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Otto to the Rescue!
Posted on 08/14/2014 10:26:51 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Mumbai-Brussels flight drops 5,000 feet as pilot ‘rests’
In a year that has witnessed a number of aviation episodes, a potential incident was averted when a Jet Airways flight from Mumbai to Brussels dropped 5,000 feet in Ankara airspace while the pilot was having a ‘rest’.
The co-pilot, meanwhile, was busy on her tablet and reportedly claims she had no idea the plane had dropped in altitude.
A call from an alarmed Ankara ATC jolted the pilots into action.
The Jet Airways flight 9W 228, operating on a Boeing 777-300 ER, was reportedly flying at an altitude of 34,000 feet when it suddenly dropped.
Jet Airways confirmed it has initiated an inquiry into the incident, which occurred on August 8.
In a statement, the airline said: “Jet Airways has initiated an internal inquiry into the matter. The airline is also extending all co-operation in the matter to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation by providing all necessary assistance for the inquiry.
“Safety is of paramount importance to Jet Airways, as is also the welfare of our guests and crew and the airline will always take appropriate steps to ensure the same.”
A DGCA official quoted in the Economic Times, said: “In the initial inquiry, the co-pilot said that she was not aware of the reasons for descent and she was reading the flight manuals.
“This requires thorough investigation and only then will we be able to ascertain the reasons.”
Meanwhile, the carrier faced another incident today aboard its Delhi-Bhopal flight on August 14 due to an engine fire warning.
Jet Airways confirmed the incident, saying: “Jet Airways flight 9W 2654 from Delhi to Bhopal had a precautionary rejected take off at Delhi due to engine fire warning.
“The ATR aircraft has since been grounded at Delhi for inspection by the Jet Airways engineering staff. All the guests were deplaned safely and taken back to the terminal building without any event. The aircraft has since been changed and duly departed for its destination at 0850 hrs.”
Otto to the Rescue!
Hey, at least he didn’t fly over Ukraine by accident.
Ping
Ping
Sitting next to an old Indian lady, who must have been the head cook, was not an olfactory enjoyable experience.
He was flying the plane on his iPad app.
“co-Pilot Busy Browsing on iPad”
The headline makes it seem that the co-Pilot was busy updating her Facebook page, or some such. Meanwhile, in the article:
“the co-pilot said ... she was reading the flight manuals.”
That’s much more likely. Tablets have largely replaced the huge case of flight manuals, and maps that pilots take on board. If the co-pilot were reading a paper flight manual, we wouldn’t be reading any insinuations about that.
Also — the article implies that the pilot did something wrong by taking a nap. Not so. From what’s reported here, it looks like this is on the co-pilot (who should have been monitoring things better); but, that she was using the iPad for work.
Maybe texting.
Sounds like the plane was supposed to be on auto-pilot and apparently wasn’t?
I’m surprised. With the state of airplane wifi, there should be plenty of time to fly a plane while waiting for websites to load.
Aw,God and I have family members in the air now on a 5000 mile trip.
(I’m having fun tracking,though)
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Welly welly sorry!
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How do you do that?
My parents went on Alaska cruise and we were able to track with webcams in each port.
It was fun!
This is really spooky.
Fourteen hours ago I was viewing Terror in the Skies, Ep9 Pilot Fatigue, on cable, which included an old Flight from India, as illustration of the age and extent of precisely this problem: apparently the common occurrence of naps during flight, in combination with copilot distraction in violation of the rules, or irrelevant idle conversation during a critical phase of flight.
That the pilots are always the first at the scene of the resulting fatal accident, is small comfort.
They have an app for that?
Really?
Flightaware.com is the most common site used to track airline flights.
I saw it in a cartoon.
Couldn’t resist. : o)
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