Programs: UA 1K MM, Marriott Platinum, Starwood Gold, Radio Shack Free Battery Club Platinum
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Again, thanks to the pilots who are answering these questions. VERY much appreciated. I have a TON of questions, but I'll limit it to these few "odd" ones. Nothing about trip picks, etc.
1. Do you remember certain voices in certain ATC sectors? I ask this question because there's one guy at SEA center, he has handled Eastern Washington and Idaho sectors IIRC. He has this pukey, "former DJ" sound to him...clearly loves to hear his own voice. And I can't help but to laugh when I hear him. Do you guys remember and/or laugh at folks like that?
2. Language on ATC. I've heard a couple of French conversations at Montreal center and Paris ground. I think one or two German conversations at Frankfurt as well. It's my understanding that it's supposed to be English wherever you go. Is that the case?
3. "Lime ice" (sic?). Sounds basic, but can you elaborate on where, when and what can happen? How do you detect it...through instruments or windshield? Have heard a few times a reporting of it gets ATC's attention.
4. Seat belt sign. At the gate, do you guys turn the seat belt sign on to indicate to the FAs "okay, we're ready in the cockpit?" That's the feeling I get with the timing and when I peek into the cockpit.
Programs: UA-1k, HH Silver, Giving Tootsie Pops to UA employees, & now a retired hockey goalie
Posts: 10,128
again thanks to all the ua pilots (and future tootsie-pop victims ) for sharing wonderful information
my two hockey pucks are:
puck 1: turbulence caused by a "mountain wave". [this thread: Is UA really oversensitive to turbulence? starting with my post at #26 (and also 35]. have you "had the pleasure" and how common a form of turbulence is it?. this was one wild ride.
puck 2: any of you perhaps working (or know anyone working/driving) these flights. if so, shhhhhhhh
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just my humble opinion but i used to try and stop hockey pucks so what do i know . Nighthawks fans are everywhere
I thought the landing gear measured the weight of the plane and the numbers were calculated based on those numbers
Nope. The airplane was initially weighed when empty, and updated tracked as equipment is installed or removed, then the actual or average weights for cargo, passengers, fuel, etc. are added for each flight.
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Originally Posted by LessO2
1. Do you remember certain voices in certain ATC sectors?
At airports that you fly to frequently you will come to recognize certain controllers.
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Language on ATC
The international standard is English but that isn't always strictly followed in countries where English is not the native language.
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3. "Lime ice" (sic?).
RIME ice. Lime ice is what you get in your drink at the pool bar.
Two types of icing. Rime ice and clear ice. If you're getting both types it's called mixed.
Rime ice. Rough, milky, opaque ice formed by the instantaneous freezing of small supercooled water droplets.
Clear ice. A glossy, clear, or translucent ice formed by the relatively slow freezing of large supercooled water droplets.
In either case, the ice formation changes the shape of the airfoil, and can increase drag, which destroys lift and makes the aircraft's handling characteristics unpredictable. You might remember the ATR which crashed in Indiana in 1994. That was caused by severe icing.
The airplanes have systems with deice, or anti-ice, the critical surfaces in flight under most conditions. In the ATR accident they flew into an area of unusually severe icing caused by super-cooled water droplets in the air. It did not give the usual visual indications that the crew would associate with severe icing and the icing extended to unprotected areas of the wing so the ice protection systems weren't able to help.
OK, gracious Pilots, please shed some light on the no-electronics during taxi, take-off, and landing rule for passengers. I can understand the remote possibility of a gadget transmitting data messing with flight instruments, but c'mon, will the guy with the Ipod in 15E really be a threat??
Is this just more of a security and personal safety issue than anything (ie making sure people are attentive and capable of responding to FA instructions)?
And even funnier to me is that mobile phones--only mobile phones-- are allowed on the landing taxi in the US, but god forbid an Ipod is turned on at this time!
Here's a quick 'n' dirty on electronic devices.
First of all, nothing's been proven by the aircraft manufacturers that these devices will never ever interfere with any of the myriad systems on any given airplane, so if ther're left on, or turned on when they're not supposed to be, we're test pilots.
As yet, no one to my knowledge has used every electronic device in evert configuration in every airplane type, from every possible locatoin on the plane, so why take the chance? My training on electricity and magnetism was in college physics 24 years ago, and I haven't kept up on it much since then, but some very smart people who work with airplanes and electronics have, so I tend to leave it to them.
There are several compasses in the cockpits, one of which is an old-style wet compass, similar in principle to the one that hangs off of your ski jacket zipper, but costs a ton more because it says "airplane" on it. The others are flux gate compasses, which use a more sophisticated method of determining Magnetic North, but still relying on some external electromagnetic force for it's data.
