SimonA380 wrote:

The information from inside the airline is that the Captain was flying - not the FO.

She was supposedly competent having gone through quite a stringent Command Upgrade - they don't give away the 4th strip at Emirates just because its your turn. The success rate for Command upgrades is around 65%. Then you have to keep hold of that 4th strip and that's not easy or guaranteed either.

You would think that 65% pass rate is based on skill and aptitude. Unfortunately I've seen so many occasions where good pilots fail training or upgrade courses due to ridiculous factors like the TRE personally disliking them. A pilot who passed a training course with flying colours but was denied an upgrade because the training manager had an argument with them over something trivial 20 years ago. Then you get incompetent pilots who only pass because they are friends with training staff. Nepotism.

Then of course there's those pilots who manage to bluff their way through an upgrade course (less than a dozen sims and line sectors) but become real idiots once checked to line and are put in command. Once away from the trainers they decide to become bullies and make the life of everyone below them in rank miserable. When they do their recurrent simulator and line training they go back into "Mr/Mrs Nice Guy/Gal" mode for a day, then once back on line become abusive bullies again. It happens in every airline.

So yeah just because EK supposedly have a high failure rate in command training doesn't mean all their Captains are of high quality.

If all this EK-bashing has any justification, what does it say about the contribution of the well-respected Sir Tim Clark, who's headed EK for a number of years now?

ayirpamar wrote:

If all this EK-bashing has any justification, what does it say about the contribution of the well-respected Sir Tim Clark, who's headed EK for a number of years now?

Respected by who?

He ran a succesful, mostly profitable airline, but that doesn't say anything about safety, work ethics and basic human decency. And incidents have a way of needing some time to occur, as it takes time to erode knowledge, passion and skill from the frontline.

Jeff bezos is also respected in certain circles. The only reason he is also known for scumbaggery is that in the US it is easier to speak out and report about Amazon. It is a lot harder to do so about the ME3 carriers.

It must be telling that on a pilots forum there are threads discussing ways to resign from Emirates without being shafted in contractually agreed terms and payments. And that on the same forum, the neighbouring airline isn't allowed to be mentioned because that one actively seeks legale action if you do/did.

sierrakilo44 wrote:

reltney wrote:

It’s simple as this…. FLY the PLANE.

Are people forgetting how to fly or never taught in the first place….that is the question of the day.

It's not so much pilots forgetting to fly. It's pilots not being allowed to.

And then you have a punitive culture which not only demands automation but pretty much wants to eradicate any "flying out of the box" ie on LNAV/VNAV as much as possible, no track shortening, no creativity. Just do what the FMC and ATC tell you to do.

Exactly, it's a dire indictment of what management thinks of their pilot group's abilities when they don't even trust them enough to be able to fly a raw data approach or use manual thrust.

At the end of the day, the degradation of hand flying skills is something that every Training Department should be proactively trying to counter. Allowing crew to hand fly an approach or departure where/when it's appropriate to do so goes a long way to achieving this. Ignoring the issue or pretending it's not happening is obviously not going to solve anything.

Though, to be fair, EK is far from the only carrier to do such practices. Especially with LCCs, it's fairly common to highly discourage if not completely disallow the use of anything but the highest level of automation in non-emergency situations. A worrying trend but one that's not new.

Give EK's route network, you do wonder how often crew are faced with, for example, having to fly a VOR Approach and how much the "average" crew would struggle with doing so.

sierrakilo44 wrote:

Any attempt at thinking out of the box and the slightest mistake and you are immediately dismissed without investigation. It's a 12th century justice system in a 2021 global carrier.

Completely the antithesis of an open safety culture. I find these issues really fascinating. I often wonder how long it would take to instill a healthy safety culture in a large pilot group like Emirates' even if you suddenly had the right people in leadership positions starting tomorrow. Not really something that can be changed quickly. It's one thing to allow crew members to hand fly an approach. It's quite another for them to actually do so for fear of management repercussions if they mess something up and are forced to execute a go around.

ayirpamar wrote:

If all this EK-bashing has any justification, what does it say about the contribution of the well-respected Sir Tim Clark, who's headed EK for a number of years now?

STC should be concerned about the work ethics at his airline if he is a chairman with any clout. Otherwise he's no more than a figurehead.

sierrakilo44 wrote:

You would think that 65% pass rate is based on skill and aptitude. Unfortunately I've seen so many occasions where good pilots fail training or upgrade courses due to ridiculous factors like the TRE personally disliking them. A pilot who passed a training course with flying colours but was denied an upgrade because the training manager had an argument with them over something trivial 20 years ago. Then you get incompetent pilots who only pass because they are friends with training staff. Nepotism.

Then of course there's those pilots who manage to bluff their way through an upgrade course (less than a dozen sims and line sectors) but become real idiots once checked to line and are put in command. Once away from the trainers they decide to become bullies and make the life of everyone below them in rank miserable. When they do their recurrent simulator and line training they go back into "Mr/Mrs Nice Guy/Gal" mode for a day, then once back on line become abusive bullies again. It happens in every airline.

So yeah just because EK supposedly have a high failure rate in command training doesn't mean all their Captains are of high quality.

I agree entirely.

Seen it, been on the receiving end.
There are plenty of idiots holding commands at EK - of all nationalities.

As for Tim Clarke - there's no respect there at all for him. He's done more to ruin the airline since Maurice Flannagan passed away than he has to improve it.
The whole place is run on a culture of fear and bullying - a culture which the Western management who join the company are quick to embrace, encourage and participate in, instead of trying to raise the standards of management to Western values. And it starts at the top of Training, Fleet and Flight Op's departments.

They've even calculated as an airline that they can absorb a multiple number of hull losses including fatalities before the image is damaged enough to require any action. If you need proof of that, look at bookings in the aftermath of Fly Dubai at Rostov, the EK 777 crash in Dubai (pure pilot error), JFK and DME. There was no public change in opinion about the safety of the company.

It's endemic, and won't change.

sierrakilo44 wrote:

SimonA380 wrote:

The information from inside the airline is that the Captain was flying - not the FO.

She was supposedly competent having gone through quite a stringent Command Upgrade - they don't give away the 4th strip at Emirates just because its your turn. The success rate for Command upgrades is around 65%. Then you have to keep hold of that 4th strip and that's not easy or guaranteed either.

You would think that 65% pass rate is based on skill and aptitude. Unfortunately I've seen so many occasions where good pilots fail training or upgrade courses due to ridiculous factors like the TRE personally disliking them. A pilot who passed a training course with flying colours but was denied an upgrade because the training manager had an argument with them over something trivial 20 years ago. Then you get incompetent pilots who only pass because they are friends with training staff. Nepotism.

Then of course there's those pilots who manage to bluff their way through an upgrade course (less than a dozen sims and line sectors) but become real idiots once checked to line and are put in command. Once away from the trainers they decide to become bullies and make the life of everyone below them in rank miserable. When they do their recurrent simulator and line training they go back into "Mr/Mrs Nice Guy/Gal" mode for a day, then once back on line become abusive bullies again. It happens in every airline.

So yeah just because EK supposedly have a high failure rate in command training doesn't mean all their Captains are of high quality.

LOL...This culture is alive and thriving within the ATC system.

zkojq wrote:

sierrakilo44 wrote:

reltney wrote:

It’s simple as this…. FLY the PLANE.

Are people forgetting how to fly or never taught in the first place….that is the question of the day.

It's not so much pilots forgetting to fly. It's pilots not being allowed to.

And then you have a punitive culture which not only demands automation but pretty much wants to eradicate any "flying out of the box" ie on LNAV/VNAV as much as possible, no track shortening, no creativity. Just do what the FMC and ATC tell you to do.

Exactly, it's a dire indictment of what management thinks of their pilot group's abilities when they don't even trust them enough to be able to fly a raw data approach or use manual thrust.

At the end of the day, the degradation of hand flying skills is something that every Training Department should be proactively trying to counter. Allowing crew to hand fly an approach or departure where/when it's appropriate to do so goes a long way to achieving this. Ignoring the issue or pretending it's not happening is obviously not going to solve anything.

Though, to be fair, EK is far from the only carrier to do such practices. Especially with LCCs, it's fairly common to highly discourage if not completely disallow the use of anything but the highest level of automation in non-emergency situations. A worrying trend but one that's not new.

Give EK's route network, you do wonder how often crew are faced with, for example, having to fly a VOR Approach and how much the "average" crew would struggle with doing so.

sierrakilo44 wrote:

Any attempt at thinking out of the box and the slightest mistake and you are immediately dismissed without investigation. It's a 12th century justice system in a 2021 global carrier.

Completely the antithesis of an open safety culture. I find these issues really fascinating. I often wonder how long it would take to instill a healthy safety culture in a large pilot group like Emirates' even if you suddenly had the right people in leadership positions starting tomorrow. Not really something that can be changed quickly. It's one thing to allow crew members to hand fly an approach. It's quite another for them to actually do so for fear of management repercussions if they mess something up and are forced to execute a go around.

By the way, some on this site overrate hand flying and underestimate why an airline would want to minimize pilots flying aircraft. Or the fact that majority of pilots embrace automation, as do aviation authorities worldwide.

