[apachelongbow]

Originally Posted by liferocks

@jereon

Sir I might be able to answer your queries on that particular flight. These are the normal assumptions from a pilots point of view.

1. No passenger information during rapid descend.

Pilots are required to don oxygen masks at the first indication of depressurisation and talking with those masks on is quite a task. They perform their recall actions wearing those masks and descend to lowest safe altitude or 10000 ft whichever is higher. There is no way they would talk to passengers before reaching that altitude. I assume that this was a controlled descend since pax oxygen masks weren't deployed.

2. Flying as low as 1500 ft from 50-60 miles.

As a commercial airline pilot no one would fly unsafe altitudes. In Delhi MSA is 2600 ft and Delhi elevation is 777ft. It is probable that you were flying at 2600ft but within 25 miles from DPN. You might have been flying for extended period of time, to burn fuel so as to come down to maximum landing weight.

3. Speed brakes in flight are only deployed upto flight detent, so you are right in your observation about speed brakes not fully deployed.

And of course like you, all of us are waiting for Jet Airways official reply to you on this matter. I am in no way defending anyone here but just shared my point of view.

Emergency descent.. is not required if you are below the altitude where there is enough oxygen in the air (at or below FL 100).

If you are close to the airport, say at fl 200 (20,000 feet), the airplane can quickly descend to below 10,000 feet in about 3 mins (6000 feet/min descent rate), now if speedbrakes were deployed or not, we cant comment, without actually sitting inside the cockpit. There are several technicalities involved with speedbrakes, for example in the airbus the same spoilers act like lift dump devices on ground, help in turn coordination along with ailerons in the air and also work like speedbrakes in air. If there is a turn demand and speedbrake demand, the turn demand (roll) is met first, remaining spoilers can help with speedbrake demands, the flight computers take care of these automatically and pilots have no say in how much of speedbrake is actually deployed.

In emergency descent the masks that are worn by pilots have a 'hot mike', they are on all the time and also a quick PA can be done via the same. In case of an emergency descent airbus mandates the following phrase only. 'Emergency Descent, passengers do not stay in the lavatories' If this call was not heard, then the descent was not an emergency descent. This is the first action taken by the Captain after he dawns his mask, before doing anything else. It is a memory item, and is mandatory. I am sure Boeing has similar phraseology and memory items.

It is again impossible to judge how high one is without reference to instruments, and definitely impossible to do that from the cabin. Believe me when I say this. So maintaining 1500 feet 50 miles from the airport is impossible, firstly no terrain clearance and secondly ATC wouldn't allow you to descent below minimum safe altitude, no matter what, unless you have a serious emergency and you want to crash land at the nearest field.

And sorry, Jet or for that matter any other airline is not required by law to answer to technical queries by a passenger. If anything they would file a report with the ATC and DGCA, and if required their own company and DGCA officials will hold an inquiry. No offense but this is required, otherwise airlines would keep wasting time answering silly queries on how fast the plane was, how unsafe it felt, how the landing was not smooth, how the engines made too much noise etc etc.

[arnabchak]

Originally Posted by ifly

Before I begin, respected mods and admins, if this is not in the taste of the forum please delete this and pardon me for starting a new thread. My sincerent apologies if this is unfit to have been posted here.

@ifly

Hell No!!!

This is a beautiful review.

Such a refreshing post and even after having read it thrice, feel so happy about it!!

Sincerely wish if you can add some more insights about the beautiful machine.

And honestly, 12KMPL is not bad at all for such a gigantic piece of engineering wonder!!

Even some small 1.2 l cars fail to give the above mileage.

Pls. keep it coming.

BTW, the mountain pic is fantastic.

[alpha1]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

No announcement were made untill about 30 minutes later. It was very obvious that all passengers were aware, and everybody was pinging the flight attendants. At long last the captain came out on the PA and announced that due to a technical issue we were returning to Delhi.
...
No further explanation or anything! No comforting words, that everything is still safe etc. etc. Only we have a technical issues and are returning to Delhi.
...
The captain came on the PA again and told us they lost cabin pressure and that was the reason to return to Delhi.
...
It took another 20 minutes before they decided to let us off the plane. All they told us was to contact ground staff. Nothing else!
...
I thought both the cockpit and cabin crew did not handle the situation well at all. There was virtually no communication, and it was very obvious that something was wrong.

