BA6501

That's more industry than BA, and that's not the reason. The real reason is that the crew might get frustrated (come on, it's the fourth time, land it already), which can cloud some good judgement.

Pilot37

Agree - each airline has its own standards, but the maximum allowed by most western airlines (in terms of approaches) is either 2 or 3, beyond which the flight crew must divert to another airport. The feeling is that beyond the attempted 2 or 3 approaches, the crew then enter a ‘let’s land focus’ which can make them ignore basic airmanship which can ultimately lead to a loss of control.

Pilot37

Heathrow Tower

The gate is allocated originally by BA, they then inform HAL stand allocation cell who have the final safety accountability, who then in turn pass it to ATC to inform the flight crew.

stevebintley

A few weeks ago I was on a 777 to NAS (G-VIIV if it makes a difference) and was sitting in the window exit seat both ways. During the 'doors to automatic and cross check' phase, on both occasions the crew checked something at the bottom of the door, on the outbound even asking me to move my foot so they could see properly. I've never noticed this before, and couldn't readily see what they were looking for / at. What would it be? I've highlighted the area below...

Can I help you

This is called a girt bar window and shows a yellow flag when the door is in automatic and blank when manual.

Bullswood

Girt (not gift) bar perhaps?

Can I help you

Doh, autocorrect. Yes Girt Bar.

Sigwx

You can commence an approach regardless of the reported visibility but something known as the ‘Approach Ban’ kicks in at the 1000ft above the ground point. If the reported conditions are below the minima for that approach you go around at that point.
Not sure what FLR has but I’d highly doubt they’ve got anything much beyond a basic CAT 1 ILS at best. If the weather has been stubbornly sitting below minimums for the approach (typically 550m for a CAT1) and you arrive to find it still below that, you can give it a go but at 1000ft you’ll be binning off that approach.
The next factor is fuel, how much more do you have to hang around and give it another go? The likely hood for such a short runway is that you wouldn’t have much extra fuel. So in that case you are more or less straight into using your diversion fuel so it’s a case of stay and commit, or Foxtrot Oscar off to the nominated diversion.

teamerchant

New account after being inactive for years (was seraphina).

One for the pilots - how do you account for the Earth’s rotation? For example, flying LHR to (eg) Johannesburg, if you took off, pointed the plane at JNB, then as the Earth turns, you’d surely have to keep adjusting the direction the plane is pointing in, as the Earth’s rotation keeps on moving JNB relative to the plane. I suspect this is one of those things that automagically sorts itself out (something something airspeed vs ground speed??) but my brain can’t figure it out!

elwe

The aircraft is also rotating around the earth's axis of rotation, at the same speed (give or take the speed it is flying over the ground). So you don't have to worry about it.

At the equator the earth is rotating at roughly 1,000 miles per hour and so are you standing on it. When you jump you continue to rotate at the same speed. If you didn't then during the 0.5 seconds of a typical human jump the earth would move 230 meters under you. So you would need to carefully check for buildings, trees etc. before jumping or risk being smashed into them at 1,000 mph.

firstlight

an aeroplane moves in an airmass which is also roating with the earth. The difference in speed between the equator and the poles gives rise to weather. The aeroplane is embedded in the air and moves relative to it.

However when you move into a different frame of reference the earth's rotational speed does matter. That's why spacecraft take off to the east and locations nearer the equator are better for getting into orbit taking less fuel.

Waterhorse

There are, of course, adjustments that are made to take account of the for the earth’s rotation. They are though, very small as the speed of movement across the globe is relatively low. The aircraft’s heading is constantly adjusting to many environmental factors, such as crosswinds, and these effects have, by far, the greatest impact in the very short term on the aircraft. The rotation of the earth is probably most important to the Inertial Reference Units - and it’s been a long time since I studied that theory, so I’m going to say that’s part of the automagically stuff that goes on; we used to say it all worked on the FM principle, the M in that stands for Magic, I leave the other initial to your imagination.

JD1905

Took a flight yesterday, the PA failed and crew realised this just after pushback. The safety demonstration was then conducted verbally throughout by 2 crew members - I noticed that some parts of the demo then appeared to be skipped.

Halfway through the flight the flight deck gave a long inaudible message (as PA was broken) It was almost as if the crew hadn’t informed the Flight Deck that the PA had failed which surprised me, although I could be completely wrong there!

My question is - in the event of a PA failure is this what’d usually happen?

Ultimately got us there on time - But wasn’t a great flight as once again no onboard service was provided.

Can I help you

This should have been reported to the flight crew immediately if it was just after pushback, the aircraft would have returned to stand if it couldn’t be fixed, what was the aircraft type?

Waterhorse

Pretty sure you can depart without a serviceable PA, so once pushback had commenced other factors come into play. I do agree that the flight crew should have been informed. Also, the PA may have been serviceable from some handsets and not others, or from a boom mic. Without more more info it’s hard to determine what way it should have been handled, or if anything was odd about the way it was handled.