The Devil at 37,000 Feet

rpadula said:
Overall, it would seem the most important info was "transponder standby" and "TCAS Off."
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I was discussing this accident today with my flying buddy and he told me that he had turned the transponder to STBY accidentally. Of course in the US, ATC is on the radio immediately saying, "radar contact lost". I am attaching a picture of our panel showing the two MCDU's (known to other people as FMS's). Normally we run the radio page only on the right unit and the flight plan or progress page on the left unit. You can see where the bottom left line select key is what switches the transponder from STBY to TA/RA. He said that he thinks he was trying to push the right lower key on the other unit and hit the wrong one because they are next to each other. You can also see on the MFD (the right screen) where there is a little box on the left side where you can read "TCAS OFF" in white letters. I don't normally look at that box, although I will more now. Most of the other informational, caution and warning messages appear on the other screen where you see all the amber and cyan messages. I also noticed today that there actually is a transponder reply light next to where it says "XPDR1" on the right MCDU.

As far as the nearest airport function goes, I don't think there is one. Last night when I read this thread it occured to me that I had never been shown how to do that and I didn't have a clue how to attempt it. So today almost all the way from Denver to Calgary I played with the buttons and looked through the manual. As far as I can see there is no nearest airport feature. The way you would find the nearest airport is to bring up the airports on the MFD and pick one. There is a feature that tells you the runways and their lengths as well as the airport elevation, but there is nothing as far as com frequencies go. What information there is is also pretty buried. If you have Jeppview, like we do, you could pull up the charts but only to airports that have instrument approaches. What I think is a little amusing is this a new airplane with new avionics, but in some ways it doesn't even do what a new C-182 would do; no LPV approaches; no nearest airport; not a whole lot of information about the airport. I know the avionics package is similar to, but not the same as that which is in the Legacy (Honeywell Primus Epic) so I thought it might have some relevance.
 

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The notion of "offsets" for safety could be codified without needing to "expose" the idea to pilots or controllers, in terms of day-to-day usage. There's a certain irony, after reading this account, in the suggestion of providing another "feature" that the pilot needs to know how to work on his TV sets, or another assignment a controller needs to grant to help improve separation, as there were failures in both of these areas.

Define a notion of the "width" of an airway, possibly a function of altitude, and you can incorporate the generation of a random lateral offset, in conjunction with cardinal altitudes, in FMS software, in a way that requires no involvement of the pilot, and for which support is wholly optional. In effect, the FMS randomly chooses a "lane" of the airway to fly. Is anybody going to notice a 2000' lateral offset from an airway at FL370?
-harry
 
Everskyward said:
I was discussing this accident today with my flying buddy and he told me that he had turned the transponder to STBY accidentally. Of course in the US, ATC is on the radio immediately saying, "radar contact lost". I am attaching a picture of our panel showing the two MCDU's (known to other people as FMS's). Normally we run the radio page only on the right unit and the flight plan or progress page on the left unit. You can see where the bottom left line select key is what switches the transponder from STBY to TA/RA. He said that he thinks he was trying to push the right lower key on the other unit and hit the wrong one because they are next to each other. You can also see on the MFD (the right screen) where there is a little box on the left side where you can read "TCAS OFF" in white letters. I don't normally look at that box, although I will more now. Most of the other informational, caution and warning messages appear on the other screen where you see all the amber and cyan messages. I also noticed today that there actually is a transponder reply light next to where it says "XPDR1" on the right MCDU.

As far as the nearest airport function goes, I don't think there is one. Last night when I read this thread it occured to me that I had never been shown how to do that and I didn't have a clue how to attempt it. So today almost all the way from Denver to Calgary I played with the buttons and looked through the manual. As far as I can see there is no nearest airport feature. The way you would find the nearest airport is to bring up the airports on the MFD and pick one. There is a feature that tells you the runways and their lengths as well as the airport elevation, but there is nothing as far as com frequencies go. What information there is is also pretty buried. If you have Jeppview, like we do, you could pull up the charts but only to airports that have instrument approaches. What I think is a little amusing is this a new airplane with new avionics, but in some ways it doesn't even do what a new C-182 would do; no LPV approaches; no nearest airport; not a whole lot of information about the airport. I know the avionics package is similar to, but not the same as that which is in the Legacy (Honeywell Primus Epic) so I thought it might have some relevance.
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Thanks for that detail, Mari. Sounds like a "confirmation" screen on turning off critical monitoring functions in flight would be a useful addition to FMS software. Did you really mean to turn off the TCAS? Transponder?
 