Even back at the gate at Delhi, there was no staff at hand to direct passengers or to help out. Everybody was just left to fend for themselves and figure out what to do and how to go about it.

Very poor performance, very customer unfriendly.

Jeroen

Is it stipulated by law to announce to the passengers all the problems that the aircraft is facing?

Is it stipulated by law that the carrier provides a compensation and backup flight in case their flights stand canceled?

I am sure answer to both of these are negative.
And hence the typical response you faced from Jet airways.
(Remember we had an argument about something contextually similar in another thread about European/german vehicles?)

I think you will get used to these Indian ways of doing things (and still being successful).

[Jeroen]

Below the e-mail text I received from Jetairways a little while ago on the cabin attitude incident:

Dear Mr. D**

This has reference to my telephone conversation with you today morning. I thank you for the feedback and the time you spared for talking to me from your busy schedule.

The experience on flight 9W 332 on 18th November 2013 was indeed very unfortunate and we express our sincere regrets for any kind of inconvenience you and your colleagues have experienced on the flight till the flight landed back in Delhi.

The aircraft developed a snag due to which the cabin pressure started dropping and hence the aircraft had to be brought to a lower altitude and was brought back to Delhi airport.

We have noted your feedback that your expectations from the cockpit crew were not met in terms of communication with passengers for offering some comfort and reduce the anxiety experienced. I have shared your comments on the importance of such a communication with our flight Operations Division.

I have shared your feedback with our Delhi Airport Manager though as per the feedback staff was allocated in the arrival to attend to the guests arriving on flight 9W 332. We apologise if we have fallen short in meeting your expectations for the sensitivity and professional approach.

As shared with you, we will contact you with further clarification so as to eliminate your concerns and restore your confidence in our efforts to ensure safety and security of our travelling guests at all times. Jet Airways has an impeccable safety record and we are working tirelessly to keep it high and secured at all times. We value the trust and support given by our valued guests and we assure of our efforts to retain the same.

Thank you for communicating with us. We are privileged to be of service to you.

With Regards,

** ** **
Guest Relations
Jet Airways (India) Limited

As promised they contacted me a little while later again. This time it was one of their captains who also happened to one of JetAirways training captain. We spend about 20-25 minutes on the phone. I talked him through my observations and thoughts about that. Both on how the communication was handled as well as my thoughts on the approach.

On the communication he acknowledged that this appeared to be not in line with company procedure. He talked me through on what the procedures are and how they are taught to JetAirways pilots. I would say they are very much in line of how I thought these procedures are typically implemented at various carriers around the world.

On the approach he told me he needed some more time to investigate and would come back to me. So we'll have to wait an see.

Originally Posted by Bangalorean

While I can agree that the crew could have been more communicative, the established procedure in cases of loss of cabin pressure is precisely what "liferocks" has posted.

From "Ask the pilot":

http://www.salon.com/2010/11/09/when..._depressurize/



Jet airways pilots in this case, acted exactly by the book, following established emergency procedures. However, I concede that they ought to have communicated better with passengers after getting down to 10000 feet.


[/b]

Well, we all seem to agree that the communication should have been handled in a very different way and I was happy to hear that JetAirways agrees to that as well.

Originally Posted by revtech

the only arrogance and ignorance i see is from your posts through out this thread.

By using big terms and claiming you have manuals of different airlines doesnt make you a qualified pilot on that type of aircraft.

I strongly suggest you leave the flying to Real Pilots who know how and where to capture the glide slope from and continue you "google copy paste expedition"

cheers

I never claimed to be a qualified pilot to this type of aircraft. I am a qualified pilot though, even though not current since I came to India. If you look into this thread you can find my qualification and even some video's of me flying.

You can read in the earlier parts of this thread why I have such a collection of manuals. Whether you chose to believe me or not of having such manuals is entirely up to you.