Some may not like to listen to that, or even admit it. When there was more hand flying, there were more accidents caused by human error more than anything else. So why on Earth would you not encourage your staff to actually use automation?

Aviation is safer today than it has ever been because of automation.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

zkojq wrote:

sierrakilo44 wrote:

It's not so much pilots forgetting to fly. It's pilots not being allowed to.

And then you have a punitive culture which not only demands automation but pretty much wants to eradicate any "flying out of the box" ie on LNAV/VNAV as much as possible, no track shortening, no creativity. Just do what the FMC and ATC tell you to do.

Exactly, it's a dire indictment of what management thinks of their pilot group's abilities when they don't even trust them enough to be able to fly a raw data approach or use manual thrust.

At the end of the day, the degradation of hand flying skills is something that every Training Department should be proactively trying to counter. Allowing crew to hand fly an approach or departure where/when it's appropriate to do so goes a long way to achieving this. Ignoring the issue or pretending it's not happening is obviously not going to solve anything.

Though, to be fair, EK is far from the only carrier to do such practices. Especially with LCCs, it's fairly common to highly discourage if not completely disallow the use of anything but the highest level of automation in non-emergency situations. A worrying trend but one that's not new.

Give EK's route network, you do wonder how often crew are faced with, for example, having to fly a VOR Approach and how much the "average" crew would struggle with doing so.

sierrakilo44 wrote:

Any attempt at thinking out of the box and the slightest mistake and you are immediately dismissed without investigation. It's a 12th century justice system in a 2021 global carrier.

Completely the antithesis of an open safety culture. I find these issues really fascinating. I often wonder how long it would take to instill a healthy safety culture in a large pilot group like Emirates' even if you suddenly had the right people in leadership positions starting tomorrow. Not really something that can be changed quickly. It's one thing to allow crew members to hand fly an approach. It's quite another for them to actually do so for fear of management repercussions if they mess something up and are forced to execute a go around.

By the way, some on this site overrate hand flying and underestimate why an airline would want to minimize pilots flying aircraft. Or the fact that majority of pilots embrace automation, as do aviation authorities worldwide.

Some may not like to listen to that, or even admit it. When there was more hand flying, there were more accidents caused by human error more than anything else. So why on Earth would you not encourage your staff to actually use automation?

Aviation is safer today than it has ever been because of automation.

Because more and more accidents are now caused by being inexperienced in handflying when the airplane decides to stop doing it (right) on the automatics.

It must be a balance, use the automatics if it increases safety, but not that much you lose the skills to do it yourself.
If you do only a couple of approaches a week, and half of them as PF, and 90% of those fully automatic, good luck when you can't use the autopilot on a windy day. And if the company has a "every sim session is a check" attitude, you will not get the chance to maintain the skills you need when it all goes to hell.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

zkojq wrote:

sierrakilo44 wrote:

It's not so much pilots forgetting to fly. It's pilots not being allowed to.

And then you have a punitive culture which not only demands automation but pretty much wants to eradicate any "flying out of the box" ie on LNAV/VNAV as much as possible, no track shortening, no creativity. Just do what the FMC and ATC tell you to do.

Exactly, it's a dire indictment of what management thinks of their pilot group's abilities when they don't even trust them enough to be able to fly a raw data approach or use manual thrust.

At the end of the day, the degradation of hand flying skills is something that every Training Department should be proactively trying to counter. Allowing crew to hand fly an approach or departure where/when it's appropriate to do so goes a long way to achieving this. Ignoring the issue or pretending it's not happening is obviously not going to solve anything.

Though, to be fair, EK is far from the only carrier to do such practices. Especially with LCCs, it's fairly common to highly discourage if not completely disallow the use of anything but the highest level of automation in non-emergency situations. A worrying trend but one that's not new.

Give EK's route network, you do wonder how often crew are faced with, for example, having to fly a VOR Approach and how much the "average" crew would struggle with doing so.

sierrakilo44 wrote:

Any attempt at thinking out of the box and the slightest mistake and you are immediately dismissed without investigation. It's a 12th century justice system in a 2021 global carrier.

Completely the antithesis of an open safety culture. I find these issues really fascinating. I often wonder how long it would take to instill a healthy safety culture in a large pilot group like Emirates' even if you suddenly had the right people in leadership positions starting tomorrow. Not really something that can be changed quickly. It's one thing to allow crew members to hand fly an approach. It's quite another for them to actually do so for fear of management repercussions if they mess something up and are forced to execute a go around.

So why on Earth would you not encourage your staff to actually use automation?

Because automation sometimes is more of a hindrance than a help, and it’s important to know when to de-automate and rely on your own skills. There are some maneuvers that pilots are required to completely de-automate to execute them properly, such as TCAS RA events and PRM approach breakouts.

Yes, automation has enhanced flight safety by leaps and bounds, but it’s not perfect. A safe flight deck uses the appropriate combination of automation, decision making and stick and rudder skills. A flight deck that is missing one of those components is not a safe flight deck.

Most, if not all, airlines in the US have an automation policy that recommends crews de-automate and fly raw data when workload permits, including turning off autothrust, which EK prohibits. The FAA also mandates airlines incorporate raw data flying in their recurrent training curriculum. There are reasons for these policies, and the subject of this discussion is a perfect example.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

Aviation is safer today than it has ever been because of automation.

Agree 100%. BUT... more automation means less manual skills. What happens when automation fails (whether due to mechanical or human error)? When does the diminishing returns of automation outweigh the degradation of manual skills?

As mentioned, it has to be a balance. There are ways to safely handfly for proficiency (not at all negating the benefits of automation), and airlines can help through their training programs or policies.

Anecdotally, I can totally say that as a young pilot, going from no automation to heavy automation to no automation, yeah I could see that my stick skills suffered a bit. Especially when it came to thrust (autothrottles are great but completely destroyed my throttle muscle memory as most of my handflying still employed autothrottles).

It's a complex issue. But we can't just ignore the troubling trend of lack of basic airwork and shutdown conversation simply because of (the very true) notion that more automation has helped safety over the decades. Automation and manual skills are not mutually exclusive

Better safety is generated by automation on top of good manual flying skills and pilot standards. Trading automation for piloting skills is bad and not making things any safer. This feels like a forced drill to use the flight director bars above anything else gone wrong.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

Aviation is safer today than it has ever been because of automation.

Yes, but it has created a new set of issues where the crew becomes incapable of flying when automation fails. This is a problem and it needs to be addressed. It will be foolish to dwell on or even cheerlead on how good and safe automation is, but continuing to ignore the new safety issues caused by automation. In the past 10 years since the Air France Airbus crash, no significant improvements have been made to address this other than the piecemeal additional training items that comes in wake of further accidents. The cultural issues at certain airlines have been allowed to continue to fester, and this is the hard part to fix.

Your argument on how good automation is, is separate from the current issues, and dwelling on the same argument does not help aviation safety because people will think "its better than before, therefore we don't need to do anything".

jeffrey0032j wrote:

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

Aviation is safer today than it has ever been because of automation.

Yes, but it has created a new set of issues where the crew becomes incapable of flying when automation fails. This is a problem and it needs to be addressed. It will be foolish to dwell on or even cheerlead on how good and safe automation is, but continuing to ignore the new safety issues caused by automation. In the past 10 years since the Air France Airbus crash, no significant improvements have been made to address this other than the piecemeal additional training items that comes in wake of further accidents. The cultural issues at certain airlines have been allowed to continue to fester, and this is the hard part to fix.

Your argument on how good automation is, is separate from the current issues, and dwelling on the same argument does not help aviation safety because people will think "its better than before, therefore we don't need to do anything".

1. The Air France crash was simply the crew not communicating. Had they done nothing, plane would have flown just fine.

2. If you asked some who work in aviation, they will find a problem with everything and anything. Automation is not there to get rid of mistakes and it possibly couldn't because humans are imperfect, it is there to minimize them.

3. Change does not come in when things are going well. Change comes in because a new problem has been identified and that needs a solution.

4. People keep saying that there are issues at Dubai ATC. They have never had a runway collision. That there are issues with Emirates maintenance........they have not had a plane crash due to shoddy workmanship. We are told that their pilot program is incompetent, yet they are not in accidents we see elsewhere. If they were as poor as it is presented, they would have killed quite a number of people.

5. Fear is good. If I messed up and the company lost money while at investment banking, I would have lost my job. If in research I handled samples wrong, or clients for that matter, I would lose my job. This is how things work, and I have seen people fired and concerns addressed as to what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. This current issue, the one we are debating is not a training issue, it is pilots getting into the cockpit and choosing to imagine that someone else had their back.

That is foolish. No one has an obligation to take care of you like yourself.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

jeffrey0032j wrote:

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

Aviation is safer today than it has ever been because of automation.

Yes, but it has created a new set of issues where the crew becomes incapable of flying when automation fails. This is a problem and it needs to be addressed. It will be foolish to dwell on or even cheerlead on how good and safe automation is, but continuing to ignore the new safety issues caused by automation. In the past 10 years since the Air France Airbus crash, no significant improvements have been made to address this other than the piecemeal additional training items that comes in wake of further accidents. The cultural issues at certain airlines have been allowed to continue to fester, and this is the hard part to fix.