I bet, in a few years, with the terrain databases, GPS signals, WAAS, and performance data being what they are, we'll have the ability for the system to dynamically generate a HITS (highway in the sky) from present position to the landing zone of any runway in gliding distance... as an emergency function, this could be useful. If a straight in approach would leave you high, the system could automatically "bend" the route to a curve sufficient to bleed off the altitude and leave you comfortably high over the threshhold, while avoiding terrain. It would read your current groundspeed, computed winds, descent rate at best glide, and plot a bug for you for airspeed, VSI, and glidepath.
 
TangoWhiskey said:
Did you really mean to turn off the TCAS? Transponder?
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If you hit the bottom left button on the MCDU it switches the transponder from STBY to TA/RA. In the picture, STBY is in bold because that is the mode it is currently in (the plane is on the ground). Because the transponder is in STBY, TCAS is off. It doesn't work without the transponder being on. That was the scenario on the accident airplane.
 
Everskyward said:
If you hit the bottom left button on the MCDU it switches the transponder from STBY to TA/RA. In the picture, STBY is in bold because that is the mode it is currently in (the plane is on the ground). Because the transponder is in STBY, TCAS is off. It doesn't work without the transponder being on. That was the scenario on the accident airplane.
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I should have quoted my question. "Did you really mean to turn it off" wasn't directed at you, it was what I think a human-proofed FMS should be programmed to ask when you press the button. If the Transponder was in TA/RA and would go to STBY, it wouldn't do it immediately... a "CONFIRM TXDR STBY?" would appear first and require a second button push. Without the second push to confirm, the transponder would stay on.
 
TangoWhiskey said:
I should have quoted my question. "Did you really mean to turn it off" wasn't directed at you, it was what I think a human-proofed FMS should be programmed to ask when you press the button. If the Transponder was in TA/RA and would go to STBY, it wouldn't do it immediately... a "CONFIRM TXDR STBY?" would appear first and require a second button push. Without the second push to confirm, the transponder would stay on.
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Oh, I get it. :idea:

Yeah, I think that would be a good idea.
 
Midair Sept. 29, 2006 - Over Brazil

Hey,

I was just reading an article in "Vanity Fair" (please don't give me any crap about it). They talk about at FL 370 when the Legacy turned to track the UZ6 airway over Brasilia and it stayed at 37,000 feet "in contradiciton to the convention that would have shifted it to an "even" flight level"...Is this true? I thought this "convention" was below 18,000 ft.
 
Everskyward said:
I was discussing this accident today with my flying buddy and he told me that he had turned the transponder to STBY accidentally. Of course in the US, ATC is on the radio immediately saying, "radar contact lost". I am attaching a picture of our panel showing the two MCDU's (known to other people as FMS's). Normally we run the radio page only on the right unit and the flight plan or progress page on the left unit. You can see where the bottom left line select key is what switches the transponder from STBY to TA/RA. He said that he thinks he was trying to push the right lower key on the other unit and hit the wrong one because they are next to each other. You can also see on the MFD (the right screen) where there is a little box on the left side where you can read "TCAS OFF" in white letters. I don't normally look at that box, although I will more now. Most of the other informational, caution and warning messages appear on the other screen where you see all the amber and cyan messages. I also noticed today that there actually is a transponder reply light next to where it says "XPDR1" on the right MCDU.