With real pilots do you mean such pilots as we had earlier on in this threat? Those real pilots that told us the Indian Skies are the safest in the world? At at a time where India ICAO status was at stake and the newspapers were full of articles with text such as:

“Icao has identified a significant safety concern with respect of the ability of this state (India) to properly oversee its airlines (air operators) under is jurisdiction,” the agency said in its report, about which Mint reported on 10 March.
Icao clubbed India with Angola, Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Lesotho, Malawi, and São Tomé and Príncipe.

You mean those real pilots making those claims against the above background. BTW, I did follow up on the above in this very thread and reporting no the subsequent progress in the ICAO certification process.

Originally Posted by apachelongbow

There are two types of pilots. One is the real one who actually flies an aircraft, anything from a crop duster to a raptor. The other one is what we call an arm chair pilot. The one who flies using google searches, flight simulator and xbox. Or the one who can 'understand' the altitude of an airplane sitting in the passenger seat, or who can perceive 'speed, bank angle, rate of climb, descent, pressure change' merely because he/she has done some rudimentary training in the US or has 3000 hours on the x box simulator.

Honestly Jeroen, I don't know if you are a real pilot or not, but frankly if you were an aviator, you would 'never' dub some other crew as unprofessional merely on your perceptions from the cabin, simply because you would know in aviation every day and every landing is different, and its not difficult and definitely not impossible that you might have done worse than that crew for that problem. Also you would have an insight into the high stress levels in a real cockpit, in real emergencies, compared to the armchair flying on the xbox.


And to me a PA stating due, technical reasons we are returning to Delhi is more than enough assurance from the crew that I am safe, rather than hearing a long winded speech of what just happened and what did we do right.

See above and if you had taken the trouble to read the whole thread you would know I am pilot, though a private pilot, not commercial. And, again, in the thread, one with a remarkable number of hours on 744 full motion similators courtesy of Lufthansa and Cargolux. If it helps, I also spend the first two years of my acadamic training on a Flight Engineer course and I have some experience in the (platform) development of flight control systems.

There is no need for a longwinded explanation. But the captain should have mentioned some sort of re-assurance along the lines. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a small techncial issue, we have started our descent earlier and are returning to Delhi where we will be making a normal landing.

That would have been in line with JetAirways company policy or so I'm told.

Originally Posted by apachelongbow

Emergency descent.. is not required if you are below the altitude where there is enough oxygen in the air (at or below FL 100).

If you are close to the airport, say at fl 200 (20,000 feet), the airplane can quickly descend to below 10,000 feet in about 3 mins (6000 feet/min descent rate), now if speedbrakes were deployed or not, we cant comment, without actually sitting inside the cockpit. There are several technicalities involved with speedbrakes, for example in the airbus the same spoilers act like lift dump devices on ground, help in turn coordination along with ailerons in the air and also work like speedbrakes in air. If there is a turn demand and speedbrake demand, the turn demand (roll) is met first, remaining spoilers can help with speedbrake demands, the flight computers take care of these automatically and pilots have no say in how much of speedbrake is actually deployed.

In emergency descent the masks that are worn by pilots have a 'hot mike', they are on all the time and also a quick PA can be done via the same. In case of an emergency descent airbus mandates the following phrase only. 'Emergency Descent, passengers do not stay in the lavatories' If this call was not heard, then the descent was not an emergency descent. This is the first action taken by the Captain after he dawns his mask, before doing anything else. It is a memory item, and is mandatory. I am sure Boeing has similar phraseology and memory items.

It is again impossible to judge how high one is without reference to instruments, and definitely impossible to do that from the cabin. Believe me when I say this. So maintaining 1500 feet 50 miles from the airport is impossible, firstly no terrain clearance and secondly ATC wouldn't allow you to descent below minimum safe altitude, no matter what, unless you have a serious emergency and you want to crash land at the nearest field.

And sorry, Jet or for that matter any other airline is not required by law to answer to technical queries by a passenger. If anything they would file a report with the ATC and DGCA, and if required their own company and DGCA officials will hold an inquiry. No offense but this is required, otherwise airlines would keep wasting time answering silly queries on how fast the plane was, how unsafe it felt, how the landing was not smooth, how the engines made too much noise etc etc.

