Ask The Pilot

I remember one CO's comment to the XO re picking a new maintenance test pilot. "Give it to'Fred', he's expendable."

I've flown with quite a few graduates of the various 'real' test pilot courses. They were all good pilots, but not necessarily aces. What was a common denominator was that they were all very analytical, and could always explain what had happened and why. Some of the best pilots are the worst instructors, because they have a natural gift, and because they don't need to be analytical, they cannot explain things to others.


Good QFIs are normally good pilots also. aka jb747 and myself. 😁:p

(said light-heartedly with tongue firmly in cheek) 😇
 
And then you get someone like Captain Eric "Winkle" Brown of the RN. He flew 487 different aircraft types - the 14 different versions of the Spitfire and Seafire he flew are counted as 1 type. Performed the record number of carrier take-offs and landings (2,407 and 2,271 respectively). The first person to perform a landing and take-off a jet from an aircraft carrier, The only Allied pilot to fly the ME-163 rocket fighter. And on and on.
In that era you didn't have 17,000 page flight manuals to learn before going flying. Most would consider the 14 variants of the Spitfire to be one aircraft...close enough anyway, even though there were different engines involved. A conversion, even for a line pilot, consisted of, "there's the aircraft, take it out for an hour". Even now, most of the warbird pilots fly multiple types.
Shouldn’t number of take offs and landings be equal?
Ideally. Note that he's talking about carrier ops, so many flights would have started or finished on land, thus giving an unequal carrier total.
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A couple of shots from the good old days...2008 03 24 145623 (02736).jpg2008 03 24 160124 (02742).jpg
 
flights would have started or finished on land, thus giving an unequal carrier total.
Likely I’m being pedantic.

Irrespective of land origination or destination, carrier ops will still need takeoff /land on the deck?. Take off from land based field, land carrier deck, takeoff carrier deck, land on land based field?.
…….
How many feet are you below the aircraft?
 
In that era you didn't have 17,000 page flight manuals to learn before going flying. Most would consider the 14 variants of the Spitfire to be one aircraft...close enough anyway, even though there were different engines involved. A conversion, even for a line pilot, consisted of, "there's the aircraft, take it out for an hour". Even now, most of the warbird pilots fly multiple types.

Ideally. Note that he's talking about carrier ops, so many flights would have started or finished on land, thus giving an unequal carrier total.
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A couple of shots from the good old days...View attachment 256679View attachment 256680
Look at all those chemtrails.

Likely I’m being pedantic.

Irrespective of land origination or destination, carrier ops will still need takeoff /land on the deck?. Take off from land based field, land carrier deck, takeoff carrier deck, land on land based field?.
…….
How many feet are you below the aircraft?
Depends how many people are walking under it.
 
How many feet are you below the aircraft?
2,000’. So there’s room to fit someone else, going the other way, through the middle.
Look at all those chemtrails.
Well, it could be argued that they obviously work, given how stupidity seems to be spreading. Perhaps more interesting though, is that you can clearly see the vortex core in the contrail.
 
QF is planning to do some technical changes in conjunction with Airbus to allow their a330-200 to operate BNE-LAX/SFO. What could these be?
They may be after an increase in take off weight. I don't know what sort of crew rest they had, but they will need a proper horizontal rest for the pilots.
What are the activation criteria for TCAS.
Would 1000ft in the other direction do that?
The TCAS will see the other aircraft, up to a few thousand feet above or below, and they'll be painted on the map display, but won't become interested in them unless they're at your height, or climbing or descending towards it. Over the years the software improved dramatically, so they're basically calculating intercepts and not just going off for everything they see...which they did do a bit in the early days. It doesn't play air traffic controller...if it calculates a miss, then that's good enough. That means that you can be in places like LA or HK, with aircraft in very close proximity, and it remains quiet.
 
AV, what is the talk amongst your workmates on this warning from the regulator:

"Australia’s aviation safety regulator has warned that mistakes are more likely to occur as airlines ramp up flying hours due to a deterioration of aircrews’ skills over the past 19 months.:
 
AV, what is the talk amongst your workmates on this warning from the regulator:

"Australia’s aviation safety regulator has warned that mistakes are more likely to occur as airlines ramp up flying hours due to a deterioration of aircrews’ skills over the past 19 months.:
Sounds like the regulator is trying to appear busy and useful in a country with no aviation.

Mistakes have always happened. The difference between good and bad aviation is the reaction to any mistakes. Fix them and move on has always been the aim. It should be like Italian driving....what's behind you doesn't matter.

