UPS 1354 NTSB Companion Video

Excellent summary. I bet that video will save a life or two.
 
Good report with some very glaring information that is left out. Shanda, the F/O did comment that she had slept well that day. "Well" for a night freight pilot is no where near normal for the average human. Cerera "the Captain" had spoken with colleagues before the flight and on the voice recorder that he was tired and that the schedules that the company was building was "killing" them. UPS and FedEx spent millions of dollars to get a "cargo cutout" from FAR 117 Flight and Duty time rules that Congress mandated the FAA came up with. 117 is built upon science of sleep and rest requirements for the human body...but cargo pilots do not need that much sleep or so says UPS and FedEx.

Did the crew make mistakes? Yes
Is the automation and FMC rules confusing? Yes

It is VERY easy to make a mistake with the FMC and have it do things that you are not expecting. Honeywell built the FMC's for both of the manufacturers. I have flown Boeing and Douglas. Same box, different "structure" inside the box and different philosophies. Boeings is built for the pilot, Douglas is built for the engineers. Airbus does things even more differently according to my pilot friends that fly it. Extremely confusing...but FAA approved.

There were three that died on 1354...Shanda was two months pregnant.

PS. Just found out that the video has been pulled from certain sites and in fact a Chief Pilot Special report came out stating that the company had nothing to do with the video....IOW...some money changed hands in Washington.
 
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MD11Pilot said:
UPS and FedEx spent millions of dollars to get a "cargo cutout" from FAR 117 Flight and Duty time rules that Congress mandated the FAA came up with. 117 is built upon science of sleep and rest requirements for the human body...but cargo pilots do not need that much sleep or so says UPS and FedEx.
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Not that it matters much, but I thought I'd heard that the line they were flying would have been 117 compliant. They didn't get a cargo caveout from 117, they got 121 supplemental exempted from it, my company suffers from the lack of 117 for the same reason.
 
That particular pairing would have been. I do not want to give the picture and I may have that all of our schedules are not compliant....BUT...what you bid and what you show up to fly are very different animals and we here "contact crew scheduling for an advisory" every night.
We are not supplemental either...flag carrier. We operate as such voluntarily.



KSCessnaDriver said:
Not that it matters much, but I thought I'd heard that the line they were flying would have been 117 compliant. They didn't get a cargo caveout from 117, they got 121 supplemental exempted from it, my company suffers from the lack of 117 for the same reason.
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One thing they didn't bring up nor did I mention either but UPS turned down a FREE upgrade to the EPGWS system prior to this crash...it is installed now. The upgrade would have given them a few more seconds of warning.
Of course if you look at cargo accident reports under fatalities....Insignificant loss of life.

mkosmo said:
True, but remember, the video wasn't made for pilots. It was made for the general populace.
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MD11Pilot said:
That particular pairing would have been. I do not want to give the picture and I may have that all of our schedules are not compliant....BUT...what you bid and what you show up to fly are very different animals and we here "contact crew scheduling for an advisory" every night.
We are not supplemental either...flag carrier. We operate as such voluntarily.
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Oh I know, I saw what it's like in the crew rooms at SDF when I flew small feed there for 10 months. It ain't a good place to be, I saw that first hand.
 
MD11Pilot said:
It is VERY easy to make a mistake with the FMC and have it do things that you are not expecting. Honeywell built the FMC's for both of the manufacturers. I have flown Boeing and Douglas. Same box, different "structure" inside the box and different philosophies. Boeings is built for the pilot, Douglas is built for the engineers. Airbus does things even more differently according to my pilot friends that fly it. Extremely confusing...but FAA approved.
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I've used the FMS on Boeing and Airbus. The Airbus is far more user friendly and intuitive, the Boeing not as much.

The Boeing MCP is not as user friendly compared to the Airbus FCU either.
 
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My comments are based on my fellow pilots comments. It is what it is. You learn one then the next one is weird until you learn its nuances.



RotorAndWing said:
I've used the FMS on Boeing and Airbus. The Airbus is far more user friendly and intuitive, the Boeing not as much.

The Boeing MCP is not as user friendly compared to the Airbus FCU either.
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Is there a link to the CVR available, plots of their track and profile? The video did not really explain what happened. Was the pilot handflying? Was the FO reading out waypoint passage and next altitude?
 
Chilling. :hairraise: I'm approaching the halfway mark in instrument training. These pilots had so many tools at their disposal but the extra information didn't help.... All they needed was VOR/DME and an altimeter.
 
Yes and no. They had a lot of tools at their disposal but sometimes too many tools are a hindrance. Throw in expectation of an ILS and having to reprogram your thinking, set up the systems so that they do give you the proper information, fatigue, speed of operation, and out of date EPGWS, operational pressure - both company and self induced, a simple reversion to VOR/DME and altimeter are just another tool that would have required a total reprogramming of operations, both mentally and physically.

Congratulations on your instrument training...


noobJohn said:
Chilling. :hairraise: I'm approaching the halfway mark in instrument training. These pilots had so many tools at their disposal but the extra information didn't help.... All they needed was VOR/DME and an altimeter.
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"
"UPS 1354 NTSB ..." This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by jenf777." WAT!!!!!!!???????????
 
See my post above. I believe they had it posted on a third party's YouTube account and now it's on ntsbs account. I don't know if there were any other issues.
 
I just read the cvr and saw the actual profile flown.
Seems like they were below the deck - and visual, when the serious stuff happened (descending below mda ahead of plan). Yes, there were events before all that which led to this issue. I had figured something different had happened, from the video.

I found it shocking that they had no idea of the proximity of terrain or that they had descended much too early even after calling rwy in sight.

I have flown at 3&4 am but not sure how well I functioned.
 
KSCessnaDriver said:
Not that it matters much, but I thought I'd heard that the line they were flying would have been 117 compliant. They didn't get a cargo caveout from 117, they got 121 supplemental exempted from it, my company suffers from the lack of 117 for the same reason.
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Cargo operators (domestic, flag, and supplemental) are exempt from FAR 117. All passenger operations (again, domestic, flag, and supplemental) are required to follow it. I'm 121 supplemental passenger and we follow 117.
 
jonnyjetprop said:
Cargo operators (domestic, flag, and supplemental) are exempt from FAR 117. All passenger operations (again, domestic, flag, and supplemental) are required to follow it. I'm 121 supplemental passenger and we follow 117.
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The whole thing is BS. I thought the concept was that the FAA was for an "equal level of safety"
 
RotorAndWing said:
Fred Smith and David Abney have lots of money at their disposal, and lots of Senators and Congressmen that can be bought.

The "cargo carve out" was done at the DOT level, and passed down.
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Had 1354 crashed into a school, the whole 117 thing would be gone. The only reason 1354 didn't change the carve-out was they didn't take anyone out on the ground.
 
KSCessnaDriver said:
Had 1354 crashed into a school, the whole 117 thing would be gone. The only reason 1354 didn't change the carve-out was they didn't take anyone out on the ground.
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And the flight and crew would were flying at the time according to 117 rules, according to the text report of the incident. I believe it was mentioned one rest over the past 30 days was six minutes short of matching 117 requirements for the two crew members. The text report still mentions the carve-out negatively, however.
 
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