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Post by jonesy on Mar 27, 2015 11:47:04 GMT 12
On our flights to work each week (domestic in W.A) whenever one of the aircrew pops out of the cockpit one of the flight attendants goes in there in the interim. Maybe thats company policy (Virgin/Alliance) or just a chance for the pilot to have a "chat" with the hostie?
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Post by Darren Masters on Mar 27, 2015 11:48:56 GMT 12
On our flights to work each week (domestic in W.A) whenever one of the aircrew pops out of the cockpit one of the flight attendants goes in there in the interim. Maybe thats company policy (Virgin/Alliance) or just a chance for the pilot to have a "chat" with the hostie? Probably Jonesy as I am VA INT and it's not policy with us neither is AU DOM. Maybe the Alliance merger they have different policy but tech crew/flighty was probably just bored. Would love to see it come in though.
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Post by jonesy on Mar 27, 2015 12:14:23 GMT 12
Can see the logic with company policy requiring 2 staff in the cockpit at any given time. What would happen if the sole occupant had a sudden medical condition whilst the other pilot was out?
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Post by Darren Masters on Mar 27, 2015 12:56:51 GMT 12
Can see the logic with company policy requiring 2 staff in the cockpit at any given time. What would happen if the sole occupant had a sudden medical condition whilst the other pilot was out? In that case you can still access from outside as the code would open the door because the person on the other side, being incapacitated, would not be able to deny it.
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Post by Darren Masters on Mar 27, 2015 13:14:10 GMT 12
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Mar 27, 2015 14:03:16 GMT 12
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Post by Darren Masters on Mar 27, 2015 15:38:11 GMT 12
Hopefully we follow. It's now a CAA wide requirement but seeing as though VA have just gone to CASA (same way Jetstar operates here) let's hope they have the brains to follow the CAA ruling.
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Post by ErrolC on Mar 27, 2015 16:21:42 GMT 12
Not sure either of these two US regulations would guard against a determined #4U9525 style situation, though. /photo/1
27 Mar 2015 3:33 via TweetDeck
John Walton @thatjohn
Corollary to the US 2-person rule: the US also allows pilots to be armed, so a rogue pilot could just shoot the FA. /photo/1
27 Mar 2015 4:00 via TweetDeck
insert code here
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Post by B747-419 on Mar 27, 2015 22:36:18 GMT 12
That's already the FAA rule, right? Is it a requirement on all flights to the USA, all airline flights within their airspace, or just on USA airlines? Did anything change here after the AirNZ B777(?) lock-out stupidity a year or two back?
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Post by B747-419 on Mar 27, 2015 22:47:55 GMT 12
That's already the FAA rule, right? Is it a requirement on all flights to the USA, all airline flights within their airspace, or just on USA airlines? Did anything change here after the AirNZ B777(?) lock-out stupidity a year or two back? Pretty sure Air NZ has a 2 pilot International operation SOP covering this. If a pilot requires to leave the F/D then a CA must be in the F/D during the absence. This has been in for a while - not just a change today as reported by the media
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Post by Darren Masters on Mar 28, 2015 22:36:20 GMT 12
That's already the FAA rule, right? Is it a requirement on all flights to the USA, all airline flights within their airspace, or just on USA airlines? Did anything change here after the AirNZ B777(?) lock-out stupidity a year or two back? Pretty sure Air NZ has a 2 pilot International operation SOP covering this. If a pilot requires to leave the F/D then a CA must be in the F/D during the absence. This has been in for a while - not just a change today as reported by the media It was a change today effective immediately on the day for short, midhaul and domestic. I have some good mates there and they were issued with notices. They did not have it before they announced it today.
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Post by Darren Masters on Mar 30, 2015 13:36:56 GMT 12
Australia gone same way effective immediately.
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Post by ZacYates on Mar 30, 2015 13:48:06 GMT 12
There's a (rather spotty on details) article about a murder case where the offender, a BA pilot, killed his wife and then planned to crash a 747 as "a statement": www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/67551144/british-airways-pilot-killed-his-wife-then-planned-to-crash-a-jumbo-jetNo info about when the case took place or the sentence he received - pretty shoddy reporting - but it certainly makes for unsettling reading after the Germanwings accident. Speaking of which - when I first saw footage of the crash site on Thursday I was stunned, I've never ever seen such a wreck. I spotted a wheel, otherwise the wreckage was like confetti. My dad - who worked for Wanganui Aero Work at the time - said the Piper Seneca wreck in the Ahu Ahu Valley was similarly horrific. Terrible stuff.
