The great big "ask an airline pilot" thread!

Priority Right

amen wrote: »

For any Airbus captains how do you find the transition from co-pilot where the "joystick" is controlled by your right hand to captain where the joystick is controlled by your left hand?

how does this impact a landing or even in flight maneuvers? Are they "rougher" for a while then if you had been in the co-pilot seat?

I'm not a captain yet. But I can guarantee you that it's hard to transition. I've been beside a few new captains who slam it in. I also want to point out that the landings are safe/within limits and technically a softer landing can be more dangerous cause you're using up runway etc......well that's some of the excuses they use! :P

Cicero

Enjoying the thread...thanks..:)

What factors make a "bumpy landing"- was on a flight this week and the landing into Dublin Airport felt like very bad turbulence - was starting to get a little worried...it was just before or when the wheels hit the runway...

eimear10

From all your experience what would you say the ratio is for female and male pilots?

xflyer

It's the same for any pilot whether airline or not. A good stabilised approach leads to a good landing. Factors against a good stabilised approach are turbulence, high winds, gusts and a crosswind at the limit. Of my 12 landings the other day in all of the above, two or three ended with a falling out of the sky feeling. The rest were distinctly average except for the last one when the wind had calmed down a bit. It's a bit of a lottery whether you get hit by the the downdraft at the crucial moment. Of couse my thing is a bit lighter than any airliner so they would be less affected. But they fly in conditions where I'm at home with my feet up watching 'Ice Pilots' or something.

xflyer

eimear10 wrote: »

From all your experience what would you say the ratio is for female and male pilots?

It's supposed to be between 7 and 10% last I read up on the subject.

A.G.S

hi ive a question as a pilot for example with Ryanair could you work shifts that will guarantee you will be home again that night for bed.rather then a cheap hotel in lanzarote or whatever destination you get stuck at ?

Priority Right

A.G.S wrote: »

hi ive a question as a pilot for example with Ryanair could you work shifts that will guarantee you will be home again that night for bed.rather then a cheap hotel in lanzarote or whatever destination you get stuck at ?

Most low cost airlines/short haul get you home every night. Stopping over and having to pay for hotels and taxis costs alot if you have a crew doing it every day. I'm pretty sure ryanair don't do stopovers.

Other low cost and/or short haul airlines do night stops. You land either in the morning/afternoon and depart early the next morning or arrive late in the evening and leave later the next day. That's usually how it works.

A.G.S

Priority Right wrote: »

Most low cost airlines/short haul get you home every night. Stopping over and having to pay for hotels and taxis costs alot if you have a crew doing it every day. I'm pretty sure ryanair don't do stopovers.

Other low cost and/or short haul airlines do night stops. You land either in the morning/afternoon and depart early the next morning or arrive late in the evening and leave later the next day. That's usually how it works.

Thanks for answering my question I'm only doing my ppl but wanna make a career outta it but have a young family and would not like to be leaving them alot

xflyer

Ahem, one thing you can virtually guarantee with an airline career or indeed any pilot job is that you'll be leaving your family a lot. Ryanair pilots for example, almost invariably get back to their home base at night. But home base may not be home. Your home base can be anywhere they need you. So you could end up based in Tenerife for example, you won't get back home until your roster is finished. You can get a base near home but once made up to Captain you're on the move again.

For any airline once you get a permanent base you can move your family there. Not always an option though.

It's not a family friendly career.

Tenger

xflyer wrote: »

Ahem, one thing you can virtually guarantee with an airline career or indeed any pilot job is that you'll be leaving your family a lot......

It's not a family friendly career.

An oft overlooked downside to modern commercial aviation.

It may not matter when you are in your early 20's but once you hit 30 homelife increases in importance (for most people anyway)

eatmyshorts

amen wrote: »

For any Airbus captains how do you find the transition from co-pilot where the "joystick" is controlled by your right hand to captain where the joystick is controlled by your left hand?

how does this impact a landing or even in flight maneuvers? Are they "rougher" for a while then if you had been in the co-pilot seat?

It's called a "sidestick", and you can give me one of those any day over a pointless huge yoke taking up space in front of me.

It doesn't really matter if it's an Airbus or not. Transitioning to the left seat of any aircraft means flying with your left hand. Left on the yoke, right on the thrust levers.

PattheMetaller

I've been reading this thread over the last few days to catch up. I don't remember if this has been asked before so here goes: why does the captain sit on the left and co-pilot on the right?