Your argument on how good automation is, is separate from the current issues, and dwelling on the same argument does not help aviation safety because people will think "its better than before, therefore we don't need to do anything".

1. The Air France crash was simply the crew not communicating. Had they done nothing, plane would have flown just fine.

2. If you asked some who work in aviation, they will find a problem with everything and anything. Automation is not there to get rid of mistakes and it possibly couldn't because humans are imperfect, it is there to minimize them.

3. Change does not come in when things are going well. Change comes in because a new problem has been identified and that needs a solution.

4. People keep saying that there are issues at Dubai ATC. They have never had a runway collision. That there are issues with Emirates maintenance........they have not had a plane crash due to shoddy workmanship. We are told that their pilot program is incompetent, yet they are not in accidents we see elsewhere. If they were as poor as it is presented, they would have killed quite a number of people.

5. Fear is good. If I messed up and the company lost money while at investment banking, I would have lost my job. If in research I handled samples wrong, or clients for that matter, I would lose my job. This is how things work, and I have seen people fired and concerns addressed as to what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. This current issue, the one we are debating is not a training issue, it is pilots getting into the cockpit and choosing to imagine that someone else had their back.

That is foolish. No one has an obligation to take care of you like yourself.

Just summarizing my thoughts on your points.

1. More than a communication issue, crew didn't even realise what they were doing until captain came back in (too late).

2. Yes I agree it is to minimize the risk, but the new issues it brings about needs to be addressed. You seem to have the assumption that the new issues cannot be solved or improved on and therefore we should sit around and do nothing because its safer than before.

3. I think this mindset is complacent at best and dangerous at worst. Certainly not one my organization practices. And contradicts what the Japanese, who practices kaizen, ie, continous improvement, would do.

4. EK521.

5. Refer to previous page for anecdotes from people in the know.

In short, nobody has said automation is bad and therefore we should throw it away and hand fly 100%. There needs to be ways to minimise the new risks caused by automation in the same way automation has helped to minismise the risk from before.

jeffrey0032j wrote:

Just summarizing my thoughts on your points.

1. More than a communication issue, crew didn't even realise what they were doing until captain came back in (too late).

Not an issue with automation.

jeffrey0032j wrote:

2. Yes I agree it is to minimize the risk, but the new issues it brings about needs to be addressed. You seem to have the assumption that the new issues cannot be solved or improved on and therefore we should sit around and do nothing because its safer than before.

Cost/benefit analysis.

How would automation help solve a pilot not doing their pre flight checks? Or extra training? That is someone that does not belong in the cockpit because they do not take their calling seriously.

jeffrey0032j wrote:

3. I think this mindset is complacent at best and dangerous at worst. Certainly not one my organization practices. And contradicts what the Japanese, who practices kaizen, ie, continous improvement, would do.

Your aim as an airline is to get people from point A to point B without killing them. If you are doing that, then that is what you continue to do.

No one changes processes just because.

jeffrey0032j wrote:

4. EK521.

What about it? Emirates has a single hull loss since 1985 when it was set up. Outside the life lost on the ground, not much in their 36 year history. Can you pick another airline, top airline outside say Qantas or ANA that has been as good in that period? The other crash they have had that was pilot error was FlyDubai 981......pilot error.

jeffrey0032j wrote:

5. Refer to previous page for anecdotes from people in the know.

In short, nobody has said automation is bad and therefore we should throw it away and hand fly 100%. There needs to be ways to minimise the new risks caused by automation in the same way automation has helped to minismise the risk from before.

Bad automation is so rare that complaining about it does not make sense. Qantas 72 as far as I can remember is such an outlier. You have the MAX, but that was all OEM.

You are more likely to crash because of pilot error, bad maintenance than you are because of bad automation. Even then, pilot error situations that come from poor training at the big airlines is such a rarity.

XT6Wagon wrote:

I dunno, I'm of the opinion that a simple mistake shouldn't be fired. Thats not this. They made a fairly major error that should have resulted in damage to the plane. THEN they flew thousands of miles with passengers and no inspection for damage. Its that second part they should be fired for.

I think that's the point. You don't fire pilots for falling foul of issues that can arise when you follow the rules. No rules are perfect and most give scope for issues to arise. You do however, fire pilots for not following the rules, i.e. negligence. Flying with unknown structural damage for 15 hours is negligent.

For the Dubai case, I fear that as the 0 feet issue is a known issue, so something I'd expect they'd have known about, it can't be looking good.

I see the main problem in pilots that get constantly monitored to totally stick to strictly fixed rules whether they make sense in a certain situation or not. It is company management setting those wrong rules and threatening to fire anybody who doesn't submit. However these rules don't make flying safer and are not what cockpits and procedures were intended to work like. Pilots cannot judge and decide themselves anymore. They are not permitted to hand fly have to use the autopilot in VMC and just fly like drilled apes. Pilots "in command" get flagged for not sticking to the rules and for individual decision making. This wrong culture has grown beyond individual airlines and continents and must be stopped. This major problem is not about big egos hurt but about a loss of safety.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

jeffrey0032j wrote:

Just summarizing my thoughts on your points.

1. More than a communication issue, crew didn't even realise what they were doing until captain came back in (too late).

Not an issue with automation.

If the crew doesn't realise the plane is stalling, even when the instruments indicate it, you could very well place this under automation dependency.
Were they under the impression an airbus doesn't stall (which it hard to do if the automation is working 100%, which it now didn't do)?
Were they so acustomed to flying the flightdirector they didn't know how to fly basic pitch/power? Had they flown some periode on raw data before, either real or in the sim?

Fact is automation failed on them and they were not equiped to handle that. The sudden downgrade in the handling of the airplane might be to much for pilots who have to depend on automatics to het an aircraft from A to B.

Eikie wrote:

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

jeffrey0032j wrote:

Just summarizing my thoughts on your points.

1. More than a communication issue, crew didn't even realise what they were doing until captain came back in (too late).

Not an issue with automation.

If the crew doesn't realise the plane is stalling, even when the instruments indicate it, you could very well place this under automation dependency.
Were they under the impression an airbus doesn't stall (which it hard to do if the automation is working 100%, which it now didn't do)?
Were they so acustomed to flying the flightdirector they didn't know how to fly basic pitch/power? Had they flown some periode on raw data before, either real or in the sim?

Fact is automation failed on them and they were not equiped to handle that. The sudden downgrade in the handling of the airplane might be to much for pilots who have to depend on automatics to het an aircraft from A to B.

If two people are having an issue and they cannot communicate as to what it is they are doing, how is automation to help with that?

Sometimes it feels like we are complaining for the sake of it.

Following all the evidence so far presented, why FAA/EASA/others do NOT downgrade Emirates and/or UAE operators in their ruled airspace on safety concerns? It was done in the past for much less, as I understand.

Aquila3 wrote:

Following all the evidence so far presented, why FAA/EASA/others do NOT downgrade Emirates and/or UAE operators in their ruled airspace on safety concerns? It was done in the past for much less, as I understand.

I had a post taken down, and I was not going to reply.

My thinking, there is a lot o casual racism that goes on over here that people might not even be aware of.

There is someone that states that this is an enterprise that is stuck in the 12th century. Off site, I asked what this means. Does it mean that if you make a mistake you never have to answer? Or what is it, going by some of what has been posted, making an error so serious as the one made just because someone did not take time to counter check should be solved by simply putting a company wide memo. Do people really understand what is at stake? Human lives. Sometimes you sack people and send a message out on what to watch out for.

You then have people coming in and having an opinion that there is not a lot of meritocracy. Why on Earth would anyone expect to go and work in another country and believe that they would not want to promote their own first and foremost? This is the freaking aviation industry where most nations will not even let you own a majority stake if you are not from the same country or even the same trading block like EU. So yes, they promote their own and my thinking is that in time they would want to have Emiratis running most aspects of the airline. What is wrong in that?

I have similarly seen some opine that there is an issue with ATC and maintenance. Since Emirates started off in 1985, they have one hull loss that led to loss of life on the ground. There is a FlyDubai fatal accident in Russia and they have not had the runway issues that we have seen in the US or Europe. Outside this, they have fewer crashes than most other countries despite flying a tonne of miles each year. All the 'poor practices' have not led to a maintenance associated crash, yet we have had so many of these in the US and even Japan Airlines. Poor training as pointed out so many times on this topic has not led to what one would assume would be a crash every so often to justify this stance.

We are also told that these pilots might not have the skills. This company flies into monsoon country, and even in England when storms are bad, they have no problems landing planes without issue. Maybe, they are doing something right as opposed to what is parroted and repeated on here. Why else would you also see people bringing standards like 'the FAA does this, and US airlines do that' as if this is the standard everyone has to aspire to achieve? I tried pointing this out without going into detail, drawing parallels with ET302, how that was covered in the media, US hearings before Boeing admitted that they had an issue. It is so ingrained in some that there is one way of doing things. It is a blinkered way of looking at things and imagining that other people have nothing to contribute rather than copy the would be standard bearers. It is so common that some might not even see the folly in this type of thinking.

Different cultures evolve differently, and different companies behave differently. People need to stop behaving like there is only one way of doing things and getting the desired results. That said, it does not mean that the ME3 do not have issues. Those issues are aspects one needs to be comfortable with when they go to work there, otherwise, stay at home.

