

Qantas QF32 flight from the cockpit (dealing with exploded engine) - davi
http://www.aerosocietychannel.com/aerospace-insight/2010/12/exclusive-qantas-qf32-flight-from-the-cockpit/

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oomkiller
Site seems dead, Google Cache: <http://goo.gl/a216o> EDIT: Apparently there
are pictures of the cockpit with the error messages etc, text-only doesn't do
this article justice.

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RiderOfGiraffes
I think it's just very, very slow to load. It loaded for me about 30 minutes
ago, shortly before your comment.

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scorpioxy
Very interesting.

It's amazing how the pilots can remain calm in such circumstances. I wonder
what they told the passengers. "One of our engines blew up and two are not
working in full capacity, but don't worry everything is fine".

I would also be interested in knowing why the engine blew up in the first
place. Seems to me that the ECAM messages were less than helpful sometimes.
Which reminded me of how we approach error reporting in the applications that
we develop where we report on individual problems and not necessarily relate
that to the overall state of the system.

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hugh3
_I wonder what they told the passengers. "One of our engines blew up and two
are not working in full capacity, but don't worry everything is fine"._

Wonder no longer, there's a video!

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyEJCg9etBg>

"We do apologise. As I'm sure you're aware, we have a technical issue with our
number two engine..."

The guy actually did a damn good job of maintaining a calm and reassuring
tone; the fact that bits of the engine can be clearly seen sticking through
the top of the wing is the only thing that detracts from the everything-is-
fine message.

He did a much better job than this other Qantas pilot, dealing with a less
serious (though more spectacular-looking) engine failure earlier in the year,
who let his own stress show:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI_5qDrMuK0>

"...as you can imagine things are a little tense in the cockpit... please be
assured we are trained for this situation. Of course it's usually in the
simulator but we are trained for it..."

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scorpioxy
Kind of reminds me of how the hostess of a recent flight was telling us how
terrible the flight would be. "There's a big storm that we will be flying
through. It's going to be a bumpy flight, and we're taking on extra fuel
because we might be diverted to another airport. Oh, and I also might have to
bump someone off the plane because we're too heavy."

My initial thoughts were: "keep that kind of information to yourself. I don't
want to know." It was more like a roller-coaster ride rather a flight so she
was right, but i still didn't want to know.

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mdaniel
Thanks for posting this @davi. I look forward to reading the full article when
it comes back online (the link by @oomkiller is a good start, but I really
would like to see the source article).

I don't know about everyone else, but reading about these kinds of incidents
from the pilot's perspective makes me _more_ confident about flying, not less.
I have zero doubt that those folks are professionals.

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robryan
It's interesting just how many different systems needed to be considered by
the pilots after the incident. I've read articles before about how a pilots
routine job can be very boring but it's good to know they have built up all
that experience and training for moments like these.

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hugh3
What strikes me is that the software he's talking about appears to be badly
designed; or at least, not well designed for this rare situation where you've
got dozens of error messages coming up at once and they're not prioritised.

Also,

 _...once we’d extended the undercarriage using the alternate system we had no
indication it was down until we’d gone to the system page to make confirmation
of that._

(What, there's no big-ass mechanical dial with "Gear up" and "Gear down" on
it?)

and

 _In the Airbus and the A380 we don’t carry performance and landing charts, we
have a performance application. Putting in the ten items affecting landing
performance on the initial pass, the computation failed. It gave a message
saying it was unable to calculate that many failures_

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yankeeracer73
I think this is one of the primary religious debates between Airbus and Boeing
pilots - Airbus is a much more highly computerized experience inside the
cockpit vs. Boeing which is still a more mechanical/tactile experience. For
some fascinating background, see the NOAA on the recent AirFrance crash. They
cover this issue specifically and essentially concluded that the pilots were
likely overwhelmed with the number of error messages and warnings coming at
them from the plane's computers and it became paralysis by analysis which they
ultimately couldn't recover from.

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stcredzero
Paralysis by analysis is one of the most common ways more intelligent
opponents are beaten by less intelligent ones. From what I understand, this
seems to hold true in chess, warfare, and a lot of other contexts. This might
be good for us to remember in the coming years.

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ra
This must be getting hammered from somewhere with a bigger audience than here.
Doesn't load for me.

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ra
OK, it finally loaded.

It's an interview with a senior, "Check Captain" who happened to be in the
cockpit at the time in addition to the normal crew.

This was a _major_ emergency and a lot more than just a single engine
explosion.

