Friday, July 28, 2017

A Hultgreen-Curie near-miss

Air India edition:
Two pilots have been suspended from duty after their aircraft, carrying 99 passengers, nearly ran out of fuel because they forgot to retract the landing gear after take-off.

Air India Flight AI676 was en route to Mumbai from Kolkata on July 22 but was forced to divert to Nagpur when the crew became alarmed by the speed at which the aircraft was losing fuel thanks to the additional drag created by the extended wheels.

An unidentified source told the Times of India that the “brand new Airbus A320”, one of the most fuel efficient aircraft in existence, had struggled to climb after take-off, prompting the pilots to settle on an altitude of 24,000 feet as opposed to a usual cruising height of 35,000 feet. The source, who made a point of saying that both pilots were women, said it flew like this at 230 knots - as opposed to around 500 knots - for about an hour-and-a-half, while the extended landing gear dragged heavily on the aircraft.

At this point, 90 minutes into a two-and-a-half-hour flight, the crew requested permission to divert to Nagpur as their fuel would have run out before reaching Mumbai.
You know, maybe that's why women are paid less....

28 comments:

Anonymous said...

they forgot to retract the landing gear after take-off.


oh come ON. this was clearly an intentional safety measure. i mean, i'm SURE they simply didn't want to risk a disastrous hydraulic failure which would have prevented the landing gear from being extended again.

they saved Air India the expense of having to salvage a belly down landing and putting all of those passengers at fire risk!

deserving of a commendation, really.

alternatively; Physics is another form of Patriarchal Oppression and must be over thrown.

alternatively, alternatively; those Indian college degrees demonstrate their value once again!


more seriously, the cockpit HAS to have an indicator telling you the current status of the gear. right there on the control panel in front of the pilots.

and TWO "pilots" couldn't be bothered to check that indicator even though for well over an hour they knew that they had major flight profile ( significantly below planned cruise altitude which also induces more drag due to thicker air AND attaining less than half of planned cruise speed ) issues.

there damn sure wasn't any problem solving going on up there.

Harambe said...

Is there no annoying buzzer with a flashing OMG TEH LANDING GEAR IS STILL OUT sign on this brand new aircraft? Cause I would've thought there would be.

Clinton said...

In my 10 years as an airline pilot I have forgotten to bring the gear up twice at the appropriate time. However, the first things we check when the aircraft isn't performing within expected parameters, especially in the climb, are the gear and flaps. In my case we caught the mistake within a minute or so after it would have been normally retracted. To go as far, and climb as high as these women did shows a complete lack of technical understanding of their own aircraft. Any trained monkey can follow standard operating procedures but a pilot's true job is recognizing when something unusual has happened and then fix it. It was luck or physics that prevented them from overspeeding their gear and causing some sort of structural damage. Unfortunately in this industry women can advance quicker then men, even when they don't have the qualifications, because it's good PR and it satisfies the diversity requirement instituted by the SJW HR manager.

Ingot9455 said...

Not even mentioning the increased fuel expenditure of trying to cruise at 24,000 where the air is thicker and where crosswinds have more effect. (They were going slower, though, so that would reduce that effect.)

dc.sunsets said...

Affirmative Action participation trophies are increasingly destroying health, safety & production as a whole.

Mocheirge said...

more seriously, the cockpit HAS to have an indicator telling you the current status of the gear. right there on the control panel in front of the pilots.

Well duh, that's what electrical tape is for. Blinky lights are annoying.

dc.sunsets said...

Being capable of landing a plane, with only the Ram Air Turbine powering hydraulics, without loss of lif, in the Hudson is undoubtedly an artifact of cishetwhitemale patriarchal oppression.

Dead people are just what we must get used to, whether by Sudden Jihadi Syndrome or Diversity Hiring Ineptitude, in our far more enlightened times.

RC said...

Yes it is DC.Setsets, as amply demonstrated by Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961. And he received accommodation, apparently because his poor water landing didn't kill everyone.

Anonymous said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5TggMyoVL4&feature=youtu.be&t=25s

Kentucky Headhunter said...

Fly half as far as a man, half as fast as a man, and get paid 70% what a man makes? Actually they're overpaid.

Quadko said...

The funniest flight I've had was when we were descending on a little commuter hop, but suddenly rising and circled the airport. Then the landing gear emerging sound was heard...
Was the error caught by the pilot, or did the tower have to say "your profile looks a little wrong, where are the wheels?"

Anonymous said...