I don’t think I’ve seen this incident referenced. Different airline (FlyBE, now defunct UK regional airline). Superficially it looks to have had a similar cause.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-46137445

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

Or the fact that majority of pilots embrace automation

What do you mean? It's not like they have a choice.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

So why on Earth would you not encourage your staff to actually use automation?

Because an over-reliance on automation results in a degradation of hand-flying skills over time. This is a well known concept which I suggest you read up about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESJH1NLMLs

If every car you drive for 25 years has an automatic transmission then one day you get to the rental car office and the only stock they have has a manual transmission, you are guaranteed to stall it. Multiple times. Even if you're Michael Schumacher or Fernando Alonso.

Eikie wrote:

It must be a balance, use the automatics if it increases safety, but not that much you lose the skills to do it yourself.
If you do only a couple of approaches a week, and half of them as PF, and 90% of those fully automatic, good luck when you can't use the autopilot on a windy day. And if the company has a "every sim session is a check" attitude, you will not get the chance to maintain the skills you need when it all goes to hell.

Well said.

There was literally nothing in my post about how crew should never use automation. It's all about balance + nuance and using good airmanship to judge what's appropriate:

- Fatiguing long haul flight from DXB to JFK with busy airspace (read high workload)...probably not a good time to hand fly the approach.
- Short-haul hop from DXB to BGW/KWI/ADD with quiet airspace on the other end...probably a good opportunity to hand fly the approach. Maybe a raw data approach?...and also an opportunity to let the other crew member hand fly the departure.

NW747-400 wrote:

Because automation sometimes is more of a hindrance than a help, and it’s important to know when to de-automate and rely on your own skills. There are some maneuvers that pilots are required to completely de-automate to execute them properly, such as TCAS RA events and PRM approach breakouts.

Yes, automation has enhanced flight safety by leaps and bounds, but it’s not perfect. A safe flight deck uses the appropriate combination of automation, decision making and stick and rudder skills. A flight deck that is missing one of those components is not a safe flight deck.

Most, if not all, airlines in the US have an automation policy that recommends crews de-automate and fly raw data when workload permits, including turning off autothrust, which EK prohibits. The FAA also mandates airlines incorporate raw data flying in their recurrent training curriculum. There are reasons for these policies, and the subject of this discussion is a perfect example.

DeltaMD90 wrote:

Especially when it came to thrust (autothrottles are great but completely destroyed my throttle muscle memory as most of my handflying still employed autothrottles).

IMO this is also a valid area of concern regarding Airbus throttles remaining stationary when AutoThrust is engaged, even as the engines spool up and down. Not unsafe, but something that leads to less situational awareness for the crew nearly always something to be concerned about.

Similarly with the 737, even though the trim wheels are somewhat annoyingly positioned and make an irritating noise, they definitely enhance situational awareness, especially compared to a 787 where they're completely gone.

DeltaMD90 wrote:

It's a complex issue. But we can't just ignore the troubling trend of lack of basic airwork and shutdown conversation simply because of (the very true) notion that more automation has helped safety over the decades. Automation and manual skills are not mutually exclusive

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

4. People keep saying that there are issues at Dubai ATC. They have never had a runway collision. That there are issues with Emirates maintenance........they have not had a plane crash due to shoddy workmanship. We are told that their pilot program is incompetent, yet they are not in accidents we see elsewhere. If they were as poor as it is presented, they would have killed quite a number of people.

The Concorde never had a crash....until it did. Emirates never had a crash....until they did. The 737MAX had a perfect safety record...until suddenly it very much didn't.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

5. Fear is good. If I messed up and the company lost money while at investment banking, I would have lost my job. If in research I handled samples wrong, or clients for that matter, I would lose my job. This is how things work, and I have seen people fired and concerns addressed as to what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. This current issue, the one we are debating is not a training issue, it is pilots getting into the cockpit and choosing to imagine that someone else had their back.

So it's a good thing that 93% of Qatar Airways flight crew are scared to make a fatigue report?

With respect, I recommend you look into human factors. The things we are discussing are not purely theoretical. B777LRF had some excellent posts earlier in the thread which do a great job of explaining why a positive safety culture and a good Safety Management System is far more effective in improving safety than a culture of fear.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

If I messed up and the company lost money while at investment banking, I would have lost my job.

Or you're tempted to lie, hide your losses and engage in high risk trading to try and recoup them to cover things up. Read up on the collapse of Barings Bank due to Nick Leeson's rogue trading:

From 1992, Leeson made unauthorised speculative trades that at first made large profits for Barings: £10 million, which accounted for 10% of Barings' annual profit. He earned a bonus of £130,000 on his salary of £50,000 for that year. Leeson's luck soon went sour and he used one of Barings' error accounts (accounts used to correct mistakes made in trading) to hide his losses. He says that this account was first used to hide an error made by one of his subordinates; she had been assigned to buy twenty futures contracts for Fuji Bank, but had sold them instead, costing Barings £20,000.

However, Leeson used this error account to cover further bad trades by himself and others. For example, he used it to cover a number of mistakes made by one of his traders who frequently came to work after long nights of partying. Leeson believes that he first crossed into out-and-out criminal conduct when he forgot to reconcile a discrepancy of 500 contracts, costing Barings US$1.7 million. He concluded that the only way to hide such a massive error and keep his job was to hide it in the error account. Leeson insists that he never used the account for his own gain. In 1996 investigators had located approximately $35 million in various bank accounts tied to him.

By the end of 1992, the error account's losses exceeded £2 million, increasing to £23 million in late 1993. This amount ballooned to £208 million by the end of 1994. Leeson had followed a "doubling" strategy: every time he lost money, he would bet double the amount that was lost in order to recoup the amount. This had been successful for him in the past, including once in 1993 where he was able to cover a £6 million negative balance in the error account and after which he vowed not to use the account again. However, Leeson had to maintain his reputation as a trading genius and soon found himself hiding his losses there again. As the losses grew higher and higher, Leeson fabricated cover stories to explain why he needed more cash from London; his sterling reputation protected him from close scrutiny.

The beginning of the end occurred on 16 January 1995, when Leeson placed a short straddle in the Singapore and Tokyo stock exchanges, essentially betting that the Japanese stock market would not move significantly overnight. However, the Kobe earthquake hit early in the morning on 17 January, sending Asian markets, and Leeson's trading positions, into a tailspin. Leeson attempted to recoup his losses by making a series of increasingly risky new trades (using a long-long future arbitrage), this time betting that the Nikkei Stock Average would make a rapid recovery. However, the recovery failed to materialise.

Leeson left a note reading, "I'm sorry" and fled Singapore on 23 February. Losses eventually reached £827 million (US$1.4 billion), twice Barings' available trading capital. After a failed bailout attempt, Barings, which had been the UK's oldest merchant bank, was declared insolvent on 26 February. After fleeing to Malaysia, Thailand and finally Germany, Leeson was arrested in Frankfurt and extradited back to Singapore on 20 November 1995.

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

Aquila3 wrote:

Following all the evidence so far presented, why FAA/EASA/others do NOT downgrade Emirates and/or UAE operators in their ruled airspace on safety concerns? It was done in the past for much less, as I understand.

I've often wondered this too. The mere fact that the airlines have such a close relationship with their regulators (with the regulators being only too happy to change the rules around things such as duty times, logging bunk time, minimum rest periods etc inorder to help the airlines gain an advantage over traditional European/Asian/American carriers) should be a big cause for concern. Absolutely unacceptable for the Civil Aviation Regulator to have members of it's board who are also on the board of the carriers they're supposed to be regulating.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

Different cultures evolve differently, and different companies behave differently. People need to stop behaving like there is only one way of doing things and getting the desired results.

Not when it comes to aviation safety.
There is only one way to approach aviation safety, which has been learned through decades of accident investigation, experience and
research in all kinds of related fields, not the least human factors.
This is the way that is promoted by all international industry actors and regulators and which is followed by most reputable airlines. Airlines can't 'freestyle' safety, it's an industry-wide effort that has reached widespread consensus.

Among the things that are paramount to a proper safety culture in an airline are a just and open reporting policy where all personnel in safety sensitive positions are encouraged to come forward with their mistakes with no fear of reprisal so that all parties can learn from them and avoid them in the future, a regular monitoring of the operation to identify any potential hazards and safety shortfalls to remedy them before safety events happen and a thorough analysis of accidents and incidents at all levels of the operational structure, which must include the training and managerial aspect of the operation.

Summarily punishing staff, creating a culture of fear and occulting the facts are antithetic to a proper safety culture.

zkojq wrote:

IMO this is also a valid area of concern regarding Airbus throttles remaining stationary when AutoThrust is engaged, even as the engines spool up and down. Not unsafe, but something that leads to less situational awareness for the crew nearly always something to be concerned about.

This is entirely wrong.
The Airbus autothrust system is an absolutely brilliant piece of kit... The best part of the whole flight control system if you ask me. The old 'oh but the sticks don't move' is usually uttered by those who have never operated it or do not understand it.
I could go on for hours about how smart the thing actually is (starting with how wrong it is to rely on a whirring electric motor and moving levers for thrust awareness), but I'd go way off topic so I'll just point to the two accidents which were in part caused by the Boeing way of doing autothrust, one of which happened to the airline that this thread is about.

