JetBlue A320 dual hydraulic failure.

[edyvw]

Landing on a carrier deck requires a certain level of skill. I’ve talked about that skill, and performance parameters, as they existed back in my day.

Simply, to put an airplane, moving at 140 knots, down on a moving runway, with windshear and turbulence on final, and be within 15 inches of glideslope (not feet, inches) consistently requires a certain amount of skill.

I’m certain that @Just a civilian pilot has that skill - he just never had to be tested in that environment.

Every single Navy pilot that flew off carriers had to demonstrate that skill. That is not true of pilots who flew in other environments.

They may be just as good, they may not, but they were never tested at that level. Naval aviators were, every single one of them.

Now, that said, the most important skill in airliner flying is CRM/TEM. Interpersonal/team effectiveness. Stick and rudder matters, but not nearly as much as the ability to work together as a team. Leadership, resource management, decision-making, situational awareness, are all factors in successful outcomes in challenging situations in the world of airline flying.

The best airlines focus on development of that skill set.

The airline industry, rightly so, is laser-focused on this for obvious reasons because, well, people die. But, if other organizations were focused on this, things would be far different. I have been embroiled for the last 6 months in an organizational restructuring that has been happening strictly because of selfish, career-driven reasons, not strategic reasons. There is no sign of a team approach, etc. And I am hell-bent to sabotage it

 

[Astro14]

I agree with this statement. In modern flight and the further automation of these vehicles, pilots have become more flight managers and less stick and rudder operators. When there is no longer a physical attachment between the flight surfaces/engines and these operations are manipulated over a data bus, it stands to reason that these systems will be faster, more accurate and ultimately safer if the data is applied correctly for a given scenario. The software algorithms and ultimately the safe flight envelope of a modern aircraft are at the mercy of programming. Redundant systems are paramount due to the actual physical disconnect between flight crew and plane. The latest problems with the 737 max becoming un-flyable because of the TCAS programming and cost cutting as it pertained to the hardware utilized for it are a perfect example. I am not advocating a return to 1970 as I feel that modern aircraft designed/programmed correctly are safer. The technology exists now to have no flight crews at all. Maybe a trailer house in the Nevada desert with a manager to deal with inflight issues of a fleet of planes remotely?

No, I really disagree with this.

You underestimate how important the pilot and crew is in managing the complex systems. Further, you underestimate how important it is to have somebody actually “on scene” and not remote. There are things that you see, hear, and feel in an airplane that you cannot see, hear and feel at a workstation that is outside the airplane.

It’s a lot like somebody doing surgery via a teleconference or zoom call. It just doesn’t work - response time is too slow and communication and coordination don’t exist - you would severely degrade crew performance.

Which is probably fine for normal events, but in a non-normal situation, like this hydraulic failure, it simply wouldn’t work. The bean counters and engineers, love this idea, naturally.

But the professional pilots and flying public do not.

The most important safety equipment in any modern aircraft is two well rested, highly trained, fully qualified pilots on that flight deck working as an team.

All the engineering in the world cannot compensate for their absence.

 

[Astro14]

Look, while stick and rudder is no longer paramount, it is still essential. It’s like saying, the modern driver needs to manage systems, but doesn’t need to know how to brake or steer. Of course they need to know how to brake and steer! The complexity of the new environment, and new systems, does not remove the requirement to do the basics well.

You must absolutely be able to fly the airplane correctly. When an engine fails, and it takes a boot full of rudder, as it does on many of the older aircraft, you need to be able to do that. Further, some of the auto Flight systems have degraded modes, and one has only to look at Air France 447 as a prima facie example, so when those flight modes degrade, as they did on that airliner, on that night, the pilot must absolutely be able to fly, their stick and rudder skills must be excellent.

The flight crew that night suffered from both a failure of basic stick and rudder, as well as the failure of the crew to work together to understand the complex situation.

The engineers made the airplane so “easy to fly“, that anybody could do it. And that’s kind of true, right up until the point that the engineering failed, and the airplane required a real pilot.

