Where's Otto when you need him?
Mark
Posted on 10/29/2009 8:40:14 PM PDT by naturalman1975
A QANTAS plane landed safely in Perth this morning after calling for assistance when a pilot became incapacitated.
The airline confirmed that flight QF593 from Adelaide had issued a “pan" alert and asked to be met by an ambulance after one of the pilots suffered a health issue, The Australian reports.
The Qantas 737-800 from Adelaide carrying 110 passengers left Adelaide about 6.50am (local time) and touched down in Perth at 7.30am.
An emergency was declared by the co-pilot and air traffic control vectored the aircraft onto the longest runway 21/03, thewest.com.au reports.
After touch down the aircraft came to a halt on the runway and a tug was required to tow it to Perth’s Qantas domestic terminal.
"A 'pan' alert is an international urgency to request assistance," Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) spokesman, Ian Brokenshire, said.
"The co-pilot requested priority because the aircraft was down to a single pilot and he doesn't need a high workload when it comes to the arrival process."
A Qantas spokesman said the plane landed under the control of the first officer in line with standard procedure.
"There was never a safety issue," the spokesman said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
Paging Karen Black.
Fish for breakfast?
"Don't ask that guy. He's under enough stress."
Ping
That is a pilots way of saying … HELP!
It really amuses me sometimes, these articles always portrays the FO as if he is somehow barely qualified to do anything, much less fly the jet.
Especially overseas, nearly all FO’s are PIC qualified on the equipment they are crewing and the regularly swap duty legs with the Captain.
Idiot media...
You got it. The F/O is just as busy and just as qualified (in some cases, even more qualified) than the Captain. It's just the F/O got hired by the airline later and doesn't have the seniority to ever make Captain.
Agree, all FO’s are competent pilots, just with fewer hours at the helm then the Pilot, in general.
That’s usually true, the exception being F/Os that retired from the military, who have decades of flying time and experience.
Not only that, many of them are high time captains or were but got moved down as a result of a merger.
Also I believe captains will occasionally drop down to FO to get on a more desirable route.
Like NY to Paris in the right seat might be more desirable than Charlotte to Pittsburgh to OHare to MSP, just to make an imaginary example.
How often this happens, I don’t know since I am not involved with the air carriers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-pan
Pan-Pan, pronounced pon-pon, is just below a declaration of an emergency.
Plus sometimes FO’s are more qualified than the pilot/captain
“Agree, all FO’s are competent pilots, just with fewer hours at the helm then the Pilot”
It took my nephew 6 years as FO flying for Delta to become captain after putting in 10 years as an F-4 carrier pilot and carrier landing instructor.
You got that right!
Being the gear monkey and selecting approach flaps is really not that much work.
But every now and then, when you slip a mickey into the old man's coffee, you get to hand fly an approach...ah, the Look of Eagles.
Just kidding, of course....
Hardly anyone hand flies a single pilot approach these days...:^)
Where's Otto when you need him?
Mark
Huh? The healthy co-pilot can land the plane by himself, but can't taxi it to the terminal? That makes no sense at all, and it seems that waiting to get a tug out there to haul the plane to the terminal would have caused a delay in getting the pilot medical attention, not to mention a delay in getting the airport back to normal operations, causing thousands of passengers to miss connections due to the domino effect of delayed flights.
I thought that the Boeing 737-800 pretty much landed itself. And in a heavy fog is capable of a cat3 landing with out pilot action. I think the airport needs equipment too for it to work. .
Ordinarily, he (or she) would, but there had to be other factors at work here that is not being reported...emergency, clearance, politics, union rules, etc. Other procedures have to be followed. The F/O isn't the one who writes these rules, however he has to abide by them or his license is in the can.
Also, you can trust the press to give a half-assed story. There is a lot they're not telling.
Only saying the FO was more than qualified to land the plane, otherwise he wouldn’t be second seat. To be FO you must be able to take off … pilot the aircraft to the ultimate destination and land the aircraft. Otherwise you would be a passenger.
The FO in the Continental/Colgan flight 3407 crash in Buffalo had almost if not twice as many hours in the aircraft then the pilot did. A pilot friend of mine thinks if she had been flying that leg instead of the captain they may have made it through that and would all still be with us today.
Actually the Captain makes the right seat do all the work most of the time!
Exactly. Most times the CA and FO alternate legs so both are just as qualified to be flying. FO’s get a bad rap in the media and the public in general as guys who are not as qualified or maybe even learning when that is far from the case.
I know the press is unreliable, but they probably didn’t just invent a tug hauling a 737 from the runway to a terminal at Perth. If they (the press and the airline) are going to be putting out the message that “there was never a safety issue”, they can’t leave this elephant in the room hanging out there unexplained, and expect everyone will believe this was all routine and never any danger. A healthy co-pilot can taxi a healthy 737 from runway to terminal without assistance from the pilot.
I agree with you. Questions like that prove half-assed reporting. LOL
Could it be the sick pilot was evacuated on the spot once the plane had come to a stop, then some safety rule required the now single-piloted craft to be towed rather than taxied.
