Editorials

TWEETING ON A JET PLANE

07/11/09 15:02 Filed in: Air Safety
There are thousands of professional jet airline pilots who take their job seriously. They get adequate rest before their flights and use whatever techniques at their disposal to stave off boredom during those long hours when the aircraft is in the cruise, and the skills required are more flight management than stick-and-rudder.

The Airbus A380 has a nifty little built-in device called Time Marker. You look at the flight plan, determine when the next ATC frequency change or position report is required, and enter the time. It displays the time on both the electronic Flight Plan page, and on the Navigation Display.

 Tick the ‘audio alert’ check box and a woman’s voice announces “TIME MARKER”. Job done. It is also a great aide memoire to set just before the Latest Safe Divert Time. While coping with another emergency at the destination airport, to save getting sidetracked, the time marker reminds the crew that they now have to divert to their alternate airport, no questions asked.

The facility is available on the earlier Airbus aircraft, but having been brainwashed onto the A380 over a year ago, I can’t remember if the aural alert feature is available. That two pilots either failed to use this facility to aid their situational awareness is worrying. If they did, and still lost situational awareness, then that is very disturbing.

 One is left wondering if they ‘periodically reviewed’ the seven aircraft systems page displays, as required by the Airbus Flight Crew Operating Manual. While a time is not stated, Airbus says ‘periodically’ is defined as ‘every twenty minutes’. It is very easy for pilots for rely on the alerting system that tells them if any value moves away from optimum.

 Apparently the two pilots have had their licences revoked for failing to keep an adequate listening watch, being out of radio contact for 91 minutes. As they should.

Don’t tar all airline pilots with the same brush.

But if you do ... then drop me a line so we can all have a laugh about it.


7th November 2009

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