Just to be clear, it was not what would you would typically call an emergency descent I believe. No oxygen mask dropped out. also, the captain did not make that announcement as you point out. Talking to the jetAirways captain I understand it was a gradual loss of cabin pressure and they decided to initiate a descent to below 10.000 feet.

I have never experienced a full emergency descent, although I have done them on the 744 Lufthansa simulator. And a little bit of in flight experimenting on a Cirrus SR22 in case of problems with the oxygen system.

Thanks for the description on the airbus system. After the aircraft turned it flew level and then the speedbrakes were still up.

On the law requirements etc see below.

Originally Posted by alpha1

Is it stipulated by law to announce to the passengers all the problems that the aircraft is facing?

Is it stipulated by law that the carrier provides a compensation and backup flight in case their flights stand canceled?

I am sure answer to both of these are negative.
And hence the typical response you faced from Jet airways.
(Remember we had an argument about something contextually similar in another thread about European/german vehicles?)

I think you will get used to these Indian ways of doing things (and still being successful).

Earlier on in this thread there was a similar debate about legal requirements on for instance resting hour and I pointed out that legal requirements are a minimum. There is nothing that prevents individuals or companies to do more or better or different. So even if there are no legal reguirements that doesn't mean you should do nothing.

I'm pleased to see that JetAirways took my complaint seriously. Phoned me several times, and had one of their operations/training captain call me back. I don't think they are legally required to do so, but I certainly appreciated it.

I dont know about the legal requirements about re-imbursement, we never checked, but we got fully re-imbursed.

On the matter of being able to judge altitudes from the cockpit or the cabin I have a different opinion from some of the other esteemed members. Check my earlier post on how often I fly these approaches and how much visual reference you have, then read the below

When I was training for my PPL in the USA I specifically choose my flight instructor for not just training me in passing my check ride, but to make me a good overall pilot (within whatever limitiations I have, and I'm sure I have loads). One of his favourite training exercises was a complete instrument failure. It's highly unlikely, perhaps not even realistic. Still, he made me fly countless circuits, landings and take offs with no instruments at all. Just pure seat of the pants, sticks and rudder feeling.

There is no legal requirement for this to be part of the formal PPL training or part of the formal check ride. But it does teach a very specific kind of airmanship. And it does teach you to estimate altitude, attitude and speed by means of visual reference only.

Especially when you're operating around familiar terrain and or fields, it doesn't take too long to get a pretty good feel for it. Even when later on we were training for our IFR and subsequent endorsement we always kept this going. Of course, you need good enough visual conditions to do so. So to me, looking at the ground, where I am in relation to different to visual references is something I always do, even as a passenger.

But aside whether you can or with what sort of accuracy, what you all overlooked, and again it is in my earlier post is that we don't need to rely on visuals in these cases. You can just look up the flight profile afterwards. Various online public sources publish all ADS-B data (and most Indian aircraft are equipped with ADS these days).

I miss my flying days. I spend some 9 days in the USA last year and of course, managed to rent a plane with a flight instructor, and flew for a little over three hours, 9 touch and go's. It was nice, but also made me realise how quickly you forget everything that you were taught!

Jeroen

[apachelongbow]

^^ Thanks man... nice to know your about your flying background. I too have trained in the USA, and I believe it does make you a more practical flyer than the stupid theory oriented courses in India and lot of fake over logging, but we can leave that for some other thread.
The problem with seat of pants flying in a pressurized airplane is precisely that, cabin pressure. Even at a low 3000/5000 feet agl, the cabin is pressurized to a certain extent just to prevent a differential surge when we ascend, hence our body being attuned to ground pressure, feels different in a rarer atmosphere, and that impairs our visual judgement regarding how high we are. Hence an instrument scan is mandatory, atleast a reference to a papi/vaasi regarding proper height if doing a visual landing. There is a DGCA car regarding mandatory paapi/vaasi for turbojet operations.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by apachelongbow