I've heard anecdotal evidence that instruments can give us erronious readings occasionally when gizmos are being used in the cabin. That's enough for me to follow the rules there. It's kind of like the IRS and the FAA: guilty unless proven otherwise.
The planes we fly have some incredibly "electronics-intensive" systems on board. One such system is the Autoland system, which uses externally generated electronic signals, the autoflight system, which in itself has, on the 757/767, three autopilots, all of whom continually vote on each other for "odd man out" status, three inertial navigation systems with the voting thing, GPS, two Flight Management Computers, an AutoThrottle system, and three radio altimeter systems. They all love each other, but hate your computer and cell phone.
We rarely use the autoland system, actually about 2% of landings (and no takeoffs) are automatically accomplished. When the weather is such that runway visibility is measured at less than about 1,800", we use the autoland system. It requires way more setup and monitoring, and involves a lot more potential split-second desision making for the pilots, and worst of all, it robs us of a hand-flown landing! ̥
Whenever we will be conducting an autoland, I ALWAYS make a P.A. announcement during the decent asking people to please double-check their electronic gizmos in the OFF position because we want to do this with no "unsolicited help".
It's rare, indeed, but I did one last month after 7 hours flying all night from Honolulu to Denver, we'd gone from gorgeous 80⁰ weather to ⅛ mile visibility with fog and snow, and that's not the time to be worrying about someone cheating the rules to finish the last hand of solitaire.
When we're safely on the ground, we can find the gate without all that stuff, though, so have at it!
Location: Chapel Hill, NC - United 1K, HHonors Diamond, SPG Gold
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Taking off in a 757 from ORD in a snowstorm, the pilot clamped on the brakes and really reved up the engines before beginning takeoff. What's the purpose of that? There was some snow on the runway.
1. How common is this scenario? I've flown roughly 150 takeoffs a year for the past few, so I'm in the ballpark of 1-for-300.
High speed aborts are very uncommon, but they do happen. I have 11 years at UA and I've never done one (except in the sim). I did one in a Brasilia, and although the stop was impressive, it's not as critical as in a larger jet.
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2. The pilot said, in a very shaky voice afterwards to ATC, that the shear detection system had "gone off." Does the mechanism just use forward-looking radar? Was it possible that everything I felt was "normal" but the air just ahead of us was iffy?
We have several onboard windshear warning systems. The one that would have gone off on the ground is a predictive windshear warning system using the doppler function of the normal radar (but a completely different processor). It's a relatively new system, and it only works near the ground, but it warns of a potential area of windshear ahead. If we get the warning during takeoff, we will abort the takeoff.
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3. How much extra, fun paperwork does a UA pilot have to do after something like this?
We would fill out a report on the computer called a Flight Safety Awareness Program report. There may or may not be a flight safety investigation following the report, depending on the severity. A fairly standard high speed abort like you described would probably not trigger the investigation.
So, my question to UA pilots is, especially if UA is, as aluminumdriver said, at the forefront of aviation technology (except that another pilot said that the 737 fleet is just now being renovated with GPSes!), have any of these technologies been implemented in the UA fleet?
Alaska Airlines is clearly the leader in designing and conducting approaches using RNP, mostly because of their need for it up in Alaska. No one is using ADS-B yet to my knowledge, nor some of the other experimental technologies. I think you'll see a lot of airlines follow Alaska's lead, but most aren't there yet.
OK, gracious Pilots, please shed some light on the no-electronics during taxi, take-off, and landing rule for passengers. I can understand the remote possibility of a gadget transmitting data messing with flight instruments, but c'mon, will the guy with the Ipod in 15E really be a threat??
Is this just more of a security and personal safety issue than anything (ie making sure people are attentive and capable of responding to FA instructions)?
And even funnier to me is that mobile phones--only mobile phones-- are allowed on the landing taxi in the US, but god forbid an Ipod is turned on at this time!
That's an easy one, IT'S THE LAW. That pretty much sums it up, by FAA regulations you are not allowed to what you mentioned and allowed to turn on your phones on roll-out. Not up to me to question it. Will it cause problems with the planes nav system? Who knows, I can only go by what they tell me they've had happen in tests. Until the law is changed, that's the way I and you should follow the rules.
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These views are my own and do not represent the views of United Airlines or the ALPA.
This reminds me... "We're waiting for 'the numbers'"
I understand that this is related to a/c weight and various flight variables, but why can't they be calculated on-board with some kind of computer?
Pilots have no way of knowing what cargo was loaded where in the belly of the aircraft. That is where load planning takes the final weights of passengers, crew, fuel and cargo, spins it through the computers and sends us the final weights where we check to make sure our CG and weights are within limits. You want a load planning section that only deals with this very important issue, otherwise you end up with the US Air Express flight out CLT that crashed due to a CG issue.