 

[sloinker]

I am kind of a luddite. Having competent, experienced folks on the flight deck is the way I want it to be if I am a passenger. Reality, especially now with augmented intelligence will spell the ultimate demise of airliner's with pilots, imo. May take a few years but it is already happening in the newest breed of military planes. I am in no way trying to diminish the competence or training of any pilot, to the contrary. As stated above I prefer experienced, hands-on, carrier trained pilots and that is my preference. Not knocking anyone's skills. If I am going to have brain surgery, I want the surgeon who has performed the procedure a million times and has dealt with surprises and adversity with great outcomes on a daily occurrence. The concept of flight management can easily be incorporated in software. Modern planes AFAIK don't require any real strength on a rudder or yoke. Easy automation. Sorry. Since I endeavor never having to fly again I will watch what the future brings. I am enjoying this discussion and the back and forth. I won't pretend to be a first person participant in what is your daily trade. I only know my own experiences and what I have learned from varied sources. I could be dead wrong in some of my opinions. I am willing to change my mind if given enough evidence, it's the scientific way. All Hail Sir Francis Bacon!

 

[GON]

The airline industry, rightly so, is laser-focused on this for obvious reasons because, well, people die. But, if other organizations were focused on this, things would be far different. I have been embroiled for the last 6 months in an organizational restructuring that has been happening strictly because of selfish, career-driven reasons, not strategic reasons. There is no sign of a team approach, etc. And I am hell-bent to sabotage it

Rather than sabotage it, why don't your quit and start an organization to compete against the organization you identify as not being strategic?

Should be easy pickins for your based the assessment you posted. And you can hire away all the people from your current organization, I am sure they all must have a desire to be under your leadership.

 

[Just a civilian pilot]

I am kind of a luddite. Having competent, experienced folks on the flight deck is the way I want it to be if I am a passenger. Reality, especially now with augmented intelligence will spell the ultimate demise of airliner's with pilots, imo. May take a few years but it is already happening in the newest breed of military planes. I am in no way trying to diminish the competence or training of any pilot, to the contrary. As stated above I prefer experienced, hands-on, carrier trained pilots and that is my preference. Not knocking anyone's skills. If I am going to have brain surgery, I want the surgeon who has performed the procedure a million times and has dealt with surprises and adversity with great outcomes on a daily occurrence. The concept of flight management can easily be incorporated in software. Modern planes AFAIK don't require any real strength on a rudder or yoke. Easy automation. Sorry. Since I endeavor never having to fly again I will watch what the future brings. I am enjoying this discussion and the back and forth. I won't pretend to be a first person participant in what is your daily trade. I only know my own experiences and what I have learned from varied sources. I could be dead wrong in some of my opinions. I am willing to change my mind if given enough evidence, it's the scientific way. All Hail Sir Francis Bacon!

You previously admitted to having "prejudices" , and now state you might be "dead wrong" with some of your ( inexperienced ) opinions about flight safety.

At least we agree on that with all due respect.

 

[sloinker]

You previously admitted to having "prejudices" , and now state you might be "dead wrong" with some of your ( inexperienced ) opinions about flight safety.

At least we agree on that with all due respect.

Reasonable people recognize their own bias and will admit to it along with adjust their rationale to account for it. Maybe you should try it. Certainty can be an Achilles heel. Is there a mandatory retirement age for pilots? You getting close? I know that many aged out pilots move to the Congo and fly DC-3's full of chicken's and goats. With all due respect of course. Put those flight management skills to good use!

 

[edyvw]

Rather than sabotage it, why don't your quit and start an organization to compete against the organization you identify as not being strategic?

Should be easy pickins for your based the assessment you posted. And you can hire away all the people from your current organization, I am sure they all must have a desire to be under your leadership.

Starting parallel organization of this type might fall into category of undermining government.
And yes, 99% do support sabotaging it.
Long story short: they want to combine my unit, very successful one, with unit that has huge issues, because they don’t want to address head on issues in problematic unit.

 

[Just a civilian pilot]

Reasonable people recognize their own bias and will admit to it along with adjust their rationale to account for it. Maybe you should try it. Certainty can be an Achilles heel. Is there a mandatory retirement age for pilots? You getting close? I know that many aged out pilots move to the Congo and fly DC-3's full of chicken's and goats. With all due respect of course. Put those flight management skills to good use!

Try what?

I have been flying for 40 years, accumulated around 26,000 hours, flown for several airlines, am a well respected airline pilot by my peers , know what I am talking about.

I don’t have any biases or irrational thinking when it comes to flight safety but you have proven to me that you do.

I do not really hang out in the other sections on BITOG ( I read versus express my opinion ) because I realize other members know far more than me.

Congo would be a bad place for me to retire flying chickens and goats, poor wifi ( how would I be able to correct people who don’t understand flight safety on BITOG ) , and it’s a former French colony ( I don’t know French ).

 

[Nuclear_42]

That is serious. Is it too early to know whether it's a maintenance issue (Jetblue's fault), or Airbus' fault with a design or manufacturing flaw.

