Flying Know It All

~ A ~

~ A ~ 33
ACARS (Aircraft Communications, Addressing, and Reporting System) 33
ACAS (Airborne Collision Avoidance System) 35
Accelerate–Stop Distance on Runway 35
Accident Models/Accidentology 35
Accoladed Pilots Do Not Always Have an Easy Ride 35
~ Captain Moody, British Airways BA9, June 24, 1982* 36
~ Captain Pearson, Air Canada Flight 143, July 23, 1983* 37
~ Captain Dardano, TACA Flight 110, May 24, 1988* 39
~ Captains Haines and Fitch, UAL232, July 19, 1989* 39
~ Captain Piché, Air Transat 236, August 24, 20 01* 39
~ Captain Gennotte, DHL Cargo, November 2, 2003* 40
~ Captain Burkill, BA38, January 17, 2008* 40
~ Captain Sullenberger (Sully), UA1549, January 2009* 41
~ Captain de Crespigny, Qantas QF32, November 4, 2010* 42
ACE (Agile Combat Employment): Dispersed “Austere” Airbases 44
Aces Learnt from Mistakes, Value of Confidential Reporting 45
Acronyms 46
~ Acronyms with Number for Repeated Letter [Military] 46
Active Sidesticks 46
“Adam” PA Code for Missing Child, “Bravo” to Reveal Terrorist 46
Adaptive Cycle Engine (ACE) / Variable Cycle Engine (VCE) 47
ADF (Automatic Direction Finder) 48
ADIRU (Air Data Inertial Reference Unit) 48
~ Initiation (Alignment) of The ADIRU or IRS 49
Administration or Agency? [US Usage] 50
ADS (Automatic Dependent Surveillance) 50
ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance–BROADCAST) 51
ADS-C (Automatic Dependent Surveillance–CONTRACT) 52
AEW (Airborne Early Warning) 53
AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) Radar 53
AF447: The Human Factors Underlying a “Needless” Disaster* 54
Africa’s New Hub Airport, Ethiopian Airlines 70
After Burner 71
Age of Aircraft Measured in Cycles 71
Age of Pilot 72
AGL (Above Ground Level) 73
“Ahead of the Aircraft” and “Behind the Aircraft” 74
AI Changing Aviation 74
AI Changing Warfare 74
AIDS (Aircraft Integrated Data System) 74
Ailerons 74
Air China (CA) Mainland China’s Flag Carrier 75
Air Crash Survival 75
Air Crash Risk Now Forty Times Less Than in 1960s and 1970s 76
Air Crashes Where Some Survivors Died Waiting for Help 77
~ And Where Teenage Girl Survived Free Fall (Peru 1971) 77
~ And Where Idolized Survivors Ate Dead “Companions” (Andes 1972) 78
~ And Where It Was Worst Single-Aircraft Crash Ever (Japan, 1985) 79
Air Cushion Seats 80
Air Force One 80
~ Doomsday Plane (Boeing E4B) 81
Air Marshals 82
Air Rage 83
Air Traffic Clearance 83
Air Traffic Control (ATC) 84
Air Traffic Control: Facilities 84
Air Traffic Control: Pilot Interaction, Phraseology 85
Air Traffic Control: ATC as Career in US 87
Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) 87
Air Transport Association (ATA) [US] Now A4A 88
Air Transport World (ATW) 88
AIRBUS 88
~ Airbus A220 (A220) 2016**/250+ 95
~ Airbus A300 (A300) 1974/561 95
~ Airbus A320 (A320) Family 1988/11,600+ 96
~ Airbus A321XLR 98
~ Airbus A330 1994/1700 and Airbus A340 1993/1,600 99
~ Airbus A350 (A350) 900 2015/500+ 100
~ Airbus A350 (A350) 1000 2018/592+ 101
~ Airbus A380 2007/271 102
Aircraft Carrier 103
Aircraft Dispatcher [US], Flight Operations Officer [Europe, Africa] 104
Aircraft Emergency Recovery Systems 105
Aircraft Registration Codes 105
Air-Launched Ballistic Missile (ALBM) 105
Air-Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM) 105
Airfoil [US], Aerofoil [UK] 105

END OF EXTRACT from Table of Contents

3 SAMPLES FROM BOOK

(1) ACARS (Aircraft Communications, Addressing, and Reporting System)

ACARS, pronounced AY-CARS, started off in 1978 as a crude system for reporting events from the airliner back to the airline. Since these events included the closing and opening of the cabin doors, and when the wheels lifted off the runway and touched down again, it paid for itself by preventing crews falsifying their time sheets.