Brilliant thread and very intersting. Cheers

P \m/

Chuck Stone

Do planes power into a landing or do they glide?

Do plane engines rotate away from each other i.e. if the right hand engine is spinning clockwise does the left hand engine spin counter-clockwise?

LLU

In an Airbus, does the sidestick give any feedback to what you are doing? i.e. if say you are pulling back and some external force (gravity, wind, etc) is pushing the plane the other way, do you feel a corresponding resistance in the stick?

Actually the same applies to the more traditional controls in a jet. Given that the controls are fly-by-wire, how much of the external forces are transmitted back to the pilot?

Thanks.

Priority Right

PattheMetaller wrote: »

I don't remember if this has been asked before so here goes: why does the captain sit on the left and co-pilot on the right?
/

It's to do with marine law. Boats turn to the right to pass eachother on their left hand sides. So when aviation first started the just copied the rule. The captain sits on the left so he can clearly see the plane he's avoiding.

LLU wrote: »

In an Airbus, does the sidestick give any feedback to what you are doing? i.e. if say you are pulling back and some external force (gravity, wind, etc) is pushing the plane the other way, do you feel a corresponding resistance in the stick?
.

You feel nothing from the sidestick. It's just connected to a computer not the mechanical controls. Also when the F.O moves their sidestick the captains one doesn't move etc so it's hard to see what inputs are being used compared to other planes e.g boeing.

pclancy

Hence the button for priority left or right?

eatmyshorts

Priority Right wrote: »

You feel nothing from the sidestick. It's just connected to a computer not the mechanical controls.

To say you "feel nothing" is a bit simplistic. There is a force feedback spring meaning there is a stronger resistance the further the stick is displaced from central. Releasing the stick returns it to the neutral position.

roundymac

The main runway at Cork is 2133m in length, could (a) a A330 make the east coast on that length of runway, (b) a 757, bearing in mind that Cork has a constant crosswind. Also does the 739er have the range to do an atlantic trip, (not just from Cork), if not, is there any plane that can fill the gap for the 757's, they are starting to get a bit long in the tooth now.
This is a great thread, love it,and thanks to all the pilots who take the time to answer our "dopey" questions.

xflyer

Chuck Stone wrote: »

Do planes power into a landing or do they glide?

Do plane engines rotate away from each other i.e. if the right hand engine is spinning clockwise does the left hand engine spin counter-clockwise?

Light single engined aeroplanes often glide in as much as anything for practice should the engine fail. But generally aircraft carry power into the landing. With jet engines it's neccessary because even modern engines take a few moments to spool up and generate more thrust in the event power is needed

In thirties any RAF pilot who used power on landing had to buy a round of drinks in the mess. That was fine for light biplanes. When they introduced heavier and twin engined aircraft the rate of landing crashes shot up and it became standard practice to use power on the approach.

As for engine rotation, yes there are some aircraft that have counterrotating engines but mostly on piston engined aircraft. Notably the Beechcraft Duchess and I think the P38 fighter of WW2. Turboprops do not as far as I'm aware and jet engines always rotate in the same direction.

For piston engined twins it's considered a desirable option as it avoids having a 'critical engine'. At this point I think I'll stop as we're getting into factors like, torque, P-factor, gyroscopic precession, slipstream effect, Vmca, Vmcg:eek:

TMA.

Priority Right

eatmyshorts wrote: »

To say you "feel nothing" is a bit simplistic. There is a force feedback spring meaning there is a stronger resistance the further the stick is displaced from central. Releasing the stick returns it to the neutral position.

Fine if you want to be pedantic you do feel a small force but it has no feedback from the ailerons or the elevator.

Tenger

eatmyshorts wrote: »

To say you "feel nothing" is a bit simplistic. There is a force feedback spring meaning there is a stronger resistance the further the stick is displaced from central. Releasing the stick returns it to the neutral position.

The question was in relation to feedback from the physical movement of the airlerons/flaps/wings. Feedback resistance is a preventative measure (to counter over input) rather than a response to external conditions

Lustrum

Can you remember the best or worst landing you've ever done? Or for that matter the toughest conditions?

