It was the FMS, your honor!

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coma24

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coma24
Caught this while enroute from MMU-JFK. It's a Hawker out of Teterboro doing all sorts of wonderful things to the SID:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXwDG-LkE1o

It's a great reminder to brief departures correctly, program the FMS correctly, and lastly, verify that it's actually doing what it's supposed to be doing.
 
Children of the magenta.... "Oh now what's it doing?"
 
Sent this to a Gulfstream pilot for his comments, he had some good insights:
Classic, throwing the FMS under the bus. It’s like “the dog ate my homework” for pilots....there are a lot of ways that sort of thing can happen:

· Wrong departure procedure loaded

· Wrong transition selected

· Wrong autopilot mode

· Wrong leg activated

· Wrong heading selected

· Etc


You have to check and re-check. And then you have to monitor – continually.

In two pilot crews, one person should enter the data and another should check it. That doesn’t always happen. But if the departure/arrival is properly briefed and the pilots are paying attention, deviations should be noticed quickly. So what happened here must have been a programming error, a CRM error, AND a lack of situational awareness.

I won’t go so far as to say “that could never happen to me” because that’s step #1 in doing exactly what those pilots did.
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Garbage in garbage out - every time.

In 25 years of using Honeywell, Collins and Universal FMSes, I don't think I've ever seen an FMS do anything that the pilot hadn't programmed it to do. I have seen plenty of misprogrammed FMSes though.

Like many things in aviation, it's a matter of proper training and discipline.
 
Dead Stick said:
In 25 years of using Honeywell, Collins and Universal FMSes, I don't think I've ever seen an FMS do anything that the pilot hadn't programmed it to do.
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I've seen the database be wrong a couple of times, but again, that's something that should be caught by the crew.
 
Too much taking things for granted. You have to brief the procedure,then check that's what's loaded. ATC is expecting you to follow a certain flight path. Humans do load the info into the FMS.
 
Yall can giggle and laugh all you like but I guarantee there'd be more wrong turns without FMS than there is with.
 
Captain said:
Yall can giggle and laugh all you like but I guarantee there'd be more wrong turns without FMS than there is with.
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You'll get no argument from me. FMSes are the greatest things since sliced bread, followed closely by autothrottles, HUDs and forward crew lavs. :yes:
 
I while back I had a DG spin roughly 180* while leaving Dallas Love. I turned straight into the 737 final stream. Thankfully Tower caught it and harshly reminded me to check my instruments.

I dread hearing the child voice. I always feel like a little kid getting reprimanded by their parent.

"Yes, Sir it won't happen again" :sad:
 
ARFlyer said:
I while back I had a DG spin roughly 180* while leaving Dallas Love. I turned straight into the 737 final stream. Thankfully Tower caught it and harshly reminded me to check my instruments.

I dread hearing the child voice. I always feel like a little kid getting reprimanded by their parent.

"Yes, Sir it won't happen again" :sad:
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I'm sorry to hear about your experience. We have FMSes in our work airplanes so ATC usually compliments me on the accuracy of my instruments. :D
 
ARFlyer said:
I while back I had a DG spin roughly 180* while leaving Dallas Love.
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When I was doing unsual attitudes with my CFI, he also switched the DG 180 degrees over the middle of the LI sound and I didn't noticed. When we were getting ready to head back to FRG I was all confused and didn't know which side was CT and LI. He finally told me to look at my HI and it all made sense!
 
jordane93 said:
When I was doing unsual attitudes with my CFI, he also switched the DG 180 degrees over the middle of the LI sound and I didn't noticed. When we were getting ready to head back to FRG I was all confused and didn't know which side was CT and LI. He finally told me to look at my HI and it all made sense!
Click to expand...

Thanks for the idea. I will pull that on one of my students soon. :devil:

David, evil CFI
 
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