As far as the nearest airport function goes, I don't think there is one. Last night when I read this thread it occured to me that I had never been shown how to do that and I didn't have a clue how to attempt it. So today almost all the way from Denver to Calgary I played with the buttons and looked through the manual. As far as I can see there is no nearest airport feature. The way you would find the nearest airport is to bring up the airports on the MFD and pick one. There is a feature that tells you the runways and their lengths as well as the airport elevation, but there is nothing as far as com frequencies go. What information there is is also pretty buried. If you have Jeppview, like we do, you could pull up the charts but only to airports that have instrument approaches. What I think is a little amusing is this a new airplane with new avionics, but in some ways it doesn't even do what a new C-182 would do; no LPV approaches; no nearest airport; not a whole lot of information about the airport. I know the avionics package is similar to, but not the same as that which is in the Legacy (Honeywell Primus Epic) so I thought it might have some relevance.
Click to expand...

Very helpful Mari!
 
Re: Midair Sept. 29, 2006 - Over Brazil

See the other "devil at 37000 feet" thread, and the rules change a little above 18000, but the basic "East-Odd, West-Even" principle applies.
 
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[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Report Blames U.S. Pilots, Controllers for Brazil Midair[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]According to reports in several Brazilian newspapers, U.S. Legacy 600 pilots Joseph Lepore and Jan Paladino and Brazilian controllers will be blamed for the September 2006 midair in which an ExcelAire-owned Embraer Legacy 600 collided with a Gol Airlines Boeing 737-800 over Brazils Amazon jungle, killing all 154 aboard the airliner. A final accident report, leaked to the Brazilian press over the weekend and expected to be officially issued tomorrow at noon by both the NTSB and Brazilian aviation safety agency Cenipa, claims the Legacys transponder was inadvertently turned off by the hand of one of the pilots, which was the central point in a chain of errors leading to the collision between the Legacy and Boeing 737 at FL370. A transponder turned off or set to standby mode also places its TCAS into standby mode. The controllers will be taken to task for failing to note the drop in transponder returns from the Legacy, miscommunication about the Legacys altitude and failure of communication between the crew and ATC. ExcelAire executive vice president David Rimmer said, The transponder is a distraction from the true cause of the accident: ATC put two airplanes on a collision course for about an hour. It was compounded by multiple catastrophic errors and weaknesses within the ATC system.[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
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Sorry for not linking.
 
TangoWhiskey said:
Good point. On the G1000, you're told when traffic is unavailable. Does TCAS similarly alert?
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I forget if the standard G1K/TIS does this or not, but the 172 I just flew with a 530W and a Ryan active traffic system actually had a bitchin' betty to say "Traffic system unavailable." (On one startup I got that warning, cycling the traffic system fixed it.) The G1K/TIS *does* have a "Traffic Unavailable" annunciation at the bottom of the screen if TIS isn't available, but like the Honeywell system, it's not in the same spot as all the other warnings. I wonder if there's a reason for that?

I'm of the impression, perhaps incorrect, that the field length and frequencies were not in the FMS database, as it was a military field.
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Score another one for Garmin - I'm almost positive that VOK (Volk ANGB) shows up in the NRST list, with full info, on the 430W.
 
I flew one of the earliest G1000 birds (2005 172R) at Ben's school over Thanksgiving 2005. It had TIS but we were never far enough from PHX to lose TIS coverage. A couple months later, the school back in Georgia received their first 2006 G1000 birds. They had only the same basic G1000 package and it did alert you with "Traffic Not Available."
 
TMetzinger said:
Well, now that I've listened to the Legacy voice recording... I'm ****ed. Neither one of the two pilots appeared to know how to operate the avionics in the airplane. Stick-and-Rudder skills are important and they did well flying, but if you're going to put your charts in the back of the cockpit and go paperless, you damn well better know how to operate the electronic substitutes as well as you know how to fly the airplane. They didn't know if the airport was suitable until practically on final! If the training for the type rating (or whatever subsequent checkout for insurance or PIC purposes) doesn't cover and test the avionics, that's a real problem with the standards.
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Tim,

I agree, but it ain't their fault. As soon as I got that impression from the article, I remembered this article:

http://www.avweb.com/news/pelican/182134-1.html

Now don't that just **** ya off?

I'm also pretty sure I LOVE US ATC after hearing the alternatives.
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They do a damn good job. :yes: No wonder so many pilots reach for the radio before they really should during an emergency.

I'm now sure that there needs to be better alerting when TCAS is not on.
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Agreed - And when the transponder goes to standby in flight.
 