It is a fact that many airlines today demand this kind of submissive behaviour from their slaved to the rules pilots.
Company rules are put above everything. No more go arounds, no more manual flying or landing, no minor diversion from the plan. Constant remote monitoring and data transmission. Stay on the FD or you get flagged in hit lists with a sim ride invitation by the chief pilot.
This should be dealt with by the industry. The sooner the better. We should bring back the old balance of smart piloting, cockpit resource management and limited automation only to assist the pilots. It is a global issue by now not just an airline's.

zkojq wrote:

What do you mean? It's not like they have a choice.

Because an over-reliance on automation results in a degradation of hand-flying skills over time. This is a well known concept which I suggest you read up about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESJH1NLMLs

If every car you drive for 25 years has an automatic transmission then one day you get to the rental car office and the only stock they have has a manual transmission, you are guaranteed to stall it. Multiple times. Even if you're Michael Schumacher or Fernando Alonso.

Who on Earth wants pilots hand flying more? No one.

OEM's do not want them doing that because they long came to the conclusion that humans are unpredictable, and this unpredictability tends to show itself as poor decision making (pilot error) that leads to more accidents and incidents. Airbus to a far greater degree than Boeing noticed this when they went fly by wire.

Airlines do not want them hand flying most of the time because, well, they tend to as mentioned above make bad decisions. That is not great for the brand, neither is it fantastic on the balance sheet.

Passengers would rather they do what they are doing currently. Take off and give controls to the autopilot, go to monitoring what the computers are doing.

As with everything, there is a cost benefit analysis. Automation got rid of a lot of error points. With cars, driving a manual car consisted of you listening to the engine to time that gear change correctly or looking at your gauges. You took that away and what you have today is a driver that operates with the accelerator and brake. They dont have to worry about where the gear stick is, and they have both hands on the steering wheel.

I have driven both, mostly the manual version, and I wouldn't go back to that.

The way people overrate hand flying is baffling.

zkojq wrote:

The Concorde never had a crash....until it did. Emirates never had a crash....until they did. The 737MAX had a perfect safety record...until suddenly it very much didn't.

Let me put it another way. Emirates has not had the growing pains other airlines have had. They have not had poor maintenance like Alaska Airlines 261, they have not had the issues that were seen with airlines cutting corners with the DC10. They have not failed to track what airlines they had on the runway.

It is a sign that they are doing something right despite opinions on here that they are led by incompetent people.

zkojq wrote:

So it's a good thing that 93% of Qatar Airways flight crew are scared to make a fatigue report?

With respect, I recommend you look into human factors. The things we are discussing are not purely theoretical. B777LRF had some excellent posts earlier in the thread which do a great job of explaining why a positive safety culture and a good Safety Management System is far more effective in improving safety than a culture of fear.

In the time I have been here, I have learnt a lot. One of the things I have learnt is that pilots do not want to be monitored, including what they do up there. They dont even want flight data being used in a way that might lead to discipline. What they have is this entitlement and a culture of blame that stops anyone from being held accountable.

This incident in particular was two pilots not doing proper pre-flight checks but soon enough it became a problem with the airline. This team ran into issues at the worst time; after takeoff and not having enough altitude. They then decided that instead of coming back and having the plane checked, they should just continue the flight. What would happen if they really ran into serious issues along the way?
These questions are not asked enough and they are drowned out by people who seem like they have a score to settle with the airline.

You can sack, and still tell people what the issue was, what should be done. The sacking serves as a reminder that the mistake is not going to be tolerated.

This is an ultra competitive industry that is high capex, low return and in some countries, the national airline is one of the crown jewels of the state regardless of whether they make a profit or loss. When you are hired by Emirates, you are not representing the airline, but Dubai as a whole, and that is huge responsibility. Your job does not simply end with the lives you are entrusted with on the plane.
Some do not seem to get this because management elsewhere has acquiesced. Silly mistakes that have the potential to see loss of life should not be tolerated, and I am yet to see anything resembling common sense on this matter with anyone telling us why what was done was acceptable.

Emirates not having a fatal accident must mean they are doing something right despite all the cries about how horrible they are as an airline.

zkojq wrote:

Or you're tempted to lie, hide your losses and engage in high risk trading to try and recoup them to cover things up. Read up on the collapse of Barings Bank due to Nick Leeson's rogue trading:

From 1992, Leeson made unauthorised speculative trades that at first made large profits for Barings: £10 million, which accounted for 10% of Barings' annual profit. He earned a bonus of £130,000 on his salary of £50,000 for that year. Leeson's luck soon went sour and he used one of Barings' error accounts (accounts used to correct mistakes made in trading) to hide his losses. He says that this account was first used to hide an error made by one of his subordinates; she had been assigned to buy twenty futures contracts for Fuji Bank, but had sold them instead, costing Barings £20,000.

However, Leeson used this error account to cover further bad trades by himself and others. For example, he used it to cover a number of mistakes made by one of his traders who frequently came to work after long nights of partying. Leeson believes that he first crossed into out-and-out criminal conduct when he forgot to reconcile a discrepancy of 500 contracts, costing Barings US$1.7 million. He concluded that the only way to hide such a massive error and keep his job was to hide it in the error account. Leeson insists that he never used the account for his own gain. In 1996 investigators had located approximately $35 million in various bank accounts tied to him.

By the end of 1992, the error account's losses exceeded £2 million, increasing to £23 million in late 1993. This amount ballooned to £208 million by the end of 1994. Leeson had followed a "doubling" strategy: every time he lost money, he would bet double the amount that was lost in order to recoup the amount. This had been successful for him in the past, including once in 1993 where he was able to cover a £6 million negative balance in the error account and after which he vowed not to use the account again. However, Leeson had to maintain his reputation as a trading genius and soon found himself hiding his losses there again. As the losses grew higher and higher, Leeson fabricated cover stories to explain why he needed more cash from London; his sterling reputation protected him from close scrutiny.

The beginning of the end occurred on 16 January 1995, when Leeson placed a short straddle in the Singapore and Tokyo stock exchanges, essentially betting that the Japanese stock market would not move significantly overnight. However, the Kobe earthquake hit early in the morning on 17 January, sending Asian markets, and Leeson's trading positions, into a tailspin. Leeson attempted to recoup his losses by making a series of increasingly risky new trades (using a long-long future arbitrage), this time betting that the Nikkei Stock Average would make a rapid recovery. However, the recovery failed to materialise.

Leeson left a note reading, "I'm sorry" and fled Singapore on 23 February. Losses eventually reached £827 million (US$1.4 billion), twice Barings' available trading capital. After a failed bailout attempt, Barings, which had been the UK's oldest merchant bank, was declared insolvent on 26 February. After fleeing to Malaysia, Thailand and finally Germany, Leeson was arrested in Frankfurt and extradited back to Singapore on 20 November 1995.

Have you ever heard of bad faith arguments? This is one.

Even in the 80's and most of the 90's when you did not have software to track what was done by who. It was easy for any competent financial institution to track what every trader was doing. Someone 'hiding' his losses is a sign of poor back end, or just poor control measures. Baring got to where they were because they never questioned.

Francoflier wrote:

Not when it comes to aviation safety.
There is only one way to approach aviation safety, which has been learned through decades of accident investigation, experience and
research in all kinds of related fields, not the least human factors.
This is the way that is promoted by all international industry actors and regulators and which is followed by most reputable airlines. Airlines can't 'freestyle' safety, it's an industry-wide effort that has reached widespread consensus.

Among the things that are paramount to a proper safety culture in an airline are a just and open reporting policy where all personnel in safety sensitive positions are encouraged to come forward with their mistakes with no fear of reprisal so that all parties can learn from them and avoid them in the future, a regular monitoring of the operation to identify any potential hazards and safety shortfalls to remedy them before safety events happen and a thorough analysis of accidents and incidents at all levels of the operational structure, which must include the training and managerial aspect of the operation.

Summarily punishing staff, creating a culture of fear and occulting the facts are antithetic to a proper safety culture.

People are fired in all lines of work when they make stupid errors. Come on now.

These pilots were not paying attention to their V1 or Vr. Could have easily crashed this plane into buildings. So what is wrong with them being dismissed? This was a silly mistake. Emirates also followed that with a bulletin.

Different airlines also do things differently. This is why you do not have a single standard operating procedure for one type of plane worldwide. Why two pilots working at the same company will think out problems differently and come to the same conclusion. No one shoe fits all.

The point is not to fire the pilots but the guys responsible for the pilots staring at their FD-bars instead of properly rotating and working together as intended. This event seems to prove that drill is dangerous. Bring the pilots back into the loop. There is a reason why the US has an excellent flight safety level with more traditional thinking and acting responsible pilots not hardwired to rules bots.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

People are fired in all lines of work when they make stupid errors. Come on now.

These pilots were not paying attention to their V1 or Vr. Could have easily crashed this plane into buildings. So what is wrong with them being dismissed? This was a silly mistake.

Aviation is not any 'line of of work'. It is a highly safety-sensitive environment which must be managed adequately following the guidelines I mentioned above.