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Post by haughtney1 on Mar 30, 2015 19:35:56 GMT 12
Here's an editorial written by a good friend of mine for "The Times" newspaper. www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4395378.eceHe's kindly shared the text of the article "I have spent 14,680 hours of my life sitting in a small room at the front of an aircraft with a colleague who is often a total stranger to me. Imagine that we are half way across the north Atlantic heading for Florida with 300 passengers on board. We have been unable to get to our desired altitude because of other traffic. The forecast winds are not quite as helpful as forecast, and the weather at destination is looking like it might deteriorate. I glance across at my colleague and think “If something happens to me, right now, is he made of the right stuff to get us all safely back to earth?” The tragedy of the A320 air crash in the Alps has highlighted problems around cockpit security but the greatest problem of all is pilots’ mental health. I have trained dozens of pilots during my 33-year career in commercial air travel and have been struck by the scant attention paid to this issue by airlines and regulators and the patchwork of testing standards used across Europe and the rest of the world. The growth in low cost airlines, as well as increase in those from the Middle and Far East, has intensified demand for new pilots. The courses they go on will differ but most begin with a basic psychometric test of the kind countless companies now use. If successful, they will then go through a flying school for the basic stuff, simulator training for the type of aircraft they will fly, tests on their flying skills and a medical exam. Andreas Lubitz would have gone through all of this in preparation for his career. We know that he took time out from his training to be treated for mental illness but should he not have had many more follow-up tests once he passed his exams and started flying? During the course of a year, most pilots will typically do two cockpit simulator checks and number of ground school classes on human factors, safety equipment, technical knowledge of the aircraft. Seldom will mental health be discussed. And yet too many people have lost their lives due to mental health problems in the aviation industry. I know this from first hand experience. Once, when training experienced pilots to become mentors to groups of junior pilots, I ran a role-playing exercise. The prospective mentor had to work with a colleague, played by an actor, who had started well but had become confrontational, been late for a number of flights, occasionally untidy and needed guidance. During their “interview”, the colleague became obstructive and sullen to the point where the prospective mentor became angry. Just at that moment, the colleague put his head in his hands and sobbed: “She’s dying and I don’t know what to do”. You could have heard a pin drop. No one had recognised the signs. And I don’t claim to be superior in this respect than any of my fellow pilots. Many years later, I failed to spot the signs in a colleague who went from being a happy, professional pilot to an angry, depressed individual who took his own life. Being a pilot is still regarded as a glamorous career but much has changed since the glory days of the 1960s and 1970s and its effect on pilots’ state of mind is insufficiently understood. Commercial jets once had a standard cockpit crew of five: a captain, a first officer, a flight engineer, a navigator and a radio officer. Today, we have two. The advent of computer technology has made the other positions redundant. No bad thing – the aviation industry would be nowhere without technology. The moving map displays, more accurate navigation systems and fault recognition technology were a huge leap forward in safety. The thing that didn’t change so quickly was us. Our brains required us to adapt to the fact that so much of a flight is now flown by computer. We need to focus and train much more on how to react when it goes wrong. But instead, I fear, we’ve simply come to rely on new technology and found ourselves surprised when it does something we didn’t think it would do. The comment of “what’s it doing now?” can still, disturbingly, sometimes be heard in cockpits. The proportion of an airliner’s flight controlled by computer, not pilot, is growing. This creates its own potential hazard. Many pilots fill the time by reading books or newspapers but for others, boredom and restlessness set in. It may seem a luxury to many, but the paradox of boredom while carrying the onerous responsibility for hundreds of passengers’ safety is a recent phenomenon and its effect on pilots’ state of mind needs studying. None of this is to excuse what was a selfish act of mass murder committed by Andreas Lubitz over the Alps on Tuesday. But until the airline industry and its regulators take more seriously the mental health of pilots around the world, the danger is something similar could happen again."
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Post by jonesy on Mar 30, 2015 20:01:57 GMT 12
The mental health issue is a massive one throughout all aspects of industries, so much more relevant when the person concerned has a duty of care for a number of others. Unfortunately its taken so many years to recognise this fact and do something about it. The really tricky thing is seeing when a person needs help, identifying the root causes of it and formulating a solution. And not just chucking them out to fend for themselves. The old addage of "harden up Princess" is well out of date...
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Mar 31, 2015 16:13:20 GMT 12
There are so many similarities with regards the rail transport industry, and in particular locomotive engineers that it is not funny.
I am fortunate in that I am predominantly driving passenger trains with each run only lasting about 95 minutes from one end to the other, but most of my colleagues are driving long-haul freight trains. And during the 38½-years I have been doing the job, the non-stop distances have increased by a huge amount, often at night through the dark countryside, with very infrequent other traffic (unlike on a public road), plus the crew sizes on freight trains have dropped over the years from three, to two, to one, all the while dealing with increased technology, more proceedures to follow and comply with, and continually squeezed-up rosters with less downtime. And as the central region compliance & safety manager at KiwiRail likes to remind us during refresher courses, “the company has sentenced all you chaps to solitary confinement for up to 11 hours at a time” and whereas in the past, blokes used to talk through all of life's troubles with the other chap in the locomotive cab and get it out of the system, now many blokes who develop psychological problems (or even just have things on or off the job getting them down) sit there all alone for hour after hour, mile after mile and stew on it. Then, when it all turns to custard because somebody isn't quite right in the head, it results in a very big, very expensive mess.
At least I am fortunate enough to be interacting with on-train staff behind me all the time, but I feel sorry for some of those chaps doing the long-haul freight runs by themselves.
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Post by isc on Mar 31, 2015 20:14:53 GMT 12
As far as rail goes, if "they" could come across a cheap system to take over, "they" would get rid of the driver as well on the likes of the coal trains from Christchurch to Greymouth. Perhaps aviation will go that way too. Well they are test running automatic/driverless cars. isc
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Post by jonesy on Mar 31, 2015 21:41:24 GMT 12
As far as rail goes, if "they" could come across a cheap system to take over, "they" would get rid of the driver as well on the likes of the coal trains from Christchurch to Greymouth. Perhaps aviation will go that way too. Well they are test running automatic/driverless cars. isc Been operating driverless dump trucks/drills/trains on iron ore sites over here for a few years now. No driver fatigue etc... Hasnt been completely successful with stories of the odd truck starting to go places it shouldnt...
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Mar 31, 2015 22:28:36 GMT 12
That works well if you have fixed concists of identical vehicles in trains, such as unit coal trains, or unit iron ore trains.
But the moment you start running general freight trains with different types of wagons, and different concists from train to train, from day to day, it all falls over, because every train that isn't a fixed-concist unit train is completely different to handle. And computers cannot handle that inconsistency.
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Apr 1, 2015 16:28:39 GMT 12
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