In regards to the training these pilots received, I'm not sure it's the fault of the FAA, at least not solely. The FAA specified what had to be covered, which to me seems reasonable. The decision of the training companies to do it in the minimum time possible is based on competitive pressures, not the FAA.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Agreed - And when the transponder goes to standby in flight.
Click to expand...

As long as you're in radar coverage, there's already a system in place to alert the pilot should his transponder fail; ATC should see that on their scope and warn the pilot. And FWIW, there are many ways that a transponder can fail which would be undetected in virtually every civil aircraft flying today, so a better alert for the switch to standby couldn't be all that beneficial in most cases.

Personally, if Brazil continues to blame those pilots I think the US should find a way to retaliate such as refusing to allow any airplanes to enter the US that departed Brazil (assuming there's a way to do something like that without shooting ourselves in the foot).
 
TMetzinger said:
In regards to the training these pilots received, I'm not sure it's the fault of the FAA, at least not solely. The FAA specified what had to be covered, which to me seems reasonable. The decision of the training companies to do it in the minimum time possible is based on competitive pressures, not the FAA.
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While that may be true, the FAA does have a tendency to micromanage. Here is one example. One of the boxes that needs to be checked is steep turns. The FAA has gone back and forth about whether the non-flying pilot can help the flying pilot by calling out excursions from altitude and airspeed as well as helping to set power in the turn and notifying the flying pilot when they are within 10 or 20 degrees of their rollout heading. The first few times I went to training the non-flying pilot was allowed to do this. Then the FAA changed their mind and the non-flying pilot had to be silent during the steep turns. Now they are back to allowing callouts.

flyingcheeshead said:
I remembered this article:

http://www.avweb.com/news/pelican/182134-1.html

Now don't that just **** ya off?
Click to expand...
I've never been an airline pilot so I can't compare their training to ours. I've also never been to Simuflite, only to FlightSafety. I'll agree that the training is pretty compressed and there are a lot of boxes to check off. My first experience at one of these schools was at BE-20 initial, where they teach you how to fly a King Air in a week. As I have mentioned in the past, I had never had any formal training and had never even been to a ground school before that. I had also never flown anything bigger than a C-320. All I can say about that experience was that it was a real eye-opener and probably the hardest learning experience of my life. Halfway through I was wondering why I had ever quit my previous job where I knew what I was doing. Since then I've done three other initials for different airplanes so I know pretty much what to expect. If I were to give advice I would tell someone to pre-study the memory items and limitations before going to school and also to brush up on your instrument skills if you are rusty. They are not there to give you an instrument refresher. If you are not up on basic instrument procedures you will be way behind while you are trying to do approaches on top of dealing with systems malfunctions.

As far as the experience of the accident pilots goes, I thought at least one of them had previous experience in a very similar airplane but maybe it wasn't similar enough. When I picked up the CE-680 I had to fly with an experienced contract pilot for 20 hours and 10 landings as a requirement of the owner. They wanted at least one of the pilots in the aiplane to have that time which actually isn't very much. He didn't act so much as an instructor, but I asked a lot of questions and he gave me many real-world hints which is something you don't learn at these schools. I'll tell you that there's no way I would have wanted my first real flight to be a ferry from Brazil with another zero-time pilot.
 
lancefisher said:
Personally, if Brazil continues to blame those pilots I think the US should find a way to retaliate such as refusing to allow any airplanes to enter the US that departed Brazil (assuming there's a way to do something like that without shooting ourselves in the foot).
Click to expand...

I leave here for Brazil tomorrow... this thread just makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. :no:

Cheers,

-Andrew
 
lancefisher said:
As long as you're in radar coverage, there's already a system in place to alert the pilot should his transponder fail; ATC should see that on their scope and warn the pilot. And FWIW, there are many ways that a transponder can fail which would be undetected in virtually every civil aircraft flying today, so a better alert for the switch to standby couldn't be all that beneficial in most cases.

Personally, if Brazil continues to blame those pilots I think the US should find a way to retaliate such as refusing to allow any airplanes to enter the US that departed Brazil (assuming there's a way to do something like that without shooting ourselves in the foot).
Click to expand...