The question is: Why didn't they follow their climb speed? Why didn't they revert to basic airmanship? Why did they not understand what was happening?
The whole idea of an aviation safety system is to understand why errors happen.
Sure, it could be that they are hopelessly incompetent pilots in which case there is no remedy and they don't belong in a cockpit, but do we know that?
Do we know their training record? How do we know the training system they are a product of hasn't failed them? How do we know if there are any underlying systemic operational issue that may have lead to this happening?

No pilot shows up for work wanting to screw up or do a bad job.

The goal of safety management is to fully understand every aspect of a safety event and its origins so as to make sure it doesn't happen again, and that means looking at much more than who screwed up and eliminating them.
Summarily firing people when they do something wrong does nothing to prevent the same thing potentially happening again because you are likely not attacking the root of the problem, unless you've determined that there were no other factors involved, which is highly unlikely.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

People are fired in all lines of work when they make stupid errors. Come on now.

Not in my country. Unless you are grossly negligent or doing it on purpose, most of the time people realise one makes mistakes and firing somebody for them doesn't serve anyone.

Ofcourse if you keep making mistakes after (re)training, you are in the wrong line of work, but mistakes happen. Firing people fornthem just promoties a culture of covering up, blaming others and fear induced stress.

[quote="Gremlinzzzz"][/quote]

Gremlinzzz, all I can surmise from this thread is that you are not a pilot, nor do you have any experience working within an aviation safety management system.

Clearly you are just here for the sake of arguing. Many people have tried to explain how things work, and all you can do is dig in your heels and argue for 100% automated flight and fire crews for any and all errors.

There is a plethora of reasons that robust safety management systems do not share your uninformed opinions.

Pleasant day to you

Wow, where do I start? Gremlinzzzz, what kind of flight experience do you have?

Gremlinzzzz, I think you are over-hyping automation and underrating the importance of maintaining the skill of hand flying and know when to automate and deautomate.

You asked

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

Who on Earth wants pilots hand flying more?

Well I know for fact that AA, UA. AS, WN NK, F9, B6 DL, does when the workload permits. I also know UPS, FedEx, K4, ABX, ATI, Atlas, Omni does as well. The regional carriers also encourages as well.

This is straight from my company manuals,

“ Automation is provided to enhance flight safety, workload management, and to enable higher level decision making and management of the aircraft flight path.

Unfortunately, continuous use of those systems does not reinforce a pilot’s knowledge and skills in manual flight operations. Automation should not be used as a substitute to good airmanship, nor should its use preclude the proficiency, or practice of appropriate hand flying.

Whenever possible in a low threat environment or where procedures and regulations do not require the use of an autopilot, manual flying is encouraged in order to maintain basic fundamental flying skills. Degradation of the pilot’s ability to quickly recover the aircraft from an undesired state must not be allowed to occur.

Workload management, airspace saturation, and many other factors must be considered before choosing the proper level of automation required for a given flight segment.”

No offense, you sound like you don’t have any flight background to make the argument use of flight automation. I could wrong, hence is why I asked you about your flying background….

Francoflier wrote:

Aviation is not any 'line of of work'. It is a highly safety-sensitive environment which must be managed adequately following the guidelines I mentioned above.

The question is: Why didn't they follow their climb speed? Why didn't they revert to basic airmanship? Why did they not understand what was happening?
The whole idea of an aviation safety system is to understand why errors happen.
Sure, it could be that they are hopelessly incompetent pilots in which case there is no remedy and they don't belong in a cockpit, but do we know that?
Do we know their training record? How do we know the training system they are a product of hasn't failed them? How do we know if there are any underlying systemic operational issue that may have lead to this happening?

No pilot shows up for work wanting to screw up or do a bad job.

The goal of safety management is to fully understand every aspect of a safety event and its origins so as to make sure it doesn't happen again, and that means looking at much more than who screwed up and eliminating them.
Summarily firing people when they do something wrong does nothing to prevent the same thing potentially happening again because you are likely not attacking the root of the problem, unless you've determined that there were no other factors involved, which is highly unlikely.

1. Aviation is logistics. It is the same line of work as Door Dash, Uber Eats, shipping, bus transport, cruise ship, rail..........just in the air with more expensive equipment.

If the Uber Eats guy does not pay attention with his bicycle, he eats pavement or loses his life in an accident.
If a rail operator does not pay attention, he will derail, if switches are not done well trains collide.
If a ship does not have the proper people managing, you have Cahaya Bahari, or Costa Concordia.
Trucking and bus transport problems are way too many.

Does it mean that the people who work in these other lines do not care? They do, but sometimes people make mistakes they should not make and management needs to make a decision as to whether they remain on the job or not.

It is an employee's job work in such a way that they continue keeping their job. It is management's job to ensure that an enterprise is not injured by the people they have entrusted with people's lives and expensive equipment.

Emirates once paid $7,000 to every passenger on the jet that crashed in India. The reputation cost that comes with a plane crash is vastly more expensive because passengers begin to doubt the product.

Finally, why are we questioning everything bar the pilots? Or a far better question is why are they they only ones that encountered such an issue? Sometimes answers are found in simplicity.

Noshow wrote:

The point is not to fire the pilots but the guys responsible for the pilots staring at their FD-bars instead of properly rotating and working together as intended. This event seems to prove that drill is dangerous. Bring the pilots back into the loop. There is a reason why the US has an excellent flight safety level with more traditional thinking and acting responsible pilots not hardwired to rules bots.

Emirates does not have an excellent flight safety level?

NW747-400 wrote:

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

Gremlinzzz, all I can surmise from this thread is that you are not a pilot, nor do you have any experience working within an aviation safety management system.

Clearly you are just here for the sake of arguing. Many people have tried to explain how things work, and all you can do is dig in your heels and argue for 100% automated flight and fire crews for any and all errors.

There is a plethora of reasons that robust safety management systems do not share your uninformed opinions.

Pleasant day to you

I am not a pilot.

I have friends in aviation, and a late uncle was a station manager for an airline. I am not as stupid as some of you imagine, neither do I have the experience some have. I however can see a bogus argument from a mile away.

bigb wrote:

Wow, where do I start? Gremlinzzzz, what kind of flight experience do you have?

Gremlinzzzz, I think you are over-hyping automation and underrating the importance of maintaining the skill of hand flying and know when to automate and deautomate.

You asked

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

Who on Earth wants pilots hand flying more?

Well I know for fact that AA, UA. AS, WN NK, F9, B6 DL, does when the workload permits. I also know UPS, FedEx, K4, ABX, ATI, Atlas, Omni does as well. The regional carriers also encourages as well.

This is straight from my company manuals,

“ Automation is provided to enhance flight safety, workload management, and to enable higher level decision making and management of the aircraft flight path.

Unfortunately, continuous use of those systems does not reinforce a pilot’s knowledge and skills in manual flight operations. Automation should not be used as a substitute to good airmanship, nor should its use preclude the proficiency, or practice of appropriate hand flying.

Whenever possible in a low threat environment or where procedures and regulations do not require the use of an autopilot, manual flying is encouraged in order to maintain basic fundamental flying skills. Degradation of the pilot’s ability to quickly recover the aircraft from an undesired state must not be allowed to occur.

Workload management, airspace saturation, and many other factors must be considered before choosing the proper level of automation required for a given flight segment.”

No offense, you sound like you don’t have any flight background to make the argument use of flight automation. I could wrong, hence is why I asked you about your flying background….

Automation got rid of a lot of accidents. That is not over-hyping automation, it is what it is.

Reducing the amount of human interaction with the plane did wonders for aviation. We are not headed back to the stone age, if anything we are seeing and will continue to see even more automation across all areas aviation.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

NW747-400 wrote:

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

Gremlinzzz, all I can surmise from this thread is that you are not a pilot, nor do you have any experience working within an aviation safety management system.

Clearly you are just here for the sake of arguing. Many people have tried to explain how things work, and all you can do is dig in your heels and argue for 100% automated flight and fire crews for any and all errors.

There is a plethora of reasons that robust safety management systems do not share your uninformed opinions.

Pleasant day to you

I am not a pilot.

I have friends in aviation, and a late uncle was a station manager for an airline. I am not as stupid as some of you imagine, neither do I have the experience some have. I however can see a bogus argument from a mile away.

Well, we aren’t calling you stupid. However, I believe you lack the credibility argue the use of automation of flight when you don’t have any lick of flight experience. Just because you have friends in the industry doesn’t give you that credibility either. Do us a favor, go take some flight lessons, go study up on the automation of flight and human factors. You’ll be quite surprised to learn a lot about how the industry views automation quite different from what you are claiming.

Btw, no one is advocating going back to the Stone Age or suggesting getting rid of automation. The industry has pushed for smart use of it, because yes it is helpful in a high workload environment. But there are situations, plenty of them where is is appropriate to de-automate because it does increase workload.

This is something you’ll never understand because of your lack of experience inside of the flight deck, lac of experience in the industry as a pilot, and where you are standing outside looking in..

sierrakilo44 wrote:

reltney wrote:

It’s simple as this…. FLY the PLANE.

Are people forgetting how to fly or never taught in the first place….that is the question of the day.

It's not so much pilots forgetting to fly. It's pilots not being allowed to. First off in EK long haul they only get a few sectors per month as PF.

