Have you ever been told to brace or told passengers to brace if you're a pilot?

Van.Bosch

martinsvi wrote: »

Sometimes the job tosses you some hard decisions as well, in one such occasion my captain was becoming increasingly sick, vomiting and temporarily loosing consciousness, but strictly refusing to divert or to declare emergency. But you have to do what you have to do, luckily we were not too far from home..

Out of curiosity should the pilot have diverted, according to procedue’s I mean? Must have put you in a difficult position?

nlrkjos

Dr.Sanchez wrote: »

I used to teach helicopter underwater escape training to people working on oil rigs. After four years of it, I got tired of telling people to BRACE, BRACE, BRACE before dropping them (in their fake helicopter) into a pool and spinning it upsidedown.

Some of us get sick of hearing BRACE< BRACE < BRACE :rolleyes: my next is my last T.F.
We had a bad flight coming back from a rig one night, like being in a fecken washing machine,couple of lads said after to the co-pilot that they were real worried ! his reply was "only worry when you smell crap from the cockpit!!"

smurfjed

@Von.Bosch. Sometimes its easier just to go home (or destination) as you are all set up for it, briefed for it, and expected. Plus there shall be additional crews to take the aircraft out again. Diverting to somewhere else causes all sorts of confusion and general chaos. But each case must be analysed as they will be all different, if this Captain was having a heart attack, then it would require an immediate landing, but if he was just feeling like crap, then it's up to him.

smurfjed

smurfjed wrote: »

@Von.Bosch. Sometimes its easier just to go home (or destination) as you are all set up for it, briefed for it, and expected. Plus there shall be additional crews to take the aircraft out again. Diverting to somewhere else causes all sorts of confusion and general chaos. But each case must be analysed as they will be all different, if this Captain was having a heart attack, then it would require an immediate landing, but if he was just feeling like crap, then it's up to him.

Yeah but food poisoning/norovirus will totally incapacitate a pilot and render them unfit to participate in flying for the hours and days it affects them. I did PPL years ago, my instructor from Weston later being a 747 pilot on board a BA flight from Australia. He and another pilot on board had dined together before flight and got struck down with food poisoning, and the end result was great distraction in the cockpit at a critical landing phase and the aircraft came in close proximity of a Heathrow hotel, I think during a go around.

http://avherald.com/h?article=4c4c5396&opt=0

A real surprise for co-pilot to have the beak of a vulture and it’s guts at his/her feet. How do announce that to passengers? “This is the captain, I hope you are enjoying your flight. That thud we just felt is because a vulture has just come on board to join us for remainder of flight. It’s also why the oxygen masks have deployed. I do trust you are not too distressed, we will be landing shortly, so kindly assume the brace position as our steering may not be 100%”.

smurfjed

https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=147119

This is the only event that I can remember that involved a BA747 coming close to the hotels on the bath road, is this the flight you were talking about?

Van.Bosch

I was on a BA flight from Athens to LGW in about 95/96/97. My recollection is that a wheel bounced off at Athens airport, a flight crew member came down and entered some door in the floor*, when we landed the fire trucks were foaming the runway etc but we were in the brace position. Is there anyway of finding the details of this anywhere? Think it was a 767.

*thinking back, this part may not have happened, doesn’t seem likely😀

Locker10a

Van.Bosch wrote: »

I was on a BA flight from Athens to LGW in about 95/96/97. My recollection is that a wheel bounced off at Athens airport, a flight crew member came down and entered some door in the floor*, when we landed the fire trucks were foaming the runway etc but we were in the brace position. Is there anyway of finding the details of this anywhere? Think it was a 767.

*thinking back, this part may not have happened, doesn’t seem likely😀

On some older types of aircraft there was indeed a viewing access panel where you could inspect the gear from the cabin floor. Although I’m sure someone else here will have more knowledge

smurfjed

smurfjed wrote: »

https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=147119

This is the only event that I can remember that involved a BA747 coming close to the hotels on the bath road, is this the flight you were talking about?

That’s the very one. Lovely guy he is, had him as instructor in my very first trial flight/lesson on a Friday 13th out at Darby Kennedy’s, the man who made flying accessible to all pockets in early 1980s, there were even people on the dole taking lessons, and a young lady with a minimal salary was being introduced to aerobatics by Arthur Wignall until his tragic accident in Sligo. Sometimes in Weston you had to shoo a peacock off the wing before boarding taking up your designated airplane. Tim gave me a great intro lesson, upon landing rather roughly said “sorry...that’s not the way to do it”. As I said, it was Friday 13th, so all excused.

Back in the 80s, during flying lessons time I got to go on board a light commercial freight flight overnight Dublin-Bonn/Cologne-Southend-Dublin. The lone freight pilots liked a bit of trusted company on board, and most often it would be in the form of a might-be/trainee commercial pilot seeing what the actual job was like. It was a Cessna Titan, boarded through a rear door.

After arriving in Bonn/Cologne we retreated to the portacabin when rudimentary beds were placed in rows, rather army-barracks-fashion, for pilots to have a few hours kip. My pilot asked me to waken him (told him I wasn’t much of a sleeper) when I heard the UPS DC8 come in from the States as there’d bevan exchange of cargo, and he wanted to get the engines started before they’d get too cold overnight and be hard to start.

