Air India Express incident

[wowie_kazowie]

This seems a little interesting...

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/ ... story.html

Kinda begs the question, who are flying these planes?

P.S. Sorry if it was already posted, looked around did not see anything

[traveller123]

I guess the training of pilots in India is very different from Canada. The one we have in Canada is the best around the world.

And what about the lack of pilots. A lot of 250 hours F/O in India and in other countries. And I heard at 2000 hours you can be captain on an A320... The situation is really different from Canada.

[fingersmac]

As per the statement of PIC he left the cockpit for the washroom as it was occupied wanted to return back to cockpit. However cockpit door was not opening. He used the emergency access code to enter the cockpit. His duration out of the cockpit 40 seconds out of which 30 seconds elapsed for the activation of Auto unlock features. There was no answer from cockpit. On entering the cockpit he saw the aircraft in 26° pitch down (approx) attitude and speed in red band, throttles full back with 5° of bank. He manually controlled the aircraft and resumed flight using LVL change to climb and arrest ROD. The Cont relight was switched ON. He climbed to FL 370 right turn to get on track then A/P was engaged, LNAV/VNAV (normal modes) engaged. When he asked F/o why he did not open the door he said he was panic stricken. CIC was informed about operations normal. No Passenger or crews were hurt. PA announcement was made to Passenger and normal flight operated to Pune. On being queried as to why he did not follow the RVSM contingency procedure and climb back to the assigned flight level of 370. He stated he forgot the procedure. He was also asked as to why he did not direct CCIC to be in cockpit during his absence from the cockpit, he stated that it was not in SOP.

The First officer stated that as soon PIC left the Cockpit. He was doing his paper work with Flight Plan. The A/T was engaged and speed was 0.76 Mach on the MCP Speed LNAV and VNAV was also engaged. Suddenly CWSR came and I was trying to engage other 11 mode but later on very quickly CWSP both came. After that very rapidly speed increased. He tried to control the speed by reducing the thrust. In mean time he tried calling PIC as well as through the Attendant button continuous 4 – 5 times. The speed increased rapidly he tried to control the aircraft. The Warning sound started coming than he got into panic situation and couldn’t control the aircraft neither open the cockpit door and answer the cabin call. During the pitch down attitude he tried to leave the control column to open the cockpit door but the aircraft pitch increased further and altitude was losing rapidly. In the mean time PIC came through the Emergency access entry. He took over the controls. He reduced the aircraft speed and climbed back to the FL 370. The whole incident was done within 30 – 40 seconds approximately. After the situation was under control the position report was given to DOKET. Aircraft landed safely in Pune. There was no injury to passenger or other cabin damages. The copilot was not involved in any incident as per the records of DGCA.

3.1 Findings:

3.1.12 The copilot has not put the seat harness and probably had no clue to tackle this kind of emergency. The jet upset exercise is carried out during simulator check in manual mode and not done with autopilot engaged.

3.2 Probable cause of the serious incident:

The incident occurred due to inadvertent handling of the control column in fully automated mode by the copilot which got compounded as he was not trained to recover the aircraft in automated mode.

Subsequent recovery actions by the PIC without coordination with copilot was the contributory factor.

The Captain had 6000 hours with 900 hours on type. The First Officer had 1300 hours with 1000 hours on type.

From the DGCAs investigation report: http://dgca.nic.in/accident/reports/incident/VT-AXJ.pdf

[burhead1]

Sounds to me like the co pilot fell asleep if it takes that long to recover from a dive after just pushing the column forward? sounds like he fell asleep and the captain had to wake him up

[fingersmac]

The captain was out of the cockpit for 40 seconds! He needed to use the toilet, it was occupied (thank Christ!).

[Hedley]

Incredible. What on earth would the co-pilot have done if the left-seater was incapacitated?!

I know I'm an old fogie, and all the youngsters here think they deserve right seat in a Boeing/Airbus at 250 hours, and an ATPL with no PIC time, but IMHO someone oughta have 5000TT of real-world experience, including thousands of hours PIC time, before they get into the right seat of a Boeing/Airbus.

[burhead1]

I still say he was a sleep before the captain left

Scarry realy.

[shitdisturber]

I'm not hugely surprised that this particular incident happened. From my own experience working briefly in India, pilots are sitting right seat in an airliner before they even know enough to be dangerous. I'm sure this isn't the first time an incident like this has happened, nor will it be the last. Luckily the Captain wasn't sitting on the can with an explosive case of Montezuma's revenge or this could have ended very badly.

[aviator2010]

does oop's cover this or does he need retraining?

[North Shore]

Am I reading this correctly? At 1300 hours TT, a pilot didn't know how to pull a plane out of a dive? Where did he get his licence, a Crackerjack box?

[Hedley]

I know. F_cking unbelieveable. As long as you don't schedule two weak pilots at the same time, you're probably ok, but sooner or later you're going to get two weak pilots up front, and if the wx isn't perfect, or anything goes wrong ...

I know I'm old school, but getting an ATPL without at least 1,000 hrs PIC is insane. And none of this "under supervision" crap - get it on an aircraft certified single pilot.

[HavaJava]

does oop's cover this or does he need retraining?

He needs to be retrained to operate a donkey cart, cuz that's the only heavy machinery he should ever be allowed to handle.

[Gino Under]

Sounds like an inadvertant high altitude stall, loss of control.
I hope this F/O now realizes what experience can and can't do for you.

Gino Under