PETER01

Thank you so much for that Sigwx, I genuinely thought it was something filled with real/critical danger but I suppose at LHR as you say on a smaller aircraft it's not. Thank you for explaining it in an easy to understand way!

One other (hopefully not a silly one but I feel it is personally!)

In these kind of situations is that a Captains only landing? (There is such a thing?)

Sigwx

No worries at all and happy to answer. As I say other resident posters here may well provide a more specific angle and info if relevant, I’m merely a limited Boeing being.

As for handling this it is a company specific area. For the purposes of gaining the type rating and qualifying, pilots needs to demonstrate competency in handling this and other failures in their ‘natural seat’. When it comes to training and checking this needs to be revalidated, so a First Officer would handle this in the right hand seat as well as Captain doing the same in the left unless it is deemed to be a ‘crew’ item. For the proposes of SOPs for non-normal situations, some operators state the captain should handle and land, others leave it up to the crew. Captains are trained to manage an operation and situation, First Officers develop these skills but are trained to fly the aircraft, so there can indeed be role reversal. Again this is an operator specific area but all flight deck occupants are trained to be able to handle this scenario.

PETER01

Thanks again and very interesting indeed! I never knew this and actually thought it was an aircraft specific thing but there you go, I have learned something new today

Wonderful place this is and whilst I am here before I retire to bed may I say a sincere thank you to yourself and the other flight crew (only 2 others I can think of?!) who post here and of course all the cabin crew, past and present. This place wouldn't be the same without you all!

Waterhorse

I have a little to add to what Sigwx has said. From an Airbus perspective there is little difference from a Boeing, flaps allow us to fly slower and also allow us a lower deck angle and better visibility in the landing phase.

We will use all the runway available in a situation like this as brake energy ( the heat put into the brakes by using them) is a squared function of speed. So if you double the speed the energy increases fourfold. So we will use as much reverse thrust and natural drag braking before we use the brakes. There will have been a calculation made to determine how much runway is needed but this will use a set level of autobrake. The A320 doesn’t have Brake to Vacate which allows the brakes to modulate to provide retardation to exit at a specific exit. Aircraft with BTV would set it to the end of the runway, to minimise brake energy

Why am I waffling on about brakes? Well i landed a L1011 flapless at max landing weight once and it turned the brakes to a molten mass which welded on and it took 2 hours to vacate the runway. So that’s a LOT of heat energy and that generates a fire hazard, although this is well tested by the manufacturer we do our very best to avoid a brake fire, the real world can be a lot less forgiving than we like and an abundance of caution is something i like.

It is not designated as a Captain only landing; however, in most emergency situations the Captain will do the landing.

PETER01

Thanks very much for that explanation Waterhorse

As a normal passenger there's one BA consistency over the years which is vital and that is I always feel 100% safe flying on a BA plane.

strowger

Would love to hear the full story if you've time...

steve76

Reading about the successful evacuation of the JAL flight in Haneda has got me thinking. What are the procedures around evacuation when it comes to wheelchair users and other people with reduced mobility who might not be able to evacuate unaided? Are they expected to stay put and then for Cabin Crew to help them out once everyone else has evacuated? In which case do cabin crew have a list of the location of all such passengers? Or is it just assumed that other passengers would help them out?

Not trying to offend anyone, just genuinely curious as it seems like a real challenge.

As an aside, when safety videos advise you to note where your nearest exits are... I always wonder why they don't have a sticker on the back of the seat in front letting you know. E.g. "exit is 12 rows in front of you or 5 rows behind". Kind of like how you get fire exit maps on the back of hotel doors.

Can I help you

Firstly your nearest USEABLE exit could be in front, behind or even to your left or right of you so it’s for the passenger to make themselves aware of all exits around them.
Cabin crew will evacuate all passengers approaching their exit and if safe to do so when their exit drys up (no passengers approaching) make a sweep of their cabin area before exiting themselves.
The cabin crew will inform the fire services if any passengers cannot be evacuated and their position within cabin.