And then you have a punitive culture which not only demands automation but pretty much wants to eradicate any "flying out of the box" ie on LNAV/VNAV as much as possible, no track shortening, no creativity. Just do what the FMC and ATC tell you to do.

Any attempt at thinking out of the box and the slightest mistake and you are immediately dismissed without investigation. It's a 12th century justice system in a 2021 global carrier.

Wouldn't surprise me to think the crew on the Flight Deck decided to continue to IAD rather than return to DXB lest they draw attention to their mistake. It's a culture of fear and cover ups.

Frankly speaking, this is not unique to EK. Boeing MAX scenario comes to mind as going on exact same lines.
And I remember some successfully resolved accidents where the consensus of the pilot gang on this site was basically "they should have crashed by the book, not successfully land against SOP"

DeltaMD90 wrote:

Anecdotally, I can totally say that as a young pilot, going from no automation to heavy automation to no automation, yeah I could see that my stick skills suffered a bit. Especially when it came to thrust (autothrottles are great but completely destroyed my throttle muscle memory as most of my handflying still employed autothrottles).

It's a complex issue. But we can't just ignore the troubling trend of lack of basic airwork and shutdown conversation simply because of (the very true) notion that more automation has helped safety over the decades. Automation and manual skills are not mutually exclusive

Thanks for the comments.

It seems to be not just retaining the manual dexterity needed to operate the controls throughout the flight regime, it's the ability to maintain situational awareness so that if/when the automation breaks down you can jump in and take over.

I see similar things with self driving cars in that they lull you into thinking the automation can solve every problem, yet the ones they can't solve are the most complex cases, and then they kick off leaving the unengaged driver seconds to sort out what is happening and take over.

Revelation wrote:

DeltaMD90 wrote:

Anecdotally, I can totally say that as a young pilot, going from no automation to heavy automation to no automation, yeah I could see that my stick skills suffered a bit. Especially when it came to thrust (autothrottles are great but completely destroyed my throttle muscle memory as most of my handflying still employed autothrottles).

It's a complex issue. But we can't just ignore the troubling trend of lack of basic airwork and shutdown conversation simply because of (the very true) notion that more automation has helped safety over the decades. Automation and manual skills are not mutually exclusive

Thanks for the comments.

It seems to be not just retaining the manual dexterity needed to operate the controls throughout the flight regime, it's the ability to maintain situational awareness so that if/when the automation breaks down you can jump in and take over.

I see similar things with self driving cars in that they lull you into thinking the automation can solve every problem, yet the ones they can't solve are the most complex cases, and then they kick off leaving the unengaged driver seconds to sort out what is happening and take over.

This is exactly the name of the game.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

NW747-400 wrote:

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

Gremlinzzz, all I can surmise from this thread is that you are not a pilot, nor do you have any experience working within an aviation safety management system.

Clearly you are just here for the sake of arguing. Many people have tried to explain how things work, and all you can do is dig in your heels and argue for 100% automated flight and fire crews for any and all errors.

There is a plethora of reasons that robust safety management systems do not share your uninformed opinions.

Pleasant day to you

I am not a pilot.

I have friends in aviation, and a late uncle was a station manager for an airline. I am not as stupid as some of you imagine, neither do I have the experience some have. I however can see a bogus argument from a mile away.

No one is calling you stupid, however, you refuse to actually listen and learn from industry experts and instead you rely on your own uninformed opinions that counter decades of industry learning and evolution. BigB even directly quoted the automation policy at his airline.

You are correct that automation is amazing and will only continue to improve, and we will likely see pilotless airliners within our lifetime. However, we are not there yet. Not even close, and to pretend that relying on automation is 100% safe is neither accurate nor acceptable.

Ab initio flight training programs still teach students how to fly airplanes without the use of automation. It’s still a skill that is absolutely crucial to safety of flight.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

Who on Earth wants pilots hand flying more? No one.

OEM's do not want them doing that because they long came to the conclusion that humans are unpredictable, and this unpredictability tends to show itself as poor decision making (pilot error) that leads to more accidents and incidents. Airbus to a far greater degree than Boeing noticed this when they went fly by wire.

Airlines do not want them hand flying most of the time because, well, they tend to as mentioned above make bad decisions. That is not great for the brand, neither is it fantastic on the balance sheet.

Your comments are simply not true, there is actually a push from the OEMs and airlines to increase hand flying.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

The way people overrate hand flying is baffling.

I find the way that people who have never flown an airliner make themselves out as experts on subjects they unqualified.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

In the time I have been here, I have learnt a lot. One of the things I have learnt is that pilots do not want to be monitored, including what they do up there. They dont even want flight data being used in a way that might lead to discipline. What they have is this entitlement and a culture of blame that stops anyone from being held accountable.

You will find airlines like EK every flight is monitored with thousands of parameters every flight, I don’t know of any major airline that does not do that sort of monitoring.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

This incident in particular was two pilots not doing proper pre-flight checks

How do you know that ?

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

They then decided that instead of coming back and having the plane checked, they should just continue the flight.

It can take over 10 hours for an aircraft on a long haul flight to get below maximum landing weight. With tyre issues on takeoff it is preferable to have the aircraft as light as possible for landing, which just happens to occur at the destination.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

What would happen if they really ran into serious issues along the way?

The same process as any other serious issue like depressurization or an engine failure. You do realise there would be hundreds of airports they pass enroute ?

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

You can sack, and still tell people what the issue was, what should be done. The sacking serves as a reminder that the mistake is not going to be tolerated.

How can you terminate someone if you don’t know what happened ?

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

When you are hired by Emirates, you are not representing the airline, but Dubai as a whole, and that is huge responsibility. Your job does not simply end with the lives you are entrusted with on the plane.

You know that is in the contract of employment for fact ?

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

Emirates not having a fatal accident must mean they are doing something right despite all the cries about how horrible they are as an airline.

They have had a fatal accident, the 777 accident in DXB. A personal was fatally injured when the fuel tank exploded, which meets the ICAO definition “direct contact with any part of the aircraft, including parts which have become detached from the aircraft”

NW747-400 wrote:

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

NW747-400 wrote:

Gremlinzzz, all I can surmise from this thread is that you are not a pilot, nor do you have any experience working within an aviation safety management system.

Clearly you are just here for the sake of arguing. Many people have tried to explain how things work, and all you can do is dig in your heels and argue for 100% automated flight and fire crews for any and all errors.

There is a plethora of reasons that robust safety management systems do not share your uninformed opinions.

Pleasant day to you

I am not a pilot.

I have friends in aviation, and a late uncle was a station manager for an airline. I am not as stupid as some of you imagine, neither do I have the experience some have. I however can see a bogus argument from a mile away.

No one is calling you stupid, however, you refuse to actually listen and learn from industry experts and instead you rely on your own uninformed opinions that counter decades of industry learning and evolution. BigB even directly quoted the automation policy at his airline.

You are correct that automation is amazing and will only continue to improve, and we will likely see pilotless airliners within our lifetime. However, we are not there yet. Not even close, and to pretend that relying on automation is 100% safe is neither accurate nor acceptable.

Ab initio flight training programs still teach students how to fly airplanes without the use of automation. It’s still a skill that is absolutely crucial to safety of flight.

Well, you are going to be on a plane that initially has minimal automation. Once you get to the airline, people are more worried about taking off and landing safe. Having pilots monitor what the flight computers are doing.

You are damn sure that even Boeing with their next jet is not going to be making assumptions that rely mainly on the pilot to bail out their shoddy work as they did in the MAX.

bigb wrote:

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

NW747-400 wrote:

Gremlinzzz, all I can surmise from this thread is that you are not a pilot, nor do you have any experience working within an aviation safety management system.

Clearly you are just here for the sake of arguing. Many people have tried to explain how things work, and all you can do is dig in your heels and argue for 100% automated flight and fire crews for any and all errors.

There is a plethora of reasons that robust safety management systems do not share your uninformed opinions.

Pleasant day to you

I am not a pilot.

I have friends in aviation, and a late uncle was a station manager for an airline. I am not as stupid as some of you imagine, neither do I have the experience some have. I however can see a bogus argument from a mile away.

Well, we aren’t calling you stupid. However, I believe you lack the credibility argue the use of automation of flight when you don’t have any lick of flight experience. Just because you have friends in the industry doesn’t give you that credibility either. Do use a favor, go take some flight lessons, go study up on the automation of flight and human factors. You’ll be quite surprised to learn a lot about how the industry views automation quite different from what you are claiming.

Btw, no one is advocating going back to the Stone Age or suggesting getting rid of automation. The industry has pushed for smart use of it, because yes it is helpful in a high workload environment. But there are situations, plenty of them where is is appropriate to de-automate because it does increase workload.

This is something you’ll never understand because of your lack of experience inside of the flight deck, experience in the industry as a pilot, and where you are standing outside looking in..

I will do you one better.

We live in a world that is dominated by results. Automation did wonders for aviation that pilots with proper feel and great hand skills could not. Your typical 'dumbed' down pilot today will go through his entire career without ever having encountered a scenario where he has to hand fly. With automation, he will rarely have to intervene unless you have a Qantas 72 edge of the envelope case scenario, and they will average fewer crashes as a result.

That is the only thing that matters. Results.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

NW747-400 wrote:

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

I am not a pilot.