Perhaps, but it seems to me it would be a lot safer to just let him drive the thing off the runway himself, so they could get traffic moving again. Plus having a tug pull a fully loaded plane for that long a distance is way outside the scope of normal operations, and the more you pull people out of familiar routines in a tightly coordinated setting like a major airport, the more likelihood something goes wrong. But what do I know? Some expert safety-crat probably made up the rules. Or else there really was some other major issue that the airline isn’t sharing.
This story is short on detail and long on sensationalism.
I’m betting on the safety-crat. Prolly sumfin about requiring two sets of eyes to be watching the progress of the craft, so it doesn’t run into another object.
I’m sure the copilot explained the situation pretty well while in the air. I do not think they would tow a craft with nobody in the cockpit because it would be difficult to stop without jackknifing.
True....and you are right, it is against safety regulations to fly (or in this case, steer and brake) alone.
Yeah. And so all over the taxi area were cranky pairs of pilots who’d been rearranged and delayed, and had little to do but watch the progress of the only moving aircraft at the airport. That thing wasn’t going to move an inch in the direction of danger without triggering 50 simultaneous MayDay calls to the tower. I think pray4liberty may have been on the scent when he said it may be union rules. Generates work for tug drivers if you classify a whole laundry list of situations as requiring tugs, even when they obviously really don’t. And generates work for pilots if you have rules that say these large passenger jets aren’t allowed to *ever* move without 2 pilots in the cockpit, even when the move in question involves a routine taxi the terminal.
When I worked for an airline at a major airport, the Maintenance personnel (IAM union) frequently taxied the powered-up aircraft between the terminal and the maintenance hangers, and later back to the terminal.
There is only ONE steering wheel and it is on the left side where only the captain sitting in the left seat can steer.
So now think it through.
The FO brings the plane to a stop. Since he has alerted the tower to the fact that he has a captain so sick that he can't fly, the plane comes to a stop surrounded by emergency medics, probably a fire engine or three and numerous support people.
So with brain engaged, the FO shuts the engines down.
It would have been stupid to try to change seats, with the engines running, determine whether any vehicle was in the way and taxi.
We don't even know at this point whether the captain was still in his seat. I would assume not, but that assumption may or may not be correct.
At any rate, assuming the FO isn't smart enough to taxi, is afraid to taxi or too dumb to know that he should taxi is sort of off the wall.
In any emergency video I have ever seen, the aircraft comes to a stop surrounded by vehicles. When I quit, it was the custom for ATC to inquire whether the crew wanted emergency equipment. That may or may not be the case today. It may not be optional in other countries and it may not be optional in cases reporting pilot incapacitation. So it would be good to hear from someone with experience flying big iron in Australia.
That would make sense, if that’s how the cockpit is configured. I wasn’t thinking the co-pilot was actually incompetent — just that some significant piece of info must be missing from the story, and what you provided makes sense. I can see that if the pilot was in bad shape, it would have been insane to try to haul him over to the other seat.
I just couldn’t figure out why the plane wouldn’t have gone straight to the terminal as usual — but much faster than usual, since it would have been given top priority and not had to wait for any other aircraft to pass by/get out of the way, etc.
Given that there was no mechanical emergency or security/terrorism/passenger-flipping-out emergency, I couldn’t figure out why the plane would have been stopped out on the runway instead of proceeding. The situations where a just-landed plane is met by a bunch of emergency vehicles and personnel are normally where it’s not safe for either mechanical/fire or security reasons to allow the plane to proceed to the terminal. I don’t think they meet planes out on the runway for unscheduled landings caused by a sick passenger needing medical attention (unless perhaps it appears to be a really serious contagious disease-type emergency).
I would guess the captain *was* still in his seat, unless he was too sick to even remain in a slouched sitting position. From the glimpses I’ve had of the insides of cockpits on large passenger planes, I’m not sure there’s room to lay someone down on the floor (nor would that really be safe for a landing, when there are no floor-belts to secure the person, who is already to weak to control their body position). I wonder what the security policy calls for re opening the cockpit door in a situation like this.
True. I asked my retired F/O husband about this. He pretty much said the same thing you did...plus there are union rules, standard procedures and aviation regulations to follow, or the F/O's license would be forfeit. I doubt he would want to risk that; so if SOP is to shut the engines down after landing and wait for help, that's what he will do.
Thanks.
I appreciate that.
I had lots of time when I quit but no experience at all in the big iron. I knew a lot of guys that flew the big iron and I read everything I could get my hands on, but that was it.
So I was a little worried that my memory was not accurate.
Thanks again.
Yeah, after that FO pulled off that landing, and contrary to what the official statement was by the airline, I consider it quite a feat because as your husband will tell you, the pre landing checklist in the large jets is like reading the encyclopedia and it would be easy to overlook something with that workload; it would be more than stupid to blow it by busting a reg or taxiing over a fire engine or into the mud.
I certainly would never fault him or the rules, for that matter.
And of course, we don’t know what the law is in Australia.
That's why two pilots are required...and in some cases three (i.e. a flight engineer). The F/O did the right thing. Even though it may not make much sense to the general public, those regs are there for a good reason, usually because someone, somewhere in the history of aviation did something they should not have. Aviation demands perfection, and pilots prefer to err on the side of caution.
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