I’m about 3/4 through the engineering / company induction course to be a First Officer on a British Aerospace BAe146.
I never thought I would consider my old aeroplane, the Dash 8, to be a modern technical marvel, but now I do. The BAe146 is British from top to bottom, over engineered, three or more switches where one would do, remarkably involved procedures where far simpler ones work for other aircraft. It’s a jet but it can’t fly above 31000’. They say the Dash 8 Q400 is a turbo-prop with jet like performance, the BAe146 is more like a jet with turbo-prop performance.
As one simple example of how over engineered this thing is, to perform a simple test of the caution/warning panel, you have to turn a dim knob to dim, check the norm/override switch is to norm, push the test button and watch all the caution/warning lights light up, then push the master warning button and watch all the lights extinguish except for two, then release the test switch, then put the norm/override switch to override and check that the currently lit cautions all go to bright then put the switch back to normal, then reset the dim knob to brighten the lights.
The same test on the Dash 8 goes like this. Caution/warning light switch to test, all lights come on, then release the switch.
That seems to represent the philosophy for the whole aeroplane. And don’t put all of the caution/warning lights in one place, oh no, it’s FAR better if you scatter them across the cockpit like glitter in the breeze.
I’m tearing my hair out.
But… I kind of like antiquated pieces of crap, so I think I’m going to enjoy it.
My jet time (all four hours of it) is in old fighter / trainer aircraft. Want to talk about silly procedures? Try starting the engines on a Fouga Magister. It’s something like a 7-step process with tricky fuel / igniter controls, and if you do it wrong you’ll dump fuel on the tarmac and set it on fire!
Russian planes are the opposite in that they’re so simple as to be ridiculous. Want to get out of a spin in your MiG-15? Just put the stick on the white line that’s painted down the middle of the instrument panel. Didn’t work? Eject.
But without going for laughs, the Russians had good reasons for doing things that way. And for some of their engineering, which to western eyes looks primitive. But I don’t know much about British planes - what do you suppose the philosophy was behind designs like you’ve described ?
To me, a non-aviator, it sounds like poorly designed software I’ve seen where you had changing requirements and multiple design teams that didn’t communicate well. Kludges built on kludges built on kludges. It works, but . . .
I flew round the Caribbean on Whisperjets in the early 70s. Noisiest fucking aircraft I’ve ever heard. I seem to remember there was an engine at the base of the tail - was that an earlier model?
On the one hand - you get used to it. Even a prop trainer Cessna or Piper seems a little kludgy to non-aviators. Especially on hot starts, getting the prop turning can be a bit of a nuisance. But once you get some experience it’s not a big deal. I imagine that’s the same with the Fouga, but for someone like me doing it just once it seems crazy and dangerous.
On the other hand, good cockpit ergonomics is a relatively recent development. In the old days engineers put instruments wherever they could fit them without much thought about grouping flight or engine instruments together, or ease of use.
I have a book that describes the procedure for re-lighting an engine after a flameout in the Gloster Meteor, one of the earliest jet fighters. The pilot had to press an igniter button on one side of the cockpit while simultaneously turning a fuel petcock somewhere else. Being a single seat fighter (most of them) one wonders who the hell was supposed to fly the airplane while doing all of that! But that’s the way it was engineered because they didn’t really think in those terms at that time.
On the third hand, there are some controls which are deliberately made somewhat difficult to operate. Wing fold mechanisms, for example. You don’t want to be able to just hit one switch - possibly by mistake - and fold or unfold the wings on planes so equipped. So they make those mechanisms like a stickshift that has to be moved purposefully through several detents before it will function. Same with the droop nose on the Concorde.
But the panel test situation described by the OP… I’m rather curious about that one.
Since it wasn’t introduced until the mid 80’s, didn’t have an engine at the back and is actually pretty quiet, you might just have been flying something else.
They were definitely labeled “Whisper Jet”. I kept a diary and wrote it down at the time. This would have been '73-4. Maybe the name transferred from a completely different plane.
ETA: I didn’t misremember - they were Boeing 727s.
An unnecessary additional post here just for me to marvel at that feat of memory… The name I certainly wrote down and have re-read; the engine configuration, however, I have borne with me, unretrieved, for nearly 40 years until this thread. I now remember looking at the plane, intently, from the window of some shitty Caribbean airfield as it howled away to the next island, and from that recalled image this evening I remembered it having an engine at the base of the tail. I was 6 years old at the time. [/bragging hijack]
Yes, the 727’s were quieter than 707’s. But this is relative; as I watched the jets fly west out of Reagan airport from Gravelly point in the late 80’s, you knew even blindfolded when a 727 flew by–your eardrums would hurt.
In another life I worked across the street from LAX. PSA were still in business back then, and they flew the BAe146. I thought they were the coolest-looking airliners ever. And they were quiet. From the outside. I never had the chance to fly in one.
I remember in 1987 PSA lost a BAe146 when a disgruntled ex-employee, who had been fired for theft, got a gun aboard the aircraft. He shot his ex-manager, who was aboard, both pilots, and himself. The aircraft crashed and all 43 aboard were killed.
RE: three engines on a 727, two on a DC-9. I’m being subjective, yes, but this was noted after seeing–or should I say–hearing several hundred take offs over the years that I would hang around on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. These planes on take off were two or three hundred above you on take-off.
I flew the PSA 146’s a few times down to Southern California from San Jose. Pretty nice planes, from the passenger’s point of view, though small. The view out of some of the middle windows was mostly that of an engine, however.