^^ Thanks man... nice to know your about your flying background. I too have trained in the USA, and I believe it does make you a more practical flyer than the stupid theory oriented courses in India and lot of fake over logging, but we can leave that for some other thread.
The problem with seat of pants flying in a pressurized airplane is precisely that, cabin pressure. Even at a low 3000/5000 feet agl, the cabin is pressurized to a certain extent just to prevent a differential surge when we ascend, hence our body being attuned to ground pressure, feels different in a rarer atmosphere, and that impairs our visual judgement regarding how high we are. Hence an instrument scan is mandatory, atleast a reference to a papi/vaasi regarding proper height if doing a visual landing. There is a DGCA car regarding mandatory paapi/vaasi for turbojet operations.

thanks, don't get me wrong, I dont advocate "seat of the pants flying in large commercial jets.". It was more to demonstrate that judging altitude (at least AGL) from a plane is just a skill you can aquire. Especially whilst flying over familiar terrain with many known/recognizable references.

I did enjoy the American approach very much. It's very 'functional and fit for purpose'. The one thing that did surprise is that the minimum score of the knowledge test on both VFR and IFR is 70%. Which means there are pilots there, that don't understand nearly 1/3 of the theory! I know worst case, but still. I'm not familiar with Indian aviation training at all. I have a few insights in the (Western) European way of GA / PPL training. It certainly is a lot more expensive and complex. I looked into getting my PPL in the UK and they seem to be able to combine the best of both worlds, with a very thorough practical and theoretical cirriculum.

American skies are great to fly, no language issues (well, I had some problems with some of very strong Southern accents), virtually no landing fees, enless airports everywhere , by and large 'easy going ATC with excellent coverage and service. And even if you want to go VFR all the way, you can request Flight Following from ATC, which gives you an extra pair of eyes watching you.

Since I left in August 2012 more than a hundred Amercian airports have been stripped of their manned/tower operations as part of budget cuts. Real shame. And remarkable. My home base initially was Johnsson County Executive Airport and later we moved our club to New Century. Neither of them being small airports. Both thriving GA airports, closeby Kansas City International and KC dowtown airports.

I had hoped to be able to convert my FAA license to Europe, but the rules have changed considerable as per 2012/13. Effectively you will have to start more or less from scratch. The other way, with an European license to the USA you can get that converted and it just takes a few lessons and endorsedments from a CFI I believe,.

Jeroen

[apachelongbow]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

I did enjoy the American approach very much. It's very 'functional and fit for purpose'. The one thing that did surprise is that the minimum score of the knowledge test on both VFR and IFR is 70%. Which means there are pilots there, that don't understand nearly 1/3 of the theory! I know worst case, but still. I'm not familiar with Indian aviation training at all. I have a few insights in the (Western) European way of GA / PPL training. It certainly is a lot more expensive and complex. I looked into getting my PPL in the UK and they seem to be able to combine the best of both worlds, with a very thorough practical and theoretical cirriculum.

Yes both American and European flying courses are a mix of theory and practice, the American one being more flight oriented and the European being a bit more theory heavy. The Indian one, however (as usual) managed to combine the worst bits from both, very heavy on theory and low on practical flying.
Consider this: For the FAA CPL we need to know how to shoot a VOR approach, in India they need you to know on what frequency does the VOR work, how do the radials radiate out from the VOR, what are the errors and what is the accuracy etc etc, but if you go sample the Indian CPL students at least 70% wouldn't be able to shoot a standard VOR approach on a Cessna!!! Yet they can recite out of rote, what is the VOT test etc.

The British established a system in India to produce clerks for the East India Company and since then, we have been producing clerks in all fields.

[shipnil]

Pilot bhpians, what is your take on DGCA downgrade by FAA?
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/i...w/29652980.cms

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by shipnil

Pilot bhpians, what is your take on DGCA downgrade by FAA?
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/i...w/29652980.cms

As I've said before I'm not a commercial pilot, just a FAA licensed Private Pilot.

Earlier on in this thread the Indian aviation safety was discussed. It was one of our resident commercial pilots who made the statement:

It may come as a pleasant surprise to you, but the Indian skies are the most stringent to fly in, making them perhaps the safest! Much more than even the US.

We did not see any further elaboration then the supporting statement of "Indian pilots have better resting times than any other pilots".