Weissbier

Priority Right wrote: »

PattheMetaller wrote: »

I don't remember if this has been asked before so here goes: why does the captain sit on the left and co-pilot on the right?
/

It's to do with marine law. Boats turn to the right to pass eachother on their left hand sides. So when aviation first started the just copied the rule. The captain sits on the left so he can clearly see the plane he's avoiding.

LLU wrote: »

.

Although the above is the most likely, I've heard of a more interesting hypothesis. It goes back to the very first days of flight when rules didn't even exist!! During this time the horse was the most common mode of transport and as almost all people mount horses from the left, the same practice carried through to boarding a plane, and to this day this is still the most predominant side for boarding all single seated planes.

And it is also said that as WW1 led to more powerful planes being produced and as these planes had a tendency to easier turning to the left which meant that pilots adopted this as the standard for examining areas and then for entering and preparing to land and ultimately to standard airport practices. Later when side by side aircraft configurations were being adopted the left seat was then set up with appropriate instrumentation and the right with minimal if any instrumentation.

Dacian

Most 'rules' and habit in aviation came from the navies of the time. Thus you have captains, first officers and pursers.
You also have port and starboard, port being the side that is closest to the port!

Gangway=jetways, galley's, cabin's, lots of naval stuff there.

tricky D

What interesting atmospheric or astronomical phenomenon have the high flyers among you seen?

Your favourite ATC funnies (your own or someone else's)?

View Profile

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU0gIgE-i58

This is cool when it happens.

Bearcat

Lustrum wrote: »

Can you remember the best or worst landing you've ever done? Or for that matter the toughest conditions?

toughest conditions for me without doubt was cork gusting real bad but just within cross wind limits....first approach we went around, 2nd I was expecting predictive windshear to scream at us but nothing.......plus or minus 25kts on the speed.......managed speed wasnt an option re flap limiting speeds . drove her on....not a bother says me sweatin like a u know what......tricky bit was turning at the end of the rwy re weather cocking into the wind.

wind i remember joining finals at 5000ft was 230/120kts!!, so you can imagine the sheer......everywhere else was the same in ireland that day......bristol was in the eye of the storm and was our bolt hole.

next toughest both JFK.....landed in snowy conditions but taxyways were ice rinks and not told....as we vacated 31R.....couldnt turn onto parrallel taxiway as the bloody aircraft kept weathercocking which meant our tail encroached an active rwy. Guy behind us had to go around and think he diverted ....felt real sorry for him. Between differential pwr and brakes....not recommended but it was our only option that night 20 yrs ago......we skated across the ramp as we got to our gate......never did a cool beer feel so welcome that night.

Had another roller coaster onto 13R......vicious winds. Eastern seaboard weather can really throw up curve balls, likewise the west coast re fog......finally Chicago and Orlando can be mares with thunder storms.....biggest ive ever seen was a wall over lake michigan upto FL450....it was a no brainer, airfield closed....we ducked into detroit and waited for them to pass......loooong day.

worst landing, I ever been on was as a pax.....missus was preggers with our first.......was into BFS.....if she didnt loose the baby that night it was a miracle as the landing was imo violent....ive never experienced such a downward g force. that baby now is 6 ft 2in!!

McNulty737

Lustrum wrote: »

Can you remember the best or worst landing you've ever done? Or for that matter the toughest conditions?

Worst I ever did was in Santiago (spain) on Christmas eve 2009, tricky place at the best of times especially landing on the northerly runway gets very rough over the threshold due to trees/terrain. Was very gusty and turbulent on this occasion and i regretfully selected the highest flap setting to reduce landing distance in order to try and make the first exit. I say regretfully because the aircraft (738) flies like crap in gusty conditions with flap 40. Anyway became a bit unstable the last couple of hundred feet and absolutely planted it down onto the runway....merry christmas!

Best might have been Lanzarote, another tricky place gets very turbulent on finals and that day was gusting up to 60mph, approaching max crosswind for the the aircraft, had to fight it the whole way down but somehow managed to grease it down on the centreline bang on the touchdown markers.

Bearcat

Ditto re Santiago ......a total Kip. I've never encountered such vicious turbulence on approach with winds less than 25kts on the deck. That an undulating runway that tempts you to flare early.....was never too generous with offering legs there!

lord lucan

Does the sadist in any of you guys enjoy telling people the weather in Dublin(particularly when it's cold and crap) over the PA when returning from a sun destination?

I ask as i swore i heard a little giggle over the PA from the Captain the other night when returning from FUE with EI.:)