I can’t watch the video (not available in my country), however the Wikipedia article on the accident states the CVR only had the 30 minutes prior to the crash and that it was not known why the crew did not get their oxygen on. I can only assume the video contains conjecture with no solid evidence as far as the use of checklists goes.
To answer your question, pilots should use the relevant checklist that applies to the problem they have, however not every problem has a checklist and you are expected to be able to work outside the box when necessary.
The A320 has a well known issue with its electronic emergency checklist system (ECAM) that prioritises red master warnings over amber master warnings. The checklist for an engine fire on one engine (red warning) will push the checklist for an engine failure of the other engine (amber warning) to the next page where it can’t be seen. The crew is expected to first confirm the state of the aircraft by the use of the engine instruments and other systems information before applying the checklist. In this edge case the engine failure checklist would probably be done first so as to use the thrust from the burning engine while it is still available. If the fire checklist was done first, the only engine producing thrust, hydraulics, and electrical power would be shutdown leaving the crew in a pretty bad predicament. To be fair, that whole scenario is a pretty bad predicament and is really just used as an example of why you shouldn’t blindly follow the ECAM.
I find it hard to believe that “don O2 mask” wouldn’t be a memory item for high cabin altitude but hypoxia is subtle and insidious. It is most likely that, rather than the crew being beholden to a checklist that didn’t include getting a mask on, they became fixated on some detail and failed to recognise the broader issue that they were hypoxic. They probably thought everything was going really well (a side effect of hypoxia).
A handful of procedures each with just a couple of steps to be memorized and executed solely from memory when needed (“memory items”). These are for cases where individual seconds count. Donning oxygen in the presence of a pressurization anomaly is one of them.
A dozen or so that are printed in large print on laminated legal-sized cardstock (the Quick Reference Card = QRC) and stored in a holder atop the glareshield for instant access. These are for very serious situations which require prompt action over a minute or so but are more elaborate than mere memorization would enable doing accurately.
The couple hundred procedures printed in a large-print booklet (the Quick Reference Handbook = QRH) for dealing with anything and everything that might go wrong. Each pilot has a personal copy that may be full of their personal notes.
These are hierarchical. So the memory items are also listed on the QRC too to help with brain farts, provided you’re fast enough getting it out and finding it. And most of the QRC procedures are essentially preludes to the more detailed QRH procedures. IOW, the first 5 steps of e.g. “Engine Fire” are on the QRC which then refers you to page X of the QRH to pick up step 6 from there.
Truth be told, other than remembering to steer manually when the machine is veering wherever inappropriately, and to put on oxygen, very little that goes wrong in a jet requires split-second responses.
Over the years there have been many fashions in how emergencies non-normal situations are handled. From more the John Wayne ad lib approach to the pure Do nothing except get out the Big Book and laboriously read from it in all its ponderous verbosity while doing exactly what it says and nothing else approach.
The former led to lots of variability in outcomes, some of which were extremely stupid. While the latter was often too slow and led to mindless folks getting mindlessly off-track when the problem did not exactly match the script. Or they erred in selecting the correct script to begin with. A big shot of adrenaline can trigger unseemly haste which often leads to bonehead mistakes.
Nowadays the hierarchical approach is intended to address the occasional need-for-speed issue, while also quickly pulling in the reins on John Wayne. And with an expectation that at each decision point pilots will carefully (and jointly) consider the totality of circumstances and ensure the problem they’re facing matches the procedure they’re reading + doing.
A real problem with bizjets is that by and large they are not a good flight operation. There are now some large organizations like NetJets who are exactly as professional as the mainline airlines. But there are many charter operators and small corporations that have a couple jets and a handful of pilots. Who may or may not really be good at what they do, and who may or may not really have a disciplined standardized approach to non-normals. Or to anything else.
Bizjets are exactly as fast and as complicated as airliners. On a per-flight basis they have an accident rate about 20x worse than airliners. It’s not the machines that are different. It’s the crews and their management. And to a small extent the more varied and riskier missions.
Speaking to the Payne Stewart accident specifically …
I did not watch the vid. I have read the NTSB report back when it came out as well as just now the wiki
If the oxygen tank was empty and they missed noticing that on preflight they’d be screwed. If it developed a leak so the pressure was OK barely at preflight when checked, but later bled off enroute they’d be screwed. If the pressurizatin problem was slow enough the pilots might be a little bit stupid by the time the warning horn went off. OTOH, if the warning horn did not go off for its own silent malfunction, they might have gotten stupid before they realized what was going on.
The FO was a total newbie with negligble jet or high altitude experience. And probably negligble high altitude training. So the Captain was essentially on his own when shit went bad. He was a former USAF heavy driver (and current ANG heavy driver) with all the quality training background that entails. But he was also older and maybe in crappier shape. He might have gotten stupid with altitude faster than the FO. So she was more alert but less clueful about what was happening to her. And perhaps a bit intimidated by the experience / age / gender imbalance.
Both were extremely new to Learjets. If the problem was sudden and severe and occurred at cruise altitude, the required response time to get masks in place may have been real close to impossible to achieve. Way up there you really need to be Quickdraw McGraw. Which is part of why fighters wear masks all the time. The depressurization time of a leaking small cabin is very very short.
