Therefore, it's good practice to let the tower know your intention to do a crossbleed start so that they can make sure no one is too close behind.

We don't worry about this too much at major airports such as JFK or ATL because most of the planes are of a similar size and everyone knows that other aircraft will probably be doing a crossbleed start when they're number 5 or 6 for takeoff.

How do you listen to this, is it online somewhere?

I have an app on my iPhone called LiveATC, that lets you listen to various frequencies with a delay of about 30 seconds. I checked it out one time while taxiing out at JFK and heard myself on it.

And, of course, if you live close enough to the airport you can get a scanner with the aviation band (118 to 136.975 MHz).

'Bout 40 years ago, at Old Warden aerodrome in Bedfordshire, home of the Shuttleworth Collection, on a grey windy day, I saw a red DH Tiger Moth biplane come racing across the field at a high rate of knots, then turn round, into the wind, and stand stock still, hovering like a Harrier. Then I heard the engine crank up and the Tiger crawled forward.

In 1944, when my stepfather was flying the Tiger Moth on RAF training over the Canadian prairie in Alberta, he once turned into the wind, found he'd come to the hover, took off some throttle and flew backwards a short way, chuckling as the wheatfields unreeled in the wrong direction, before the instructor in the rear cockpit told him to stop messing around. Well, if the wind dropped suddenly, you'd need to practise your stall recovery.

There was a rumour at that training field, a rumour that seems to have turned up at a lot of different times and places, that one of the other students had actually succeeded in landing backwards. But my stepfather never tried that one.

To a non-pilot this sounds exceedingly dangerous.

Are blue angel pilots that much "better"? When they are making hard almost 90' turns it seems like there is much room for a small error and losing control. Interested to hear a pilots take, if it's even possible to relate.

This thread always goes in full force! Thank you W0X0F. Always looking for you or your brother when I board a 75x/76x. One day I will be lucky.

Now, to the usual questions (or not usual):

Have you ever conducted or participated in a maintenance acceptance flight for the company? Who is conducting those when planes return from long maintenance (SIN) or when they enter service? for example, I presume that each of the new 737-900 goes through a maintenance flight before it enters the fleet.
Also, what would one usually check in the Boeing acceptance flights in particular? The Airbus tends to do alot of examination for the automated systems, but in general the B757/767 is somewhat less automated than the Airbus.
Is there a fixed protocol/task list for those flights upon major maintenance or acceptance to service? Are they considered more 'fun'/'interesting'/'challenging' to the flight crew?

Since this is an aviation thread I think some of you may enjoy this. There is a show called Jetstream that follows some Canadian Air Pilots on their fighter pilot course. I really liked it. Available on youtube.

Is it possible to have a hot start on any of the turbine aircraft you've flown? Ever hear of it happening?