I agree that the primary responsibilitity for aircraft separation is ATC's. TCAS is a backup system, since ATC doesn't have a perfect record.

I don't think the Legacy pilots should face any adverse consequences for inadvertently turning the transponder to standby - even if they did do it and there wasn't another cause. If the transponder and TCAS are critical to flight safety, then they should only be able to be shut down by deliberate action, not inadvertent, and there should be a clear alert in the event of shutdown or failure.
 
lancefisher said:
Personally, if Brazil continues to blame those pilots I think the US should find a way to retaliate such as refusing to allow any airplanes to enter the US that departed Brazil (assuming there's a way to do something like that without shooting ourselves in the foot).
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The FAA will decertify an airline, usually for safety/maintenance reasons, and prohibit their operation to and from US airports.
 
TMetzinger said:
I don't think the Legacy pilots should face any adverse consequences for inadvertently turning the transponder to standby - even if they did do it and there wasn't another cause. If the transponder and TCAS are critical to flight safety, then they should only be able to be shut down by deliberate action, not inadvertent, and there should be a clear alert in the event of shutdown or failure.
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I am trying to recall which countries are trying pilots with criminal charges following an accident.
It is something that has become more common within the past 20 years. Mostly 3rd world countries and Europe (Italy), but has even started to appear here in the US recently.
 
I can conceive of deliberate action by a pilot that rises to the level of criminal activity - 9-11 comes to mind - but aside from those cases where it's clear that someone set out to commit murder/mayhem/theft/other with an airplane, it becomes a negligence issue, not a criminal one.

In this case I'm not sure whether the Legacy pilots were negligent. ATC certainly was somewhat negligent (they clearly forgot about the Legacy in one sector). I think the pilots should have tried to establish comms with ATC earlier - they went an awfully long time (and distance) without hearing from ATC, before the accident ever took place. Whether that is "negligence" is not clear to me.
 
Only partway through this article. I can't decide if his writing style is great, or irritating. I am enjoying the article so it must be a little of each. The Legacy is still 45 minutes after takeoff... will read more tonight.
 
A little late to the discussion, but I felt the characterization of the pilots' interactions after the collision was unreasonably sensationalized; as written, it was made to sound as if the Captain was essentially incapacitated by inaction and confusion, but if you listen to the CVR transcript, it sounds a lot more like they immediately fell into functional roles which served the situation well.

In addition, of course, I salute the FO for his character in extending the hand of respect to the Cpt after they landed, and to the Captain, for his gracious way of handling it.

Bottom-line for me? They conducted themselves as a professional flight crew, and while we can learn much from the incident (as we should from each and every one), the successful landing is a testament to the crew's skills, training and composure.

Finally, to suggest that there was anything for which criminal prosecution of the pilots is appropriate, is ludicrous.
 
woodstock said:
I can't decide if his writing style is great, or irritating.
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I like the way he integrates the viewpoint of the natives into the narrative, but all in all, even if I might agree with some of his points, his style is way too holier-than-thou for me.
 
TMetzinger said:
I'm annoyed by the moralistic tone describing the Legacy - the pandering to the environmentalists and the class-warfare types to whom a bizjet is a manifestation of the horned one.
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I found this shocking too. The actual line reads "You can include the corrupted tax structures that allow airplanes as questionable as the Legacy to be built, sold and flown." ????

Coming from someone that is GA friendly is weird, I think it was almost put in to appease the greater audience of readers of Vanity Fair.

I may write the Editor.:nono:
 
captvikki said:
Coming from someone that is GA friendly is weird, I think it was almost put in to appease the greater audience of readers of Vanity Fair.
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I think even some people who wholeheartedly support small airplane GA are less enthusiastic about the business jet community. The large sums of money involved offends their egalitarian sensibilities. Even though I am in the business I understand that.
 
Everskyward said:
I think even some people who wholeheartedly support small airplane GA are less enthusiastic about the business jet community. The large sums of money involved offends their egalitarian sensibilities. Even though I am in the business I understand that.
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I don't... I just want to either get paid to fly them, or become successful enough to own one. The only "rich" people I've ever met that caused me to question whether they "deserved" all that money have been entertainers - and they only have that money because the public gave it to them by buying their books/cds/dvds/etc. So I realize I have to turn my disgust right back at myself if I disapprove of what they've done with money I willingly gave them.