So this is the aviation equivalent of forgetting to take the parking brake off and then wondering why the car is sluggish and smells like burning.
My mom did that a few times. Don't think it ever happened to dad.

Thanks, J. said...

This isn't funny. Suspended huh? Let the women pilots fly, off a rooftop like queers propelled by ISIS. White Sharia isn't so absurd and wrongheaded when we hear stories of Vagina Quota hires destroying lives and much less endangering them. Suspended...Fuuuuuuuck this.

Will said...

About 1990 at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Okinawa, there was a billboard at the end of the runway that said “wheels?”

I always wondered how many Marines came in belly up before the sign went up.

I can imagine the scenario – the morning briefing

3rd Marine Air Wing Commanding General – “I swear to god! If you retards don’t pull your head out, and start following the checklist I’m putting up a giant billboard letting the public know exactly what apes you are!”

1st Lt, CG’s Aid – “uhh… actually sir, that brings us to item two…”

Unknown said...

I like the little snark "who made a point of saying that both pilots were women".

Hey, if we are playing identity politics then we are playing identity politics. Don't whine when we win that game easily

Unknown said...

Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to start cloning humans, so long as we clone a thousand Sully Sullenbergers so we don't have shit like this happening.

Guabal said...

I would say back to the kitchen for these two, and make that double Curry I mean hurry

Dexter said...

To be fair, this might not be a "women in the cockpit" problem but a "(dot) Indian in the cockpit" problem. They're still bathing in their own feces in that hell-hole.

liberranter said...

Is there no annoying buzzer with a flashing OMG TEH LANDING GEAR IS STILL OUT sign on this brand new aircraft? Cause I would've thought there would be.

The "three green[lights]s" on the instrument panel representing the landing gear down and locked should've given these two bimbettes a clue that something was amiss. I guess they were too busy gossiping to pay the fuck attention to flying the plane.

Unknown said...

@liberranter
As a former USAF crew chief, this was something we were taught when we did aircraft inspections. Check your lights all the time, including the landing gear lights.
And this reminds me of the running joke in The Big Bang Theory, where Sheldon constantly reminds Penny about her Check Engine light being on. And remember, she was supposed to have been able to rebuild a tractor engine as a girl, yet ignore that something was wrong with her engine. That's is until it broke, then instead of fixing it herself, beta Leonard buys her another car.

Bob said...

"and TWO "pilots" couldn't be bothered to check that indicator even though for well over an hour they knew that they had major flight profile ( significantly below planned cruise altitude which also induces more drag due to thicker air AND attaining less than half of planned cruise speed ) issues."

They probably saw it there buzzing and beeping away at them, looked at it with a frowny face and shouted "WHY does that thing keep buzzing, I'm NOT wrong!"

Bobby Dupea said...

I was taught to recite out loud on every departure to check the VSI (vertical speed indicator) and call out when it reported a climb rate "Positive rate, gear up." Complicated shit, I know. Why, you can call out "Gear up!" and forget to extend your right arm.

And if my aircraft won't climb to normal cruise, it's "Center, I have an issue." And then, if not resolved, "Center, XXXML declaring emergency."

Exactly what were these chicks talking about that superseded de minimis cockpit management?

Their airline, as the ATP above noted, is going to have fun inspecting and signing off on that gear, which is not certified to be down and locked at 300 knots indicated.

Nate73 said...

As much as it would be funny to conclude this is a woman problem, we need more context to decide if it's that or an Indian problem. The male pilots might be just as incompetent.

Anonymous said...

This story reminds me when one of the affirmative hires at work pulls up in the bobcat cart with smoke pouring out of the hood. With the smell of burnt breaks she says "thats weird, it has been kind of sluggish."

Skyler the Weird said...

My H1bs call in for a password reset of their database and never can tell if it's Unix, Oracle, Teradata or Something else. I need to start charging for the $2.99/minute psychic hotline.

liberranter said...

As much as it would be funny to conclude this is a woman problem, we need more context to decide if it's that or an Indian problem. The male pilots might be just as incompetent.

I would imagine that the male pilots aren't quite as incompetent as the women, probably fucking up things considerably more complex and difficult than raising and lowering landing gear (but that are still handled as a matter of routine by western pilots).

Tatooine Sharpshooters' Club said...

The Telegraph story says the pilots have been "de-rostered" later in the story, so maybe they are gone.

But the funniest thing, a good quarter of the story (including a FAQ) is about other landing gear related incidents, as if to point out "See, it's not just a uterus or Hindustani issue!"

Robert What? said...

Wait... aren't the women's feelings more important than the lives of the passengers?

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