At the point where the aircraft made contact with the ground (or so it appears in that video), I assume that the captain makes the go around call?
Most likely the Captain’s call, but could be either. Another call you might actually get (depending upon the airline rules), is for the FO to continue if the Captain is prepared to accept the long flare. Not something that you’d have on that runway though.
If the FO was PF would the captain take over or just instruct the FO to do so?
No, you just play QFI and tell them what you want. Taking over was quite rare. When the weather was such that an FO might need to do a go around, I let them do the approach and go around, and if I needed to take over (‘cos we operated to different limits for the Captain) I’d do so prior to the next approach.
Even if a Captain could recover an unstable approach better to go around and get both heads “back in the game” per se than for a Captain to take over and fly essentially single pilot to the ground. Especially very close to the ground where time is limited.
It’s best if nobody tries to fix an unstable approach.
Hi JB . With QF 2 it has an exemption to able to land before the curfew in Sydney but i believe they can only land from the south.
As there is only one runway and one direction to land on would the A380 be more affected by strong cross winds or tail winds that would have the captain deciding to divert?
380 had very good wind limitations. They were the highest of any of the types that I flew. Having said that though, there isn’t a great deal of difference between the various types. If suss weather was on the forecast, I’d always have enough fuel to be able to “have a look” before having to divert.
If the weather forecast for Sydney was above the maximums to land would you take extra fuel to wait in the air or would you wait in Singapore until you can land on any runway in Sydney?
That decision is affected by a lot of factors. If there is no chance of it being within the limits, then it’s just as likely that ops control would delay the flight before you even had a look. In the current fuel environment, waiting on the ground would be more attractive than usual. There are a few caveats to it though. One is that once you have a delay to boarding, especially in Singapore, you have a pretty high chance of some passengers going walkabout, and extending the delay even further. For that reason, I preferred to have a captive audience. I might board and then wait at the gate for a while. Holding at the destination will become an issue too. If you delay, you can end up in a worse spot in the stream. Going early might get you to the head of the holding queue. Thinking back on it, I hated it when ops control delayed, as it invariably extended beyond the target delay. I was pretty good at wasting time.