Just like cars not every mechanical failure is predictable. The cause of this incident is unknown. However due to Airbus's wonderful design aircraft landed safely with no loss of human life on a standby hydraulic system. Every time there's a mechanical fault people love to blame maintenance crews or Airline. You can be the best mechanic ever yet still have a pristine engine throw a rod and make a big hole on the block. Just the nature of the beast.

 

[Nuclear_42]

Not much left working when you’re down to just the blue hydraulics! Emergency gear extension, alternate flap extension, reduced flight controls, no nose wheel steering, alternate brakes (or is it just accumulator?) - that about right? It’s been a while, but loss of green and yellow is a serious problem.

Your alternate brakes (parking brake) runs off the yellow system. In this case considering there's still hyd fluid in that system. The parking brake accumulator saved the day. Now while the aircraft is in movement Airbus refers to the manual movement of the parking brake handle as ultimate braking. Probably 99.99% of times pilots just use the rudder pedal to apply brakes in this scenario. However if that were not to function you could just apply braking via the parking break lever on the center pedestal. Keep in mind its going to just apply brakes 100% hence ultimate braking term.

 

[Just a civilian pilot]

We would not use the park brake to try and stop following the loss of both hydraulics ( Green and Yellow ) , we would apply pedal braking like normal landings except the pilot monitoring would monitor the alternate brake pressure gauge and call out the pressures ( left and right brakes ) to the pilot flying to ensure they do not go above 1000 PSI ( no anti skid ) and locking up the wheels and blowing the tires. If we used the park brake instead, it is EXTREMELY sensitive, and powerful. It would almost certainly blow the tires.

That said, where we would use the park brake during an landing would be if we lost braking not caused by any failure we are aware of ( no ECAM warning ….normal brakes simply won’t work when apply pedal brakes ). Even then, we would turn the NWS/ANTI SKID switch off first, and apply pedal braking ( max 1000 PSI ) , then use the park brake if still no braking. This is a memory item procedure on the Airbus versus losing braking due to the loss of hydraulics ( ECAM warning ).

The chances of losing both hydraulics on the A320 ( unless the PTU is not turned off ) , is about as likely as losing both engines right after take off due to unrelated mechanical failure. The chances of both engines throwing a rod are statistically zero, same with losing both hydraulics ( if the PTU is turned off ).

 

[edyvw]

Try what?

I have been flying for 40 years, accumulated around 26,000 hours, flown for several airlines, am a well respected airline pilot by my peers , know what I am talking about.

I don’t have any biases or irrational thinking when it comes to flight safety but you have proven to me that you do.

I do not really hang out in the other sections on BITOG ( I read versus express my opinion ) because I realize other members know far more than me.

Congo would be a bad place for me to retire flying chickens and goats, poor wifi ( how would I be able to correct people who don’t understand flight safety on BITOG ) , and it’s a former French colony ( I don’t know French ).

I mean, you can’t not access BITOG.

 

[c502cid]

We have on daily basis “air show” here, and graduation show every May. I pick up neighborhood kids, load them in car with mine and we watch it with ice cream. This was this Thursday:

They were low level flying over Teller all week practicing. Talk about up close and personal!

 

[edyvw]

They were low level flying over Teller all week practicing. Talk about up close and personal!

CO NG fly over Summit count ski places regularly. It is quite show at 12,435ft at A Basin.

 

[PWMDMD]

Try what?

I have been flying for 40 years, accumulated around 26,000 hours, flown for several airlines, am a well respected airline pilot by my peers , know what I am talking about.

I don’t have any biases or irrational thinking when it comes to flight safety but you have proven to me that you do.

I do not really hang out in the other sections on BITOG ( I read versus express my opinion ) because I realize other members know far more than me.

Congo would be a bad place for me to retire flying chickens and goats, poor wifi ( how would I be able to correct people who don’t understand flight safety on BITOG ) , and it’s a former French colony ( I don’t know French ).

Weirdly, there is a tendency when lay people see professionals performing at a very high level and performing very highly technical work with a lot of skill, to underestimate the difficulty. I think it's partly because really well-trained people make even difficult things look easy and let's face it, people just don't know what they don't know. The other factor to consider is that many times the real skills and knowledge usually come into play not when things are going as planned, but when they go to poop, and most lay people never see those circumstances. I have no idea what it's like to be a pilot but I'm fairly confident it ain't easy and that I know nothing meaningful about it or pilot training or what makes a good or bad pilot - I defer to you and Astro, the professionals.