After boarding the freight was piled to capacity behind our seats, preventing any possible egress through the door. We taxied out and we’re rolling along the runway when a red light flashed on and we braked to a halt. Cargo door open indication, could have meant medical equipment being strewn all over the local cities and the Germans wouldn’t like that at all. Pilot asked to pull onto taxiway and stop briefly to close door, permission granted by ATC. He left engines running, and proceeded to climb out the emergency window beside him, whilst I asked him which were the fuel condition levers and exactly how to pull them off in case of emergency. I winced as he passed close to running propellers to access the door externally. All for the fear of not being able to start them, even when they had showed zero reluctance to fire into life.

We set out again, headed for Southend to unload some of our freight, arriving at break of dawn. Tbe fuellers came along and asked me what we needed. BTW I was there under pretence of being a legit pilot, and referred them to the captain rather than say “fill her up”! The pilot sat on a kitchen sink drinking his coffee, in a rather basic outhouse of the terminal, reminding me of a garden shed. One of the other freight pilots, in from Vienna, had seen a Dakota arrive and somehow made the assumption I was its pilot, and asked me would it be possible for me to give him a flight on board as it had been a long-standing ambition to sit up front in one. “Sorry, mine is the Titan, not so interesting.”

After pilot had finished his coffee we walked back out to the aircraft and took off into lovely sunny skies. Glancing down my side over Burnham on Crouch by the Essex Coast my eye was sharply drawn to a hole in the wing where the fuel cap should be. Actually it was flying off in the slipstream, caught on precariously by the end of a chain which had caught in the port, but was not attached to it. I informed pilot, whilst glancing at the fuel levels. He turned white as a sheet and declared Pan Pan on the radio requesting immediate return to Southend. I said “don’t worry, fuel levels are good and stable”, but of course I didn’t know how the dynamic of a gaping hole in the wing would actually work out, and neither did he except to fear it would all vapourise quickly through the low pressure over wing. He said it was a good thing I was there as he wouldn’t have seen it from his vantage point, and blamed himself for failing to do the walk around, as well as the fuel people. One thing he did ask was for me to keep my eye closely on that fuel cap and note exactly the location if it fell off so that we might retrieve it by land as a replacement part could take over a day to get from USA. I had to get into work later that day and was most anxious not to have a detachment which might delay me!

We got going again, fuel cap properly in place, closely overtaking the Dakota which had just departed ahead of us, and waving out to its pilot. Flying over semi-cloudy Snowdonia I insisted on a full 1000 feet separation between us and Mount Snowden as we had tempted fate twice already in the last few hours. He wanted a closer-up view on this beautiful day, but conceded to my request to climb 500 feet higher for a safety margin as the cloud was hanging around the tops of the mountains. I got back barelyy in time to sign on the attendance book at my mundane public service job in Dublin. The boss said I looked flustered, but I didn’t dare tell my tale as she would have admonished me for doing such an irresponsible thing as taking that flight.

Dardania

Deleted User wrote: »

That’s the very one. Lovely guy he is, had him as instructor in my very first trial flight/lesson on a Friday 13th out at Darby Kennedy’s, the man who made flying accessible to all pockets in early 1980s, there were even people on the dole taking lessons, and a young lady with a minimal salary was being introduced to aerobatics by Arthur Wignall until his tragic accident in Sligo. Sometimes in Weston you had to shoo a peacock off the wing before boarding taking up your designated airplane. Tim gave me a great intro lesson, upon landing rather roughly said “sorry...that’s not the way to do it”. As I said, it was Friday 13th, so all excused.

Christ:

In May 1991 the captain was convicted of negligently endangering his aircraft and passengers. He had resigned from British Airways after losing his captain's qualification on type. He was fined UKP £2,000, and ordered to pay legal costs totalling UKP £1,500. On 30 November 1992, he committed suicide (see link #4)
As a result of this incident the rules on landing and approach for the Boeing 747-100/200 were changed to make a manual go-around mandatory if the ILS Deviation lights illuminated at any stage on the approach.

Maybe I'm being naive and modern, but that's a shocking safety culture to go for a conviction. They even changed the rule later - talk about lessons learned...

smurfjed

The aircraft commander resigned from British Airways on 2 April 1990.
He appealed unsuccessfully against the endorsement to his pilots licence.
He committed suicide on 1 December 1992.
This case is understood to have been the first UK criminal prosecution of a professional pilot as a result of their actions whilst in command of an aircraft being used for the purposes of commercial air transport. There has since been no comparable prosecution in the UK.

He was basically hung out to dry. The investigation was done by BA and the CAA and not the AAIB as one would expect.

vintagecosmos

Locker10a wrote: »

The first time I experienced the landing gear being re-lowered after take off due to hot breaks (I didn’t know this at the time) my attention peaked and I felt a little adrenaline.

Other than that, standard birstrikes and one rapid precautionary disembarkation due to smoke in the cabin during boarding.

That's an interesting one. Read in a book recently that pilots used to leave the brakes on and open full throttle to clear fog off the runways. The old red-hot landing gear starting fires when retracted put an end to it.

smurfjed

The old red-hot landing gear starting fires when retracted put an end to it.

Agh.... i started thinking about kinetic energy when the aircraft isnt moving, googled it and found this gem

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/685775.pdf 1969 no less.

Now for some amusing reading, thanks

Hotblack Desiato

vintagecosmos wrote: »

That's an interesting one. Read in a book recently that pilots used to leave the brakes on and open full throttle to clear fog off the runways. The old red-hot landing gear starting fires when retracted put an end to it.

https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19630904-0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_306

This crash severely affected the small village of Humlikon in the Canton of Zürich: 43 of its 217 citizens (20% of the population) boarded the plane to visit a farm test site near Geneva. Among those who perished were the entire local council, all teachers and caretakers at the local schools, and the village's post office clerk.