Jay Leno mentioned this tonight.
A pilot from Cathay Pacific, taking delivery of a brand new B777-300ER from Boeing/Paine Field in Everett WA, did a flyby at 28-30 feet above the runway before leaving for Hong Cong.
Here is a series of pictures of the flyby.
mmm… ground rush!
Being fired seems to me to be an overly harsh punishment for, under the circumstances, a not overly hazardous maneuver. I have to wonder if this was insitigated by some flying-phobic bureacrat who has a puritanical horror of a pilot experiencing anything resembling fun on the job.
I believe he was fired for doing the maneuver without permission and wasting fuel. The airline tried to have the video and pictures supressed. I suppose they didn’t want to be known as the cowboy airline.
Also, 30 feet off the deck doesn’t leave a lot of room for error.
The danger isn’t in hitting the ground, per se. Pilots know pretty well how close they are to the ground from takeoffs and landings. The danger in this maneuver is one of energy management.
If you’re going to buzz a runway, you should do it really fast. That way if you have an engine failure you have some energy with which to gain altitude and perhaps land safely.
It’s okay to buzz slowly if you still have room to land and come to a stop, but I doubt that was the case with this 777.
So this maneuver was theoretically dangerous, although engine failures are unlikely. Especially in an airliner. Then again, it was a brand new aicraft, and I’ve learned to be careful of any airplane just out of manufacturing or maintennance.
Fire the pilot? Nah. Whack him on the knuckles and demote him - I’d say yes.
The pilot of the A320 at the Paris show figured he knew what he was doing in his fly-by, but the plane thought otherwise.
Shit happens, so one would expect a professional pilot to minimize risks as far as reasonably possible, rather than to go stunting about with dozens of souls on board as the 777 pilot did.
I’ve seen that video several times before and I’m 95% certain that it was a fly-by-wire remote control flying demonstration that went awry, not simply poor pilot judgement in a fly-by. So, not strictly applicable to this case.
I’m 100% certain that the last I heard of this crash it was caused by a failure of the fly-by-wire system.
Fly-by-wire does not mean remote control. It means that the control inputs from the flight deck are communicated to the wing and tail surfaces by electrical impulses, rather than by hydraulic or mechanical linkages.
What’s the point to doing a fly-by, anyway?
I noticed that the airline waited until he landed back home with the jet & corporate officers before firing him for being dangerous.
Looks to me like the wiki article has it right. He was too slow, too low and had no place to go. If the FBW setup crapped and he couldn’t get the tin above the treeline, I get it, but the fly-by was the true cause of the crash. I would bet that if he just aimed at a runway landed, he could have gotten her stopped or slowed enough to prevent the incident, and everyone would have walked away.
As far as the OP, well, firing should be the least of his problems. Whoever licenses him should revoke the license forever. That’s too large a craft to be screwing around with. You want to buzz the runway in a Citation X, be my guest, but a commercial airliner? Hell no.
Just showing off. He’d likely spent the previous six weeks at the Boeing training center, in Renton, learning that particular aircraft. He wanted to show everyone what he’d learned.
But did his co-pilot yell “Great Balls of Fire!” as they went by?
I have read articles that report the pilot has performed this maneuver at airshows. The issue here is simply that he did not obtain permission from Cathay before doing so.
Strictly speaking, ANY aircraft, even a single-seater, is “too large” to be screwing around with.
Low over a runway is NOT a big deal - you do it at least twice on every flight, take-off and landing. An aborted landing - which while not common is a standard procedure - can have you going much lower and much slower than a fly by such as this pilot did. You’re overestimating the danger involved. The big issues here are:
When you’re hired to fly an airliner you’re hired to fly it to the employer’s specifications, not for your own amusement. That said, just about every pilot has, at one time or another, done something like a fly by. Here in the US a reprimand would most likely be the extent of the punishment, firing seems extreme. On the other hand, he might have been a troublemaker otherwise and this became a convenient excuse.
There’s the ‘subject to appeal’ lines in some of the reports, don’t forget. “Fire me for wasting fuel, when the CEO told me to do it?”
From what I’ve read, he had permission from ATC and the CEO riding in the cockpit.
See above.
Just to clarify, Flybys are often done on the delivery flight, but they have to be preauthorized. It wastes a lot of expensive fuel too.
The plane wasn’t carrying any commercial passengers, just the company’s purchasing group, which included the chairman of the airline, who apparently said sure, go ahead, but he’s a bean counter. He didn’t have the authority to make that call.
Here’s a quote from an un-named source*, who claims to have been involved:
*I have no proof of the veracity of the quote.
Transport category aircraft have guaranteed engine out performance. They are capable of continuing a take-off with one engine inoperative after V1 speed which is normally sometime before they lift-off. This B777 would have been flying significantly faster than that and would have been able to climb away from a single engine failure. He should be punished for disobeying regulations, not for the danger of the specific manoeuvre.
If anyone should be fired for a flyby it should be this guy. Although his flyby was authorised, I fail to see how he could know how far his left wingtip is from the ground on the first pass, and I’ve done a lot of low flying.