[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by Sutripta

Maybe in a convoluted way.

Reports say that co-pilot was a former F16 pilot. The jocks of Pakistan's airspace. So the captain thinks the co-pilot needs to be put in his place, and constantly berates him right through the flight. Mentioned as possibly one of the reasons for the co-pilot not correcting the pilots actions.

If the co-pilot had not been a former F16 pilot, who knows.

Well put.

Originally Posted by AlphaKilo

What? Any sources behind this theory?

View the video in post # 95. Read up on the crash.

[Sutripta]

Originally Posted by rajivr1612

A term "lose of face" was used in relation to this where in junior officers don't question senior officers for the fear of getting reprimanded, mostly in Asian countries.

Not just Asian countries. eg. Look up KLM accident at Tenerife.

Sutripta

[rajivr1612]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Well put.


View the video in post # 95. Read up on the crash.

Wow, how did I miss this video? How can a very experienced pilot behave like this and mishandle this situation?
Is a CVR transcript for this flight available?

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by Sutripta

Not just Asian countries. eg. Look up KLM accident at Tenerife.

To be honest Tenerife happened in 1977, which is now 43 years ago. What is worrying that on some flight decks to date it is still a problem.

The KLM-Panam Tenerife accident is still the largest aviation disaster ever. It is also regarded as one on the main accidents triggering modern CRM and addressing this very issue in the cockpit.

Although I don’t think anybody can claim this sort of behaviour has been completely eradicated, it has certainly become a whole lot better at most flight decks. There is a strong cultural component to it as well.

Cultures with little hierarchy tend to do a lot better with this. Many female pilots tend to do better with this as well. (or at least seem to come a bit more natural)

Without going into details, the short version of the Tenerife disaster:

At a very busy, congested and foggy Tenerife, the KLM 747 Captain van Zanden, took off whilst the Panam 747 was still taxing on the runway. Due to the fog he could not see it. Tower did not have ground radar and many planes were scattered all over the airport. Poor and some non standardised ATC phrasing played a role.

More importantly, on the voice recorder the KLM Co-pilot is heard questioning the captain when he commenced his take off roll. The Co pilot had better situational awareness and believes the Panam 747 was still on the runway. He is heard telling the Captain that he believes the Panam is still on the runway.

The Captain brusquely overrides him and starts the takes off run. The first officer does not object any further and subdues. The flight engineer sides with the captain. Earlier the captain and the Flight Engineer were heard ridiculing First Officer in general as no good Rookies. (or words to that affect)

Some 15-20 seconds into the take off run. the Panam 747 suddenly materialises out of the fog. Van Zanten pulls up, but the KLM 747 is going fast, but not fast enough and ploughs into the Panam. 583 people die.

You will not read it in any of the official reports. For no other reason in those days they simply did not look for this: Many years later it became apparent that Captain van Zanten wife was about to be admitted to hospital. He was likely to be anxious to go home.

Since, KLM is one of those airlines that keeps a very close eye on the welfare of their pilots. Pilots with family problems, a wife about to give birth, messy divorce, parents dying, are encouraged to speak up. If need be their rosters will be adjusted, no consequence on pay or grading!

Van Zanten was a very experienced pilot at the time of this disaster. Close to 12.000 hours. He was also one of KLM’s most experienced 747 instructor. He had also taught on other models. He was a bit of the KLM boy wonder, he appeared in a few KLM adds too.

Being a captain on a 747 in those days was akin to being God! And, unfortunately some of these characters acted out like that. Authoritarian, with very or no regards for others.

Aviation has come along way since. Unfortunately, some of this behaviour is still around. As I mentioned earlier, native culture does play a big role. The Japanese 777 that landed short of the runway in San Fransico some years ago, had four very experience pilots (three of them Captains) in the cockpit. Three guys watching the fourth guy fly the plane into the ground and nobody said a thing!

Jeroen

[vigsom]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Being a captain on a 747 in those days was akin to being God!

Fast forward from 1977 to 2010, and although the aircraft was different, the authority was still on display in the Air Blue incident.

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Many years later it became apparent that Captain van Zanten wife was about to be admitted to hospital. He was likely to be anxious to go home.

This is a revelation; I've followed this incident investigation in detail but this aspect never featured anywhere.

On a side note, I don't know if near misses are noted and investigated seriously because in Process Safety, this is given a lot of importance.

[mooza]

Originally Posted by Aditya

Attachment 2009166

The last row window seat should be occupied by a Cabin crew, who will have a good view of the deployment of the landing gear, as can be seen from the picture in the above attachment.

The crew can alert the Flight deck if there is no deployment of the landing gear even after the Pilot has made the landing preparation call. Flashing red lights on the landing gear can help the cabin crew in spotting the landing gear in the darkness of night as well.

RIP to the departed souls.

[fhdowntheline]

Originally Posted by mooza

The last row window seat should be occupied by a Cabin crew, who will have a good view of the deployment of the landing gear, as can be seen from the picture in the above attachment.

The crew can alert the Flight deck if there is no deployment of the landing gear even after the Pilot has made the landing preparation call. Flashing red lights on the landing gear can help the cabin crew in spotting the landing gear in the darkness of night as well.