What will be lacking is the 'flow'. That only comes with practice.
 
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JB and AV it seems Pilots heavily sway towards joining a union, more so than many other industries. A mate at Jetstar told me 95% are which is quite a number.

What is the reason for that? To those that don’t decide to join, is that largely they don’t normally side with unions, or management?

Does the pilot body look at those who are not union affiliated differently? I remember the Jetstar strike the other year when 800 went on strike and the non unionised 40 odd from memory, still went to work. Would be a tad awkward I guess.
 
JB and AV it seems Pilots heavily sway towards joining a union, more so than many other industries. A mate at Jetstar told me 95% are which is quite a number.

What is the reason for that?
I think there's a fair bit of history with regard to unions with Australian airlines, that predates me. When I joined there was the AFAP, who basically covered anyone who didn't work for Qantas. They were the ones behind the 1989 battle. AIPA was the QF union, and for most of my time covered only QF pilots. Over much of my career they had pretty cordial relations with the company, and there was quite reasonable give and take. There was never any industrial action, or even talk of it. That was still the case up until AJ's lockout. From that point onwards, I think attitudes changed. In the era of Dixon and then Joyce, the company was considered untrustworthy by the majority of pilots.

Your option is to be in a union, or to trust management. Let me think about that.

To those that don’t decide to join, is that largely they don’t normally side with unions, or management?
I guess they aspire to become management pilots, though there have been a number in the union who seem to have been management placements anyway.
 
AV I note your company of late has done a lot of flights to/from into Asia for engineering and also then all these Silkair machines arriving.
Do line pilots get the chance to fly these missions or is it all management/training pilots that get those gigs?
 
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JB and AV it seems Pilots heavily sway towards joining a union, more so than many other industries. A mate at Jetstar told me 95% are which is quite a number.
On the other side of the radio, we (ATC) also have pretty good coverage of the workforce through our union (Civil Air). Our union may be "small" - covering around 1000 civilian ATCs in Australia (+ RAAF), but the union has proven very effective over the years on both industrial and professional issues.
 
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AV, what is the talk amongst your workmates on this warning from the regulator:

"Australia’s aviation safety regulator has warned that mistakes are more likely to occur as airlines ramp up flying hours due to a deterioration of aircrews’ skills over the past 19 months.:
Like JB said, mistakes are always going to occur. But these mistakes are usually caught by our SOPs. It's why there's such a large emphasis on sticking to them as much as possible.

The mistakes we're seeing at the moment is crews accepting a late track shortening and/or high speed into an airport and just being slow to react. Whereas once upon a time it would become normal on a 4 sector day.

At this point we're lucky to even get 4 sectors per month and 2 of those would be given to the other pilot to fly to keep their currency as well.

So to mitigate these risks, I'm talking about it in my brief that the theme for the day will be to just slow things down. Especially when reading checklists and doing those scan flows where there is a high potential for moving a switch to the wrong position, or worse yet, selecting the wrong switch itself!
 
JB and AV it seems Pilots heavily sway towards joining a union, more so than many other industries. A mate at Jetstar told me 95% are which is quite a number.

What is the reason for that? To those that don’t decide to join, is that largely they don’t normally side with unions, or management?

Does the pilot body look at those who are not union affiliated differently? I remember the Jetstar strike the other year when 800 went on strike and the non unionised 40 odd from memory, still went to work. Would be a tad awkward I guess.
The pilot body don't look at anyone differently if they're not in a union (not in my experience anyway), however if you are ever called in for tea and bikkies it's nice to have some sort of pilot representation there in your corner backing you up.

The other thing is that you get the support from the unions during different times in your career. I've had the protection of industrial action once and those who weren't under a union had to still perform their duties as per normal. Definitely made it awkward especially if you had to fly with someone who wasn't able to take PIA.

But those that don't join either don't see the benefits, or it's just too pricey for them, or both.
 
AV I note your company of late has done a lot of flights to/from into Asia for engineering and also then all these Silkair machines arriving.
Do line pilots get the chance to fly these missions or is it all management/training pilots that get those gigs?
There have been expressions of interest to the pilot group do these flights because of the amount of quarantine required (both at home and in the hotel down route). At this stage though I think they've only limited it to BNE based pilots and check and training captains.
 
There have been expressions of interest to the pilot group do these flights because of the amount of quarantine required (both at home and in the hotel down route). At this stage though I think they've only limited it to BNE based pilots and check and training captains.
Any news on flights from MEL (or anywhere for that matter) to LAX?
 

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