United Airlines dives to 700ft above the ocean

jordane93 said:
It’s already happened here at DL. Word from check airmen is they’re doing just fine. Supposedly this United crew was experienced.:dunno:
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Agreed, I don't think this is a problem of inexperience at all. It's a problem of task recency/atrophy. Experience engenders judgement, but it doesn't empower you to not bone up the instrument cross-check (whether it be the primary secondary, or control and performance variations of the same). An outsized emphasis on automation is the mark for me, as someone who derives a living at doing everything without the help of a PM nor an autopilot (statistically the most dangerous iteration of instrument flying, second only to weekend warrior IMC behind consumer grade avionics). Ironically, a philosophy employed specifically to mask/ameliorate the very presumed fallibility of the statistical left side of the bell curve (the colgans, the atlas et al) in the first place. Irony which does not escape me in the least.

Solution? There's many, but they require neutral acknowledgement of the problem, not rank "thin blue line" antics.
 
NoHeat said:
You’ve lost me there. So the pilots were studying intensely? Taking vitamins? Getting - hmm - stimulated?
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Messing it up. Once upon a time, not that many… umm… decades ago, hearing someone say, “Wow, I really pulled a boner” was no more unusual or open to misinterpretation than saying you went to a wedding or party and everyone was gay.
 
DaleB said:
Messing it up. Once upon a time, not that many… umm… decades ago, hearing someone say, “Wow, I really pulled a boner” was no more unusual or open to misinterpretation than saying you went to a wedding or party and everyone was gay.
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And just to be clear, you could also say they were happy and it would mean the same thing
 
NoHeat said:
You’ve lost me there. So the pilots were studying intensely? Taking vitamins? Getting - hmm - stimulated?
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You’re not the only one that has trouble following some of his posts. They are sometimes so full of slang and incomplete sentences it’s hard to follow.

I get the impression he thinks the pilots just messed up doing pilot things because they were not proficient at hand flying.

If that’s the case I think he is correct. This smells like pilot screw up not microburst.
 
Tarheelpilot said:
You’re not the only one that has trouble following some of his posts. They are sometimes so full of slang and incomplete sentences it’s hard to follow.

I get the impression he thinks the pilots just messed up doing pilot things because they were not proficient at hand flying.

If that’s the case I think he is correct. This smells like pilot screw up not microburst.
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@hindsight2020 is at the top of my POA People I Want to Have Lunch With because I want to hear him talk like this live and with voice inflection. I think it would be fascinating.
 
Remember, Maui is composed of two mountains, 10k' Haleakala, and the 6k' West Maui Mountains. PNL sits between them and takeoffs to the southwest pass directly between the mountains. When the trade winds blow from any northerly direction the west and south ends of the island are a blender of confused air.
 
Domenick said:
Remember, Maui is composed of two mountains, 10k' Haleakala, and the 6k' West Maui Mountains. PNL sits between them and takeoffs to the southwest pass directly between the mountains. When the trade winds blow from any northerly direction the west and south ends of the island are a blender of confused air.
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But it took off to the north.
 
Doh! :)
What were the winds that day? What I said holds for takeoffs to the north with southerly winds.
 
From the armchair perspective, though based on what we know, this seems more like human error than microburst. Weather could certainly be a factor, but that profile looks intentional. Will be curious to see what the final findings reports. Juan Browne had a good take on this, he's not sensationalist..
 
Let's just do a sanity check on the theory that it was a microburst....

I would guess that a fully loaded 777 can still climb at around 3000fpm with full thrust, which I'm sure the pilots would have called for if caught in such a situation. Of course, should that be the case, the pilots would have pitched the aircraft for around 180 to 200 knots for optimum climb. (I've never flown a 777 so folks who have, please chime in.) But they were still descending at greater than 8000 fpm. This means the microburst would have exceeded 11,000 fpm!

This is close to twice the advertised 6000 fpm possible claimed by all the FAA documentation about microbursts.

I find it hard to believe a microburst can be that substantial.

It would be revealing to know what was the airspeed of the aircraft during the time of descent. I hope it was slow, indicating the crew was desperately trying to climb out of whatever it was.
 
Tantalum said:
From the armchair perspective, though based on what we know, this seems more like human error than microburst. Weather could certainly be a factor, but that profile looks intentional. Will be curious to see what the final findings reports. Juan Browne had a good take on this, he's not sensationalist..
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Blanco misses the mark imo. His take focused on the theory they didn't have the magenta stuff properly programmed. Yet publicly struggling to understand how (para-quote): "the crew could allow that amount of sink rate to develop.... *pregnant pause*.... that, is not clear to me...*another pregnant pause*... if it was an autopilot/automation mistake". Yeah, no s--t it's not clear to him. You have to let Occam have a word in before this makes sense..

..but he won't go there. That's fight club. And we don't talk about fight club.

Then has the temerity of declaring in the very next segment that "in the case of Qatar Airways, thaaaat is a classic case of spatial D". That was a clown move.

Lastly, he triple downs by uttering that the solution to this all is, are you ready for this: airline pilots should not "practice" handflying at night.

...your solution is to rely on the stuff that creates the deficit in the first place. Solid take Juan. I tell ya, some sectors of aviation couldn't pick out 'root cause' on a game of Charades if you clocked them in the face with an oak tree root they saw you dig out of the ground right before you rekt'd them. :D
 
What is his background?
 
I wasn’t there, I’m not even trying to surmise the particulars. I’ll leave that up to the powers that be.

A few things, the weather was reportedly bad, rain, wind, likely gusty, may or may not of been convective activity nearby. I’ll ‘assume’ the weather was adequate for takeoff, doesn’t have to be perfect.

I’d like to bring a few of the ‘wind shear recovery’ techniques into this type of takeoff. With that I mean, park it 15+ degrees nose high, try to do a wings level climb as able, limit turns. Of course the crew scanned the departure corridor with the radar before launching, assumptions. During this earlier part of the climb, flaps are left in takeoff position.

Don’t bother picking the above apart that I’m advocating departing with likely wind shear present, not saying that. I’m just advocating more attention to flying the plane, even though the ‘book answer’ is do both.
 
Tools said:
I meant before he quit flying…
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Like this?
"He earned his A&P license right after graduating high school, then attended college on a ROTC scholarship. After graduation, he was commissioned in the Air Force and attended Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT) at Williams Air Force Base.

After UPT, Juan became a T-37 Instructor Pilot at Mather Air Force Base. His next assignment was flying the C-141, and he quickly rose to Aircraft Commander, flying all over the world, nonstop using air refueling.

He next flew C-130 aircraft with the Reno Air National Guard, and finally secured a job as an airline pilot."
 
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