Even nowadays, flight attendants tell passengers they cannot help them put luggage in the overhead racks because they are not paid, or more importantly compensated for injury, until the doors are closed. This is also to protect them.

ACARS has over the years become ever more sophisticated, reporting technical faults and abnormalities not only to the airline with the appropriate parts when the aircraft lands and, if the problem is deemed too serious, another aircraft can be readied. The engine maker has even on occasion called the airline with the aircraft still airborne to recommend a change of regime to protect the engine.

As a means of digital communication, ACARS is also used for many other purposes, such as requesting updated weather reports, air traffic control clearances, and to communicate with Dispatch. However, CPDL (Controller–Pilot Data Link) is now increasingly being used for clearances in the US and over the Atlantic.

ACARS featured in the following tragedies:
(1) 9/11* Warning Sent to Fourth Hijacked Aircraft
(2) Disappearance of Air France AF447
(3) Greatest Aviation Mystery Ever (Disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370)

[Extract cut short]

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(2) ~ Acronyms with Number for Repeated Letter [Military]

In military usage, a number (2, 3 …) in an acronym indicates a repeated letter such as in the quite common C2 (for CC) which can stand for Command and Control (CC). There is C3 for Command, Control, and Communications, and even C4 in the often used C4ISR standing for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance!
The US Air Force alone has thousands of acronyms, and in fact one can have a handy acronym for anything in the military.

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(3) AF447: The Human Factors Underlying a “Needless” Disaster*

On June 1, 2009, Air France Flight AF447, a wide-body Airbus A330, en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, disappeared over the South Atlantic with no Mayday call and only a few ACARS messages.

For two years what had happened was a mystery. Then the voice and flight data recorders were retrieved from the ocean bed, revealing to the relief of Airbus there had been nothing intrinsically wrong with the aircraft itself.

The Human Factors
While this tragedy is covered in detail in our Air Crashes and Miracle Landings, we retell it here with some human factors that have not been fully considered. While they are not the whole story, knowing them they may give a fuller understanding:

Captain’s Lack of Sleep
When the BEA (French investigators) initially published the transcript of the Cockpit Voice Recording (CVR) they omitted the earlier dialog between the captain and the junior first officer (FO) where the captain stated he had only had an hour’s sleep and admitted, “It was not enough.”
When this was revealed in the parallel judicial procedure, the BEA investigators claimed they had omitted that part of the recording because it was “private.”
Captain and Junior FO Had Brought Along Their “Companions”
With the prospect of a three night layover in Rio, the captain and the junior FO had brought along female companions. For the captain, in the middle of a divorce, it was an opera singing off-duty flight attendant. For the junior FO, it was simply his wife.
With the captain and junior FO both apparently having begun their aviation careers as cabin crew, they may have felt a certain affinity, which can only have been cemented by their having partaken of a helicopter tour over Rio with those companions the afternoon prior to their departure. Even if this were untrue, the parties would have socialized at the hotel.
Anyway, they formed a close knit pair at the expense of the senior FO who was a graduate from a prestigious aviation school, where he had specialized, perhaps unfortunately, in meteorology. Promoted to the airline’s management, he no longer undertook routine flying and was rostered on the flight to keep his pilot’s license current.
Fraught Relationship between the Two FOs
Most pernicious of all was the fraught relationship between the two first officers. This meant almost the worst of all worlds for with the senior FO believing only the captain could handle the junior FO, he diverted his attention from what was happening to the aircraft to calling him at critical moments, and notably when the aircraft began to stall completely after the unnecessary climb.
The fraught relationship is quite evident from the tone of the original French version of the cockpit voice recording where the junior FO is talking to the captain and referring to the absent senior FO snidely as “him” rather than by his first name or even family name.
Though obvious from the CVR, this hostile relationship was confirmed to the author by a blunt aviation commentator based outside France but with good aviation contacts there. He said he had heard about the two pilots “hating each other’s guts” (sic) from several sources while on a visit. Of course, that could not be cited in official reports by the investigators without ruffling a lot of union feathers.
Such a backdrop did not bode well but usually would not have mattered for the autopilot would be flying the aircraft in ~ Normal Law with the computers programed with “protections” preventing the pilots from doing anything untoward that would endanger the aircraft.

Situation Prior to Autopilot Disengagement
Almost three and a half hours into the flight, with the A330 out of radar range over the South Atlantic, the captain decided it was time for him to “skedaddle” for his rest and called the senior FO back from the rest station situated adjacent to the cockpit to take his place.
Since the senior FO had been the pilot flying (PF) on the outward leg, he designated the junior FO as the PF for he would be the one executing the landing later at Paris. With the autopilot doing the actual flying, this did not normally mean much extra to do.
Air France did not at the time have protocols regarding who should be in charge in the captain’s absence, meaning the much less experienced junior FO would be the first in line in any emergency.