Folks using airplanes for business have earned the right to do so, and unless I'm a shareholder I don't get any say in the matter, nor should I.
 
ABC's Nightline is suppsed to have a story on the incident tonight (Dec 10).
 
captvikki said:
The actual line reads "You can include the corrupted tax structures that allow airplanes as questionable as the Legacy to be built, sold and flown."
Click to expand...

Yeah, that line shocked me too... I, too, almost quoted it into this thread, but was afraid I'd spin-zone it. :-)
 
lancefisher said:
As long as you're in radar coverage, there's already a system in place to alert the pilot should his transponder fail; ATC should see that on their scope and warn the pilot.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that works great in the US, but clearly did not in Brazil.

And FWIW, there are many ways that a transponder can fail which would be undetected in virtually every civil aircraft flying today, so a better alert for the switch to standby couldn't be all that beneficial in most cases.
Click to expand...

Doesn't the TCAS detect the plane's own transponder as well? I'd think you could program it so that the TCAS could alert the crew to any transponder failure. I would also think that the TCAS being off should set off an audible alert, especially above FL180.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Yeah, that works great in the US, but clearly did not in Brazil.



Doesn't the TCAS detect the plane's own transponder as well? I'd think you could program it so that the TCAS could alert the crew to any transponder failure. I would also think that the TCAS being off should set off an audible alert, especially above FL180.
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The TCAS I use is embedded in the VSI display. If it goes offline you get a yellow "TCAS OFF" flag.
 
TMetzinger said:
Folks using airplanes for business have earned the right to do so, and unless I'm a shareholder I don't get any say in the matter, nor should I.
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I have nothing against rich people. They have a range of personalities that mirrors the general public. Some are nice, some are jerks. In any case, if they can afford an airplane like this, more power to them. I'm just saying that, while many airplanes are useful business tools, there are others that are just extensions of someone's already large ego. I have flown both kinds, probably more of the former since I've never flown those higher-end airplanes that are people's winged chariots. I've been inside some of them though, and I can understand the perspective of the 99.999% of the public that can't afford to fly in them. Remember, this guy was writing for Vanity Fair not Business and Commercial Aviation. He could've knocked his moralistic tone down a notch or two, however.
 
As I mentioned in an earlier post, regarding the anti-biz-jet tone: you might blame the author, you might blame the editor, you might blame both.
 
Everskyward said:
I have nothing against rich people. They have a range of personalities that mirrors the general public. Some are nice, some are jerks. In any case, if they can afford an airplane like this, more power to them. I'm just saying that, while many airplanes are useful business tools, there are others that are just extensions of someone's already large ego. I have flown both kinds, probably more of the former since I've never flown those higher-end airplanes that are people's winged chariots. I've been inside some of them though, and I can understand the perspective of the 99.999% of the public that can't afford to fly in them. Remember, this guy was writing for Vanity Fair not Business and Commercial Aviation. He could've knocked his moralistic tone down a notch or two, however.
Click to expand...

I still think that Vanity Fair targets people who tend more toward wealth, which is why this tone strikes me as odd. If it were in "Time", or "Newsweek", or something more mainstream, it wouldn't seem so weird.
 
TMetzinger said:
I still think that Vanity Fair targets people who tend more toward wealth, which is why this tone strikes me as odd. If it were in "Time", or "Newsweek", or something more mainstream, it wouldn't seem so weird.
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Here's their mission statement, on their rate card. It will tell you who they think their target audience is.

http://condenastmediakit.com/vf/index.cfm

From entertainment to world affairs, business to style, design to society, Vanity Fair is a cultural catalyst—a magazine that provokes and drives the popular dialogue. With its unique mix of stunning photography, in-depth reportage, and social commentary, Vanity Fair accelerates ideas and images to center stage. Each month, Vanity Fair is an unrivaled media event that reaches millions of modern, sophisticated consumers who create demand for your brand.
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