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These views are my own and do not represent the views of United Airlines or the ALPA.
1. Do you remember certain voices in certain ATC sectors?
Sure, but not very often. There used to be a guy at Denver called the Dandy Day guy, but he's since retired.
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2. Language on ATC. I've heard a couple of French conversations at Montreal center and Paris ground. I think one or two German conversations at Frankfurt as well. It's my understanding that it's supposed to be English wherever you go. Is that the case?
It depends on where you go. In Mexico and South America, you're often the only ones speaking English with the controller. There's also a lot of French spoken in French airspace. The German in Germany is usually pretty inconsequential - things like "we'll be ready in a minute" or just have a nice day. On the other hand, it's virtually all English in Japan and the Netherlands, for example.
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4. Seat belt sign. At the gate, do you guys turn the seat belt sign on to indicate to the FAs "okay, we're ready in the cockpit?" That's the feeling I get with the timing and when I peek into the cockpit.
No need to repeat Larry on the icing question, so I'll take this one. The captain has a before start flow he does right before we do the Before Start checklist. This involves doing the final things necessary before pushing back and starting the engines, items which might not have been appropriate earlier in the preparations. It also includes turning the seatbelt sign on, mostly to tell the passengers to be seated (they probably already knew that), and also pressurizing the hydraulic systems. This will often cause load shedding in the cabin - in other words, the coffee maker and other galley devices won't work until after engine start, so we generally don't do it until we're ready to go. We're actually normally waiting for the FAs to tell us they are ready, not the other way around.
During cruise, lets say the flight runs into light chop and the seatbelt sign is turned on. Sometimes it seems that the seatbelt sign is left on long after the chop has subsided and we are back to smooth & level flight. I have often wondered on these occasions whether it is possible for the cockpit crew to have "forgotten" that the seatbelt sign is still on. Thanks in advance for any comments.
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Der Flugmeil'faenger bin ich ja, stets lustig, heissa, hopsasa!
Taking off in a 757 from ORD in a snowstorm, the pilot clamped on the brakes and really reved up the engines before beginning takeoff. What's the purpose of that? There was some snow on the runway.
Fabulous thread! Thanks again.
During icing conditions, we do engine runups to make sure that the engines are free of ice. Each engine is advanced to a mid range setting (generally 50% N1) to ensure that the engine blades are free of ice. The first runup occurs after engine start, then every 15 minutes. We also do one on takeoff, except that both engines can be run up together, and there is no need to bring the thrust back from 50% if the engines are normal. Basically, we hold the brakes, advance the thrust to 50% N1, and if everything is normal, we start the takeoff roll.
Last summer I was on a flight outbound from DEN listening on Ch9. We made our way to first in line for takeoff when ATC started talking about microbursting and wind shear. Our pilot was asked if she wanted clearance to take off (I presume) and she responded, "No thank you." We waited about 15 minutes and heard some other interesting-sounding reports from other pilots that I imagine were landing.
Finally we got another notice from ATC and another request to determine if we were ready. Our pilot said, "yes," this time.
We hurtled down the runway like normal, but I was perhaps sensitized because of the ATC chatter, so I felt like the plane was experiencing side-to-side buffeting that was more than normal. That may have just been me. In any event, we ended up with a "max velocity RTO" or some such, and a fire engine or two to come out and put out our brakes, and then a fun bus ride back to the terminal.
My questions are...
1. How common is this scenario? I've flown roughly 150 takeoffs a year for the past few, so I'm in the ballpark of 1-for-300.
2. The pilot said, in a very shaky voice afterwards to ATC, that the shear detection system had "gone off." Does the mechanism just use forward-looking radar? Was it possible that everything I felt was "normal" but the air just ahead of us was iffy?
3. How much extra, fun paperwork does a UA pilot have to do after something like this?
Thanks for your time,
Ben
United has several systems onboard to help with windshear detection. First is the Mark Q1 eyeball, where we look for visual ques of WS, blowing dust, virga, rain shafts, stuff like that. We supplement the eyes with the weather radar, looking at storms to see if they are big enough to possibly have microbursts in them. Then we have a Predictive Windshear System that scans out in front of the aircraft about 5 miles ahead, basically a doppler radar looking for wind shifts. If gives us Cautions and Warnings of microbursts ahead. On takeoff, it is active until about 100 knots, then it comes on again after you're 50' in the air. If it sees a microburst, it gives us a warning and a visual indication of where it is so we can try to avoid it. If we actually end up in a windshear, the Enhanced GPWS system takes over and gives us max power and highest aircraft performance perameters to escape the windshear, basically keeping the jet right on the edge of stall as it max performs for the most lift possible. We do this training every year in our simulator training.
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These views are my own and do not represent the views of United Airlines or the ALPA.
) for sharing wonderful information 