I have friends in aviation, and a late uncle was a station manager for an airline. I am not as stupid as some of you imagine, neither do I have the experience some have. I however can see a bogus argument from a mile away.

No one is calling you stupid, however, you refuse to actually listen and learn from industry experts and instead you rely on your own uninformed opinions that counter decades of industry learning and evolution. BigB even directly quoted the automation policy at his airline.

You are correct that automation is amazing and will only continue to improve, and we will likely see pilotless airliners within our lifetime. However, we are not there yet. Not even close, and to pretend that relying on automation is 100% safe is neither accurate nor acceptable.

Ab initio flight training programs still teach students how to fly airplanes without the use of automation. It’s still a skill that is absolutely crucial to safety of flight.

Well, you are going to be on a plane that initially has minimal automation. Once you get to the airline, people are more worried about taking off and landing safe. Having pilots monitor what the flight computers are doing.

You are damn sure that even Boeing with their next jet is not going to be making assumptions that rely mainly on the pilot to bail out their shoddy work as they did in the MAX.

bigb wrote:

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

I am not a pilot.

I have friends in aviation, and a late uncle was a station manager for an airline. I am not as stupid as some of you imagine, neither do I have the experience some have. I however can see a bogus argument from a mile away.

Well, we aren’t calling you stupid. However, I believe you lack the credibility argue the use of automation of flight when you don’t have any lick of flight experience. Just because you have friends in the industry doesn’t give you that credibility either. Do use a favor, go take some flight lessons, go study up on the automation of flight and human factors. You’ll be quite surprised to learn a lot about how the industry views automation quite different from what you are claiming.

Btw, no one is advocating going back to the Stone Age or suggesting getting rid of automation. The industry has pushed for smart use of it, because yes it is helpful in a high workload environment. But there are situations, plenty of them where is is appropriate to de-automate because it does increase workload.

This is something you’ll never understand because of your lack of experience inside of the flight deck, experience in the industry as a pilot, and where you are standing outside looking in..

I will do you one better.

We live in a world that is dominated by results. Automation did wonders for aviation that pilots with proper feel and great hand skills could not. Your typical 'dumbed' down pilot today will go through his entire career without ever having encountered a scenario where he has to hand fly. With automation, he will rarely have to intervene unless you have a Qantas 72 edge of the envelope case scenario, and they will average fewer crashes as a result.

That is the only thing that matters. Results.

Lol ok, I am going to let you believe that. While you at it, I have a bridge to sell you. There are many situations that the public doesn’t hear about when the pilots had to intervene and de-automate. Just because there are no accidents, or you don’t hear about it doesn’t it isn’t happening. (That because the intervention lead to a successful outcome). However there are is trouble with heavy reliance on Automation, I have access to ASAP reports about it.

Pilots have to intervene all the time with automation. Just because you don’t hear about issues or results speaks for these selfs as you doesn’t negate the importance automation management and maintaining hand flying skill-set. That’s what the industry has preach. Again, something you don’t know about because you have a preconceived perception of automation from the outside looking in.

Therefore, I am done arguing with you. This website wonders why it’s losing input from industry experts over the years.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

NW747-400 wrote:

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

I am not a pilot.

I have friends in aviation, and a late uncle was a station manager for an airline. I am not as stupid as some of you imagine, neither do I have the experience some have. I however can see a bogus argument from a mile away.

No one is calling you stupid, however, you refuse to actually listen and learn from industry experts and instead you rely on your own uninformed opinions that counter decades of industry learning and evolution. BigB even directly quoted the automation policy at his airline.

You are correct that automation is amazing and will only continue to improve, and we will likely see pilotless airliners within our lifetime. However, we are not there yet. Not even close, and to pretend that relying on automation is 100% safe is neither accurate nor acceptable.

Ab initio flight training programs still teach students how to fly airplanes without the use of automation. It’s still a skill that is absolutely crucial to safety of flight.

Well, you are going to be on a plane that initially has minimal automation. Once you get to the airline, people are more worried about taking off and landing safe. Having pilots monitor what the flight computers are doing.

You are damn sure that even Boeing with their next jet is not going to be making assumptions that rely mainly on the pilot to bail out their shoddy work as they did in the MAX.

bigb wrote:

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

I am not a pilot.

I have friends in aviation, and a late uncle was a station manager for an airline. I am not as stupid as some of you imagine, neither do I have the experience some have. I however can see a bogus argument from a mile away.

Well, we aren’t calling you stupid. However, I believe you lack the credibility argue the use of automation of flight when you don’t have any lick of flight experience. Just because you have friends in the industry doesn’t give you that credibility either. Do use a favor, go take some flight lessons, go study up on the automation of flight and human factors. You’ll be quite surprised to learn a lot about how the industry views automation quite different from what you are claiming.

Btw, no one is advocating going back to the Stone Age or suggesting getting rid of automation. The industry has pushed for smart use of it, because yes it is helpful in a high workload environment. But there are situations, plenty of them where is is appropriate to de-automate because it does increase workload.

This is something you’ll never understand because of your lack of experience inside of the flight deck, experience in the industry as a pilot, and where you are standing outside looking in..

I will do you one better.

We live in a world that is dominated by results. Automation did wonders for aviation that pilots with proper feel and great hand skills could not. Your typical 'dumbed' down pilot today will go through his entire career without ever having encountered a scenario where he has to hand fly. With automation, he will rarely have to intervene unless you have a Qantas 72 edge of the envelope case scenario, and they will average fewer crashes as a result.

That is the only thing that matters. Results.

Another untrue statement. Airliners can never take off on automation, and they can only autoland from SOME ILS approaches. Any non-precision approach, offset ILS or an ILS not certified for autoland requires manual flight. Also, as I previously stated, many maneuvers that are daily occurrences require crews to completely de-automate the airplane such as TCAS RA events. Autopilots unexpectedly disconnect pretty often as well. Manual flight is required of every pilot day in and day out.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

Who on Earth wants pilots hand flying more? No one.
...
Have you ever heard of bad faith arguments? This is one.

Either you are not reading what others are posting, or you too are making a bad faith argument.

For example:

NW747-400 wrote:

Because automation sometimes is more of a hindrance than a help, and it’s important to know when to de-automate and rely on your own skills. There are some maneuvers that pilots are required to completely de-automate to execute them properly, such as TCAS RA events and PRM approach breakouts.

Yes, automation has enhanced flight safety by leaps and bounds, but it’s not perfect. A safe flight deck uses the appropriate combination of automation, decision making and stick and rudder skills. A flight deck that is missing one of those components is not a safe flight deck.

Most, if not all, airlines in the US have an automation policy that recommends crews de-automate and fly raw data when workload permits, including turning off autothrust, which EK prohibits. The FAA also mandates airlines incorporate raw data flying in their recurrent training curriculum. There are reasons for these policies, and the subject of this discussion is a perfect example.

We don't need the straw man argument, "ok then get rid of automation", no one is arguing that.

We need people to take in nuanced situations. It's not all or none. Just because automation helps most of the time, it can and does fail, and pilots need to be ready to take over when that happens, which means they need to do hand flying often enough to retain that skill set.

Noshow wrote:

The point is not to fire the pilots but the guys responsible for the pilots staring at their FD-bars instead of properly rotating and working together as intended. This event seems to prove that drill is dangerous. Bring the pilots back into the loop. There is a reason why the US has an excellent flight safety level with more traditional thinking and acting responsible pilots not hardwired to rules bots.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

They do, but sometimes people make mistakes they should not make and management needs to make a decision as to whether they remain on the job or not.

Your mental model only seems to incorporate the rulers and the ruled. No wonder the twelfth century accusation gets thrown around. The training regime and the safety culture isn't open to discussion, it is presumed to be flawless. A perfect "emperor has no clothes" situation is waiting to unfold.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

It is a sign that they are doing something right despite opinions on here that they are led by incompetent people.

Well based of on the Flydubai crash and both EK accidents, I would say the incompetence can be found elsewhere….

Just because you censor sticky situations and bury them, doesn’t mean they don’t exist - thats the literal definition of incompetent. Check yourself.

(RE: AF447)

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

Not an issue with automation.

How is it possible to not perceive the role automation played in AF44? Bonin was perfectly comfortable keeping the stick all the way back while fighting roll oscillation and long after because he was so used to the flight envelope protections. No one flying a plane without automation would think you could get away with that without stalling.

Gremlinzzzz wrote:

We live in a world that is dominated by results. Automation did wonders for aviation that pilots with proper feel and great hand skills could not. Your typical 'dumbed' down pilot today will go through his entire career without ever having encountered a scenario where he has to hand fly. With automation, he will rarely have to intervene unless you have a Qantas 72 edge of the envelope case scenario, and they will average fewer crashes as a result.

How does your "average pilot" deal with a TCAS RA? Not a QF72 edge of the envelope situation at all, something they are likely to run into in their careers.

I’ve flown seven TATL crossings without the benefit of an autopilot. Four in fighters, so didn’t have one, but the other three were in C-5; makes for a long night. Every flight requires the pilot(s) to be ready to assume manual flying and the outcome of the maneuvers would never be in doubt. To assume “computers” can bail out the crew is a dangerous proposition as proven many times over.