RIP to the departed souls.

I dont believe one can see the landing gear from the last window seat. The gear is mounted pretty close inset between the fuselage and engines. All the cabin crew would see is the flap being deployed. But Airbus drivers can correct me. What would help better is cameras mounted underneath wings and nose.

[vharihar]

Nice video by Mentour Pilot about stabilized approaches:

https://youtu.be/ZiNHsukIkCg

[VeluM]

Analysis by “Flying Captain” can be disregarded as half knowledge.

Analysis by “Flying Beast” is good (minor error in drawing the runway orientation). However his speculation that the ATC recording of the accident was of the second attempt to land and that the aircraft crashed in the third attempt is incorrect IMHO because the altitude data indicates just two instances of the aircraft reaching near ground level after take off, the second of which is the crash.

False glideslope capture is likely to be a contributory factor, but the aircraft was always high on profile, so the pilots ignored stability criteria required for the approach.

Pilot error may be part of the cause, however would be last in a chain of events or contributory factors leading up to this accident. Fortunately modern Air Crash Investigation reports do not assign blame, focusing instead on what went wrong right from the root cause.

With so many levels and contributors to aviation safety beginning with the regulator all the way to the pilots, accidents in aviation are rarely isolated to one root cause. The report on this will be interesting to read, as the organisational culture in PIA is reportedly suspect.

[John]

Forget the discussion about politics and the gossip in the video. What is interesting are the two simulations. Difficult to imagine the pilots ignored the warnings that the landing gear had not deployed OR if they knew it had not deployed, why did they not ask permission for an emergency landing. On the second approach also, they did not respond to the ATCs query about a belly landing. Extremely odd!

https://youtu.be/aXSmLj8iUCM

[norhog]

https://www.dawn.com/news/1561122

The latest that I could find.
They were high, fast and the approach controllers did to pass the aircraft to the Karachi tower hence the visual check of the landing gear was not done.
Please read this link for details.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by norhog

They were high, fast and the approach controllers did to pass the aircraft to the Karachi tower hence the visual check of the landing gear was not done.

Although many towers do try to follow landing aircrafts visually, there is no formal requirement for them to actually check landing gear is down. In many cases it is simply not possible. (E.g. poor visual conditions, wrong angle tower to plane, controller to busy etc).

I know that at quite a few airports the tower/approach on passing landing clearance would also tell the pilot something along the line of “check landing gear down and locked”. It is a very doubtful whether such calls from controllers have any effectiveness.

It was discussed on the PAI thread in PPRuNe. The consensus was that no matter what pilots would confirm back to controller. Pilots have their own / company routines when it comes to lowering landing gear, that is/should be engraved in their DNA.

Having a tower controller tell you to go around due to no landing gear deployed is likely to get pilot’s attention! But again, not always possible, so you can’t rely on it as a procedure/back up. It might and has probably saved the day in a number of instances.

Many years ago I was a passenger on a KLM Fokker 50. We landed somewhere in France. The Fokker 50 has a high wing and I always get myself a window seat so I can observe the retraction/lowering of the landing gear. As we made our landing I saw the landing gear come down, upon landing when the tyres hit the tarmac I noticed an awful lot of smoke. Much more than usual. in those days they always flew with cockpit doors open. I was sort of pondering when I heard a (fire) alarm going off in the cockpit. Before we came to a standstill fire tenders had already caught up with us. In the end false alarm.

I happened to be staying in the same hotel as the KLM crew. So I had a little chat with the captain in the bar that night. I told him how what I had seen and my surprise in seeing the fire tenders being deployed so quickly.

He told me the tower had been monitoring their landing and had noticed the large amount of smoke and immediately called for the fire tenders to roll. As it so happened they were out driving very near our runway and caught up very quickly.

The captain also told me, the tower advised him of unusual smoke before he had any indications/alarms in the cockpit. On these Fokkers with the high wing, sometimes grease and so falls on the landing gear / brake discs. It creates a lot of smoke as the tyres touch the runway speed up and start hearing up tyres and brake discs. So no real emergency.

But it does prove that having the tower visual follow the aircraft can bring some benefits. But as I said, in many cases simply not possible on busy, large airports

Jeroen

[Sutripta]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

On these Fokkers with the high wing, sometimes grease and so falls on the landing gear / brake discs.

If not uncommon, wouldn't it have caused problems over the years?

Sutripta

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by Sutripta

If not uncommon, wouldn't it have caused problems over the years?

From what I understand they had this excessive puff of smoke only now and then, but nothing beyond that, not frequently as to make it a regular occurrence.

The problem with this could be somewhat different. If crews get sort of accustomed to a “false alarm”, they might not respond quickly or appropriate enough after a while. E.g. similar to crying wolf too often. Nobody might take notices until they realise there is an actual fire going on!

But I don’t think it happened often enough for that effect.

Jeroen

[Sutripta]

^^^
I was not really referring to smoke/ fire, but to the functionally detrimental effect of grease on brake discs. And esp. if it on one side only.

Sutripta