Waterhorse

All this comes with a big health warning as it happened c 30 years ago and memory is a fickle beast. All is as I remember it, but things may have been different in some details

This happened a long while ago and was an RAF TriStar Freighter heading into the Uk. The airfield was only Cat 1 ie not full autoland and the weather was poor, indeed all night was we wended our way to the Uk the visibility was below minima for an approach. while we had fuel for a safe alternate airport we didn’t have a lot to spare and were planned to land at Max Landing Weight. the plan was to descend to about 20,000 feet and get the latest weather and decide what to do next. When we did check the weather it was suddenly better so we decided to land as quickly as was prudent, it was all going swimmingly until we selected flap, and nothing happened apart from some warnings on the Cautions and Warnings Panel - the flaps had jammed.

We did the drill from the books and checked that we had enough landing distance available - we did with a 700m margin, quickly re-read the handling notes on how to handle the landing, selection of reverse and flare technique etc and compared experience of any sim practice and when we had last practiced the event. We briefed the approach and a few what ifs, like a go around or rejected landing and what to do should that happen, as we did not have a lot of fuel left.

The captain decided that as I had more recent practice of this particular failure I should conduct the landing and so we shot the approach and landed with a threshold speed of 192 knots IIRC or 221mph for the layman. Anyway it was quick and we did as the book said, selecting reverse later on the no2 engine to ensure no pitch up at reverse selection and applied full max manual braking. The RAF L1011 had a ground run monitor on which you set the Landing Distance which was essentially the length of the runway minus 800m. The manuals said we had a 700m safety margin and when we came to a stop and put on the parking brake, the GRM said we 720m left till the end of the runway.

The manual told us to put the park brake on and get the fire services to examine brakes, tyres etc before attempting to vacate the runway, which we did. the only trouble was that the brakes got very very hot (off the top of the brake temp gauges, so I’ve no idea how hot) and when we tried to release the park brake, it wouldn’t. The brakes were not carbon as they are today but steel and this heat had effectively made the brakes a rather solid mass of metal. we had to wait about 2 hours before the engineers could get near them to release the brakes manually (it sounded like they use big hammers with large chisels - but that is probably just fanciful thinking) The runway was closed for over 2 hours.

There were no passengers as it was a freighter so there were no issues there. At the time all L1011 training for the RAF was done in the BA sims at Cranebank and carried out by BA instructors and we flew to BA SOPS with only very minor changes.

Things that we would have done differently? Hmmm it’s always difficult to second guess this as there was a safe outcome, we could have modulated the brakes and used the additional 700m of runway and maybe avoided the jammed on brakes, we could have vacated the runway and put the park brake on, possibly not blocking the runway. However, that would have been to go against the guidance in the Flying Manual and should we have had a brake fire or worse, would have put us all in a far worse position. A blocked runway will not kill anyone, a brake fire that gets out of hand could.

Anyway I’ve thought a lot about it since, the one thing that I would probably have done differently with hindsight is I think I would have the Captain land it - as a Barrister’s first question should it have gone wrong would have been “why did you let the lesser experienced First Officer land an impaired aircraft?” - but he had sound reasons and it was a considered decision and it worked out safely so who is to say it was the wrong decision, just one maybe that I would do differently.

So apart from having little relevance to a BA board, I hope it was at least interesting and a little thought provoking.

c1223

This isn't exactly the same, but this video from the 747-8 test flights shows what happens to the breaks when you slam them on at 200mph all while being fully loaded.

BOH

Great read......did you land at Brize?

BOH

I'm getting old, that test pilot looks about 27

Waterhorse

Yes it was Brize

strowger

Fascinating. Thank you.

A thing I don't understand: how do you come to be both "maximum landing weight" and also low on fuel?

Waterhorse

It’s a a matter of how much freight was onboard. with a basic aircraft weight of c 118tonnes and a Max Landing Weight of 166.9 you have 48.9 tonnes to play with. Div fuel of c 10 gives you 38.9 tonnes of freight. So you can add additional fuel but you have to use it before landing so it doesn’t help you with a possible diversion. We could not commit to a single runway with only Cat 1 landing capability and marginal weather. So we either had to make the landing first time or divert - and end up landing at an unfamiliar airfield with even less fuel.