Tutti
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10 years already for the Airbus A380
The A380 made its first flight on 27 April 2005 and entered commercial service in October 2007 with Singapore Airlines. (www.youtube.com) Altro...
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The pilots description of what went on from his perceptions was extremely interesting to me. The statement he made about the aircraft not acting as "expected" in particular. Years and years of in type experience would not have taught them what going on. From a programming perspective (my area of expertise), the aircraft computer systems did what they had been programmed to do. This was counting the errors of each failure to get power to the fuel pumps. Each time one of the A/B/C/D BUSS systems failed to energize the pumps, the crew got error messages about it. I believe it was 3 sets of messages per BUSS attempt to connect (my estimate ONLY). The computers then determined (again by error counting) the electrical BUSS systems were incapable of supplying power. The system then went to the last resort for power, which is the RAT. The crew had minimum knowledge of the logic in the computer systems, hence the total surprise of the load shedding process the aircraft initiated without warning when the RAT deployed without pilot command. Loss of the cockpit displays in the middle of a crisis must have been quite disconcerting (understatement!) to the crew while that process completed. I would imagine this was a major factor, along of course with the CG issue, of getting the aircraft back on the ground ASAP, even if it was over maximum landing weight. Excellent CRM among five senior cockpit crew members is the only thing that saved this aircraft.
Agree on the CRM with out a doubt. Interesting that the check captain and the chief A380 pilot were able to recognize that the Captain was in charge without the temptation to second guess. I think that the QANTAS model and the Australian spirit match well with open questioning of decisions by authority but a practical focus on getting the job done. Great job
Best I remember from what I read of the book, he just started handing out checklists for them to run, while him and assigned FO tried to fly the plane. All I got to say is I'm glad it was him, not me. That is one life experience I glad didn't come my way. Even by his own words, had the others not been there, there is no way they'd have gotten down.
The check captains also were assigned the weight and balance calculation which would not run (I recall hopefully correctly) because the aircraft was so overweight for the landing.
Again for all. His book QF32 is an excellent read even for those of us who have never flown professionally
Again for all. His book QF32 is an excellent read even for those of us who have never flown professionally
Now that I have all this >>TIME<< on my hands being retired and all, I'll probably go back and reread the whole thing. The one thing I remember for sure is that it was a mell of a hess. Had he not had the extra folks on the flight deck, it might have been UAL232 all over again, or worse. There was really no checklist for what had happened. As with American 191, he really didn't know how bad it was.
Agree. I have read the book twice and I am still not sure whether I am done!
All I can say about de Crespigny and all souls on board. The one thing that helped more than anything was the fact that the aircraft was still controllable. 5 senior Captains and good CRM helped immensely though, having to go through all the bells and whistles thrown at them.
Meant to include that it was just not their time and Grace of God.