As an example, I have parents from time to time watch what I do for say a filling and it goes quickly and smoothly with a great outcome and they will say, "Oh...that didn't look difficult". I take that as a compliment because I made something that is technically demanding and made it look easy, but I know if I put that high speed in their hand, they'd poop themself. The real skill though isn't that situation, it's when it isn't going as planned and you need to know how to recover the situation and that's all training and experience.

Lastly, there is something to be said about 40 years and 26,000 hours of flying! I'd happily step into your plane over a guy who qualified for carrier landing yesterday.

 

[sloinker]

Try what?

I have been flying for 40 years, accumulated around 26,000 hours, flown for several airlines, am a well respected airline pilot by my peers , know what I am talking about.

I don’t have any biases or irrational thinking when it comes to flight safety but you have proven to me that you do.

I do not really hang out in the other sections on BITOG ( I read versus express my opinion ) because I realize other members know far more than me.

Congo would be a bad place for me to retire flying chickens and goats, poor wifi ( how would I be able to correct people who don’t understand flight safety on BITOG ) , and it’s a former French colony ( I don’t know French ).

You may be right. Hopefully not dead right with a bunch of passengers. In no way am I besmirching your experience or ability. I couldn't do your job and wouldn't want to do it. My skill set is probably well within your aptitude, it would take you some time to catch up to my 44+ years experience within my field, but you could do it. Do I know some things with certainty within my own skill set? Yes. Am I ever surprised? Not too often but on occasion. The issue I have is if I make a mistake it could very easily result in injury and death for myself and anyone close by. I don't have the responsibility of a few hundred passengers which suits me just fine. Here is hoping you are never surprised within your expertise without knowledge or training to mitigate a disaster. Since I recently retired, my exposure to high voltage electrical hazards has gone away, my life is much safer. I imagine you must be retired or close to it in regarding your posts. Sit back, chillax and let the next generation take the reigns. Get together with the other retirees and talk about the old times around the table at a diner once a week. Go ahead and buy a share of a Cessna 150 or maybe an ultralight. The sky's the limit.

 

[Number_35]

Missed being a boomer by 1 year.
If I was born 1 year earlier, in 1964, I would have been a better pilot

We used to have these divisional seminars at work. There would be two or three technical presentations, an overview or vision presentation, and to wrap up something a bit lighter.

One year this lady was characterizing us by "generation" - Greatest, Silent, Boomer, Gen X, Gen Y, and Millennial, and telling us we had these common characteristics and behaviours based on what generation we belonged to.

I said to my co-workers later something like "The presenter wouldn't have dared to categorize us by astrological Zodiac sign (Gemini, Leo, etc.) or Chinese Zodiac 12-year cycle (Year of the Ram, etc.) but seemed to be fine saying that all of us born from 1946 to 1964 we pretty much the same".

 

[Just a civilian pilot]

You may be right. Hopefully not dead right with a bunch of passengers. In no way am I besmirching your experience or ability. I couldn't do your job and wouldn't want to do it. My skill set is probably well within your aptitude, it would take you some time to catch up to my 44+ years experience within my field, but you could do it. Do I know some things with certainty within my own skill set? Yes. Am I ever surprised? Not too often but on occasion. The issue I have is if I make a mistake it could very easily result in injury and death for myself and anyone close by. I don't have the responsibility of a few hundred passengers which suits me just fine. Here is hoping you are never surprised within your expertise without knowledge or training to mitigate a disaster. Since I recently retired, my exposure to high voltage electrical hazards has gone away, my life is much safer. I imagine you must be retired or close to it in regarding your posts. Sit back, chillax and let the next generation take the reins. Get together with the other retirees and talk about the old times around the table at a diner once a week. Go ahead and buy a share of a Cessna 150 or maybe an ultralight. The sky's the limit.

59 in July, plan on going to 65 if my health is good enough to keep my medical ( so far no issues ).

When I do my final Airbus Airline flight, that’s the last flight I will ever do as tempting as it is to fly goats and chickens in the Congo ( Republic of Congo….former French colony……Democratic Republic of Congo former Belgium ….both French ).

Not sure what I will do when I retire.

Just back from a long day flying ( not the Congo…..down and back to Mexico ).

 

[wpod]

Somehow I managed to fly ( FO ) the B727, rack up around 26,000 hours total time all aircraft without an accident despite never landing on carriers.

I must have been lucky I guess

Planes with bathrooms are more forgiving.