Especially with any newbie fumbling they’d both have been prone to. Often masks are tucked into where they can be fitted into the cockpit which is less than optimal for instant instinctive use. If the Captain spent a few seconds fumbling for the mask where it’s kept in his KC-135 before recognizing his mistake then focusing his attention to where it’s kept in the Learjet and how to deploy it, that may have been more than all the seconds he had.
Lotta ways that all adds up to a bad situation.
There have been other loss of pressurization accidents that occurred due to oxygen tank valves being closed, or low/no pressure with the gauge in a hard place to read place (like up in the nose cone), etc.
Actually any of his military or cowboy movies. Or his pilot movies.
It’s the macho “I can handle anything; just use my superior knowledge and coolitude to scare the problem into submission. Since I’m the hero of the movie in my head, of course I’ll come out looking heroic and get the girl. And survive this engine fire”.
Top Gun’s Maverick character was a quintessential John Wayner. It’s an attitude that your worst ill-considered instantaneous ad lib is better than any carefully considered procedures written by a group of experts with all the time in the world to consider the contingencies.
W0X0F, pronounced ‘wahks-off’, means ‘indefinite ceiling, visibility zero, due to fog’. Dad was a Flight Service Specialist, and told me what it means. But I don’t remember what the individual elements of it mean. ‘F’ for ‘fog’ is obvious. So are the zeroes. ‘X’ means… ‘sky obscured’?
I cannot believe we are still using a system of codes for weather and pilot reports like it’s the goddam 1930s with teletypes. In this day and age we are still hostages of a system in which “BR” means “mist”.
If you wanted to create a system that is purposely confusing and prevents pilots from quickly and easily getting the information they need, you would invent what we have now: A special code for METARs which is similar, but somewhat different from TAFs, yet another set of coding for PIREPs, and the colossal mishmash that is still the NOTAM system despite supposedly being overhauled a while back. Unbelievable. I can read a typical METAR as well as anybody. But I shouldn’t have to in this day and age, and we shouldn’t be wasting flight students’ time with this nonsense anymore.
I’ve been asking FAA reps for years why this hasn’t changed and the answer is usually ICAO. It sets the standards. Why this prevents them from keeping the codes and simply adding the capability of real-language translation, I don’t know.
W0X0F was code under the legacy FAA / NWS system that was not ICAO compatible. The US FAA switched to the ICAO system in the early-mid 1990s. DoD had long previously switched to the ICAO system. But of course using US customary units like feet & nautical miles, not meters & km.
So I learned lightplane flying under the truly ancient 1950s FAA/NWS system, which was updated around 1970 to merely be archaic, then had to learn ICAO for USAF, go back to FAA for my early airlining, then listen to the old farts bitch when the USA went to ICAO for domestic use. Now I are an old fart and I sure hope nobody changes anything major in my remaining months. My employer is now transitioning to a new flight planning system and I’m darn happy I won’t have to learn it. Neener neener.
Anyhow, W0X0F
W = Indefinite ceiling. They can’t actually tell where the sky ends and the clouds begin
0 = Ceiling height in hundreds of feet. So right at the surface.
X = Sky fully obscured. IOW you can’t tell clouds from air, so you can’t tell what kind of clouds they are.
0 = Visibility in statute miles or 8ths thereof. There ain’t any.
F = Fog. The type of clouds forming the obstruction to visibility.
W0X0F is the classic pea soup fog. It’s only a partial weather report since winds, altimeter settings, time, station ID, etc. are missing but would be a valid ceiling & visibility component of a complete weather report.
Back in the day W0X0F was pronounced by my cohort about like “rocks off” (as in “get your …”) but with a leading W in place of the R.
Under ICAO coding the same concept looks like:
00SM FG VV000
Which decodes as:
00SM = Visibility = zero statute miles
FG = Visibility is limited due to fog
VV000 = Vertical visibility is zero hundreds of feet, meaning clouds start right at the surface and the sky is obscured.
Which is much harder to pronounce. “Oohz’m FIGvoo” is about how I’d say it. Although nobody does.
The weather app we use, WSI WeatherBrief, has a natural language translation feature built in. And can parse the timestamps to convert them into departure or ETA-relative components. So it can take a big nasty TAF and just show you the subset that matters for your plan. IIRC it can even absorb ATIS and translate that for you.
There are a variety of products that do that. But last I checked ICAO doesn’t officially bless any of them. They’re stuck to the teletype codes.
And I’ve worked at companies that didn’t allow you to install apps on the devices we were issued, so then you’re using your personal phone / iPad to see real-language translations. Which can technically be against the OpSpecs. But I’ll advocate for that before I support keeping the code system without legal alternatives.
I mean, the very fact that the weather and other information is “in code” says something. Why is any information pilots need in a format that needs to be decoded, either in one’s head or through technology? It’s just not necessary anymore.
Understand. At least for us, using any software whatsoever except the official stuff is utterly verboten. I hear tell it’s done sometimes by some folks, but I don’t.