Sixteen minutes after the captain’s departure,
the aircraft encounters a cloud of hyper-cooled ice crystals.
The pitot tubes ice up and send invalid airspeed data to the computers.
With no credible airspeed data, the autopilot disengages at 00:00.

Disaster Timeline

–00:19 [ 19 seconds before A/P disengagement]
Sound of impact of ice crystals. Background noise increases.
Neither pilot alluded to the noise. The investigators noted that at the time pilots had little knowledge regarding the phenomenon. Nevertheless, the senior FO (pilot monitoring) took it upon himself to reduce the airspeed down toward Mach 0.8 and switched on the engine anti-icing, no doubt in response to the indication of ice shown by the instruments.
–00:02 to 00:00:
A cavalry charge—a repeated trilling sound—warning the autopilot is about to disengage.

00:00 AUTOPILOT DISENGAGES

00:01 Junior FO:
“I have the controls.”
00:03 Senior FO:
“All right.”
00:05
Two SV stall warnings:
The BEA investigators call them Stall 1 warnings, no doubt because they were warning of the risk of a stall, perhaps because the “startled” junior FO pulled back much too sharply on his side stick.
“Stall … Stall.”
00:06 Senior FO:
“What is that?”
Despite the stall warnings, the junior FO was still for some reason keeping the nose up.
The French investigators raised the possibility that the “startle effect” made the junior FO initiate the climb. However, due to the blockage of the pitot tubes measuring airspeed, the computer had erroneously indicated a slight drop in height, which the junior FO may have wanted to correct, but this does not explain why he continued to climb so steeply.
00:08
Two more SV stall warnings, the last one truncated.
“Stall, S—”
00:10 Junior FO:
“We haven’t got a good display … of speed.”
00:11 Senior FO:
“We’ve lost the speeds…”
00:17 Senior FO:
“Alternate law, protections Lo …?”
Even the CVR transcribers could not tell what the senior FO had said. In fact, what the last word the ECAM (Electronic Centralized Aircraft Monitor) had visually spelt out was “LOST.”
Over such a crucial matter the senior FO should have insisted on confirmation. Worse still, while he was speaking, the junior FO was trying to make a point about the thrust levers, an example of extremely poor CRM (Crew Resource Management).
00:19 to 00:23 Senior FO:
“Wait, we’re losing … Wing anti-ice. Watch your speed. Watch your speed.”
In saying “speed,” it is quite likely the senior FO was referring to the rate of climb not airspeed, the indication of which they had lost.
00:23 Junior FO:
“Okay, okay, okay. I’m going back down.”
00:26 Senior FO:
“Go back down.” !!!
00:27 Senior FO:
“According to that we’re going up. According to all three you’re going up, so go back down.” !!!
00:30 Junior FO:
“Okay.”
00:31 Senior FO:
“You’re at … Go back down.” !!!
00:37 Junior FO:
“We’re in a … We’re in a climb.” !!!
00:45 Senior FO:
“Blast! Where is he?” [Expletive difficult to render properly in English]
It seems the senior FO had already called the captain by banging on the partition between the cockpit and rest station, as well as using the call button. At just what was the most critical moment of all—the beginning of the definitive stall—the senior FO was diverting his attention away from what the junior FO was doing.
00:46
“Stall … Stall … Stall … Stall … Stall …”
Almost-continuous SV stall warnings start. The French investigators call them Stall 2 warnings because they represent an incipient or actual stall as opposed to the earlier ones denoting the risk of one.
01:01 Senior FO:
“Blast! Where is he?”
The junior FO made slight nose-down inputs alternately to the right and to the left. The rate of climb that had reached 7,000 feet a minute had dropped to 700 feet a minute, and the roll varied between 12 degrees to the right and 10 degrees to the left, suggesting the junior FO was struggling just to keep the wings level and not concerned with the pitch.
The airspeed shown on the left side increased suddenly to 215 knots (Mach 0.68), while the speed displayed on the left primary flight display (PFD) remained invalid for 29 seconds.
Stall 2 warnings continue.

01:05 THEY REACH A MAXIMUM HEIGHT OF 37,924 FEET

1:20 Senior FO:
“Do you understand what’s happening or not?”
01:28 Junior FO:
“I don’t have control of the airplane anymore now.”
01:30 Junior FO:
“I don’t have control of the airplane at all.”

[Extract cut short]

[Three minutes later they plunge into the ocean.
The full timeline with the return of the captain
and their hitting the sea is given in the book
with analysis.]

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