My thoughts at the time were that there is a bit more to aviation safety than only that aspect and I wrote down my two cents worth of aviation safety and where India stood based on the ICAO database:

see: http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/commer...review-14.html

This downgrade effectively puts India, from an aviation safety aspect in terms of oversight into the Subsaharan category of Countries as it is known. I.e. Angola, Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Lesotho, Malawi, and São Tomé and Príncipe. No offense to anybody but from an aviation safety point of view not a good place to be put on par with.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/...w/29654982.cms

The times of India article points out some of the immediate effects this will have. And the most prominent is of course the limitations on flights to the USA and extra safety inspections of Indian aircraft in the USA. I'm thinking of a different angle, a more local one. The DGCA is simply failing to provide adequate oversight on Indian aviation. That means all the Indian aviation in Indian skies is simply put sub-standard what International standards and conventions demand. Not a pretty thought when you fly a lot in India!

And of course, even this articles hints that the current strained India-USA relationships have played a role. I'm not so sure about that at all for various reasons. That whole affair was much more important to India then to the USA. It was in the Indian newspapers front pages for days. On those same days you might not even find it on American News pages. I seriously doubt that anybody in the Obama administration lost any sleep over that. For them it was just a bit of inconvenience and it had to be dealt with, no big thing. Here it was huge.

Secondly and much more relevant, the FAA has huge professional standing in the international aviation community. If the FAA was ever to be seen to be pushing a political agenda rather than aviation they would simply be the laughing stock of the international aviation community. Their European counter parts would have a field day and they would never ever be able to show their face in any international aviation forum again.

The FAA over the cause of history has come under lots of criticism. But never, to my knowledge, of pursuing American foreign policy. In fact most of the criticism has been that they should be more stringent and apply heavier fines and penalties to (American) carriers that did not comply with safety standards. That sort of criticism, by the way came from American congress, no less.

In previous posts I have made references to several articles around this pending issue of India being audited and subsequently consequences for its ICAO status. This has been going on for quite a while with many aviation experts openly criticizing how the DGCA was handling and implementing the changes necessary based on the audit findings. The fact that they have, in the press, through various spokespersons, expressing their confidence on India meeting FAA requirements, shows they probably, genuinely, don't understand what this is all about. A very worrying situation.

Would be interesting to read the detailed FAA report that supports this decision. I don't know if that shows up in the public domain.

One thing is for sure; Going back to the original claims made by our resident pilot of Indian skies being the safest skies in the world: MYTH BUSTED as the saying goes.

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

It's rare for India carriers to show up on this website. Not because there are few incidents, but because there is less transparency and fewer people around who know and report it to these sort of avaition sites;. Must have been a pretty hard landing, or maybe debris on the runway?

http://avherald.com/h?article=46f7ece3&opt=0

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

For those who want to know why ICAO downgraded India, here's the actual findings of the FAA audit:

http://dgca.nic.in/public_notice/PN-FAA.pdf

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Came across this very cool and unusual video on one of my flying forums.

It's a B747-200F, from MK Airlines .

Enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DcoVBj7pyU

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

A little while ago there were some post on this forum regarding planes landing on the wrong airport.

Here's a variant on that theme; Plane lands on the correct airport but on the taxiway instead of the runway.

http://avherald.com/h?article=471a56bf&opt=0

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

in continuation of India ICAO status having been downgraded here is an interesting consequence of some of the actions undertaken by the DGCA.

One of the things they are doing, is stepping up the number of unaunounced checks:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/i...w/32518390.cms

Jeroen

[rakeshnair14]

Dear friend, I am an budding Avaition enthusiast, just recently smitten by these beautiful birds & I when i found out this thread my happiness knew no bounds!
Please let me know if there really is another dedicated thread for Aviation where I can follow & keep myself updated with all the recent developments in Aviation Industry?

Meanwhile I have few queries regarding the beautiful A320 , hope to get your valuable views on it!


1.What is the difference between an regular A320 CEO & A320 NEO with Sharklets ?
2. Why is the A320s preferred more than Boeing 737s in narrow body categories? Is the A320 more advanced & better than the 737?