The key thing about the code is that it’s unambiguously understandable by a computer. And it’s completely human-language neutral and also incorporates units designators so whether the local station uses miles or meters, feet or furlongs, there’s no ambiguity.
So I can read a report from Ulan Bator just as well as one from Des Moines. And so can a Chinese pilot. Or an Indian one.
Using the coded forms to collect data from all over the world makes complete sense. All the computers talk to each other with no confusion. That’s good. Disseminating them to airplanes in coded form makes some sense (but see below). Taking them from airplane systems or pilot’s tablet to the final UI in coded form makes little sense nowadays. As you say.
I don’t know how much international you do. I do a lot, although it’s all Caribbean and Latin America. Lotta Spanish, some French, some Dutch, a bit of Brazilian Portugeuese. And lots of amazingly accented English as people’s first or as second language being sent and received over marginal radios.
Writing down an ATIS being broadcast in Spanish is difficult to say the least. If they simply read out the METAR codes verbatim in digits & phonetic letters it’d be MUCH better. Instead, they’re translating it into human language and broadcasting that. But not my human language. Oops; sux to be me. Many places transmit ATIS recordings in both the local language and English. Where it’s a computer-generated voice that’s great. Where it’s a local with his thick local accent it’s much harder to follow his idiosyncratic take on English pronunciation. Now imagine being a Chinese or German pilot listening to an ATIS recorded by a native Spanish (or Portuguese, or French) speaker speaking English badly.
That’s why disseminating the info in code makes sense. The natural language translation should be in the last 24 inches from the innards of your FMS/tablet to the screen to your eyeballs. That’s the first safe place to do it.
And I agree completely that human plain language translation into your desired human language should be fully available in your cockpit provided by your employer under your OpsSpecs.
The ground facilities should all have D-ATIS too. And CPDLC. But they don’t. At least not yet.
Wortman, 72, died after the plane crashed in an Orleans County pasture, having seemingly fallen apart in mid-air, according to police. The pilot, a 70-year-old man named Earl Luce who’d bragged online about having painstakingly built the experimental aircraft by hand, was also killed.
“The preliminary investigation indicates that the wings of the aircraft became detached from the fuselage and fell to the ground landing in an orchard,” county Sheriff Christopher Bourke said in a Monday news release.
I was thinking kinda the opposite to your thought. Or crosswise or something. Anyhow …
Consider the old “… but you f*** one sheep …” joke.
The doctor did one bad thing and his epitaph is all about that. Not about all the good he (presumably) did. He manages to die in a newsworthy fashion and what are the headlines about? Not his good works, not even his death which is why they’re even writing about him at all. Instead it’s all about his earlier major screwup.
The doc is more of a celebrity than was the builder / pilot, at least in conventional circles. So unsurprising to me that the headlines are more about the doc than the builder / pilot. Far more likely the writeup in the EAA magazine will be about the pilot / builder with the passenger a mere parenthetical. Then again, if I was a well-known GA homebuilder dude being written up for being killed flying my own creation is not exactly the form of notoriety I’d have wished for.
What always pissed me off about accident reporting when I was young was reports like “Brand X Airlines DC-9 crashes; 40 passengers killed” with no mention of the crew. As if their deaths didn’t matter. They’re just Redshirts, nothing to see here; move along.
As to the Wittman Buttercup accident itself, It’ll be a long time if ever before any useful info comes to light. But I do wonder if the airplane is trailerable or had recently been taken apart and put together. Wings can fail in a lot of ways. But both at once usually (not always) means somebody forgot to put some bolts in. Oops.
A failure in overload normally snaps one wing and the remaining fuselage and opposite wing combo pretty quickly turns into a tumbling jumble that no longer has lifting forces available to overload the surviving wing. There are exceptions, but they’re rare.
Yup. That plane had been flying since 2002, so probably not a build error. More likely the wings were recently put on and the attach fittings not put on properly - or at all. It’s pretty hard to make both wings fail simultaneously in a strut-braced airplane unless the struts aren’t connected properly.
If it was something like corrosion, I wouldn’t expect both wings to fail. On a cntilivered plane maybe, as the forces built up from losing one wing might tear the other off, but a properly strut-braced wing? I dunno.
My money is on maintenance/assembly for flight error.
I prefer the abbreviations to be honest. Every app that has a decode of the code, including Jeppesen FD Pro X that we use operationally, I’m quicker just reading the code. 340/25G35 9999 BKN020 tells me in a single line that it’s a nice day in Wellington ;).
As I said, I can read them too. But you and I are, forgive me, “old guys” within aviation. When I was an instructor nearly every student would ask why they needed to learn these silly codes and… they were right to ask.
Foisting this on current aviation students is - and I’m going to use a technical term here - stupid. We have the ability to decode them easily. Most of us do, and it’s no longer necessary to perpetuate this system. That the codes are easily readable for our computer systems? Great, keep them for that. And keep them for those who want them. All I’m saying is we should be able to “officially” use plain language decodes for weather and PIREPS too. That would be a boon for many flying today, and a bigger boon for those who are learning and can jettison that area of useless knowledge.
“Oohz’m FIGvoo” is about how I’d say it. Although nobody does.