Originally Posted by
momoflyingguy
Upon take-off, as soon as the plane lifts off the ground, the first few seconds you feel like you are kinda breaking away from the ground with like a dizziness feeling, then a few seconds later there is a beep, what is that, is the pilot trying to say we lifted off safely?
If it's just a few seconds after liftoff, that's either an Airbus thing or you're hearing the hydraulic system that is raising the landing gear. Though, I can't remember hearing a chime like that in our (US Airline) Airbus A319/320s. It's been over 10 years since I've been on an Airbus widebody but I think I might remember something like that, associated with the emergency exit lights turning on and off. If that's it, it's a procedural signal for the F/As. It isn't for the passengers.
Originally Posted by
crazy8534
The one I most enjoy is the little sort of 'brrp-brrp' alarm thing you hear from the front row of an airbus, coming from the cockpit, just before landing. It apparently tells you that the pilot has switched the autopilot off and is flying manually.
No exactly. It tells the PILOTS that the autopilot has been disconnected.
The autopilot disconnect audible alert was required after accidents like Eastern 401, the L1011 that crashed into the Everglades in the early 1970s. In that accident, they were holding at low altitude at night troubleshooting an unsafe landing gear indication (turned out to be a burnt out light bulb). They were having trouble removing the cover to change the light bulb and inadvertently bumped the control column which degraded the autoflight from autopilot to control wheel steering mode. That put the airplane into a slow turning descent that the crew didn't notice in time to prevent them from crashing into the Everglades.
Originally Posted by
ScruttonStreet
A few years back on a flight to Italy the ‘ding’ suddenly went off about ten minutes into the flight and the emergency exit lights went back on. Being still a nervous flyer, I was convinced something was terribly wrong with the plane.
We flew along like this with the gear down for what seemed like an age before the wheels went back up again. Pilot then came on to say the wheels were too hot, so he had lowered them to cool down.
Normal procedure for hot brakes. You retract the gear initially, so that you'll have the required climb performance if an engine were to fail, then extend them again to cool them down in the airstream.