Airbus A380 weighs man and machine on the scale of fallability

Photo courtesy Airbus

Whatdoes a nightmare look like to airline pilots flying 465 people on the world’slargest and newest airliner? Well it must look something like what the five,count ‘em five, pilots on Qantas flight 32 saw after takeoff from Changi airport in Singapore last month.

With the exception of the night and day differences intechnology, it might also have looked like what the pilots of United flight 232 saw before that plane made an emergency landing in Sioux City, Iowa 21 years ago. 

Last week, whileworking on the story for The New York Times about the new report on Qantas flight 32 by the Australian Transportation Safety Bureau, I decided to call Denny Fitch. I was sure Denny would have some interesting things to say about what it’slike to be on a flight deteriorating so badly, the plane has to be flown inways never taught in flight school.

Denny isn’t like the handsome Capt. Richard de Crespigny,the Australian pilot in command of Qantas Flight 32, (and the one the journalists down under are calling Capt. Marvel.) Oh Denny’s cute enough, don’tget me wrong. His story and de Crespigny’s differ because on United flight 232,Denny was not flying the plane. The DC-10 instructor pilot for United was apassenger on the flight, enjoying a comfy seat in first class on his way hometo Chicago from Denver on a sunny day in July 1989.

The plane was at cruise altitude, more than an hour into theflight with 284 passengers aboard when the tail mounted General Electric CF 6 enginecame apart - sending shards through the plane’s hydraulic lines at a point whereall three systems converged. The engine was lost, but that wasn’t the worst ofit. Lost also was the pilots’ ability to manipulate the flight controlsurfaces.

In the three-heads-are-better-than-one department, Capt. Al Haynes, first officer William Records and flight engineer Dudley Dvorak figuredout a way to establish rough control of the airplane by adjusting the thrust onthe wing engines. That’s what Denny found them doing when he went up to theflight deck and volunteered his services.

 “Obviously the normalcomplement for the DC-10 is three,” he told me during a phone interview from hishome on Friday. “To havea training check airman or an instructor pilot be able to come up and domultiple things, well that’s a benefit,” he said. “Eventually it became my assignment tocontrol the airplane through that method. Handling the throttles, that was my job.” 

More hands on thecontrols, more brains processing the constantly evolving situation; these arethe factors that link the pilots then with the pilots now.

So now imagine, the aforementioned de Crespigny, his firstofficer Matt Hicks,second officer Mark Johnson, staring at cockpit displays illuminated like the proverbial Christmas tree and error messages scrolling bylike a Karaoke machine gone haywire and conclude how very pleased they musthave been to have A380 captains David Evans and Harry Wubbinalso in the cockpit when their date with near-disaster arrived.  

Capt. deCrespigny, by the way, has spent two years interviewing folks at Airbus, Rolls Royce, (even Boeing) for a book he is writing about the world’s largestpassenger jet. “The captain is a technically-minded guy,” said RichardWoodward, a Qantas pilot and a safety executive with IFALPA. “His technicalknowledge of the airplane is very deep.” But academically-minded aviatorsnotwithstanding, the ATSB report shows all of the men have some prettyimpressive log books, both in total flight hours and hours on type.

 

Flight crew member	Licence	Total experience (hours)	Total A380 (hours)
PIC	ATPL(A)	15,140.4	570.2
FO	ATPL(A)	11,279.5	1,271.0
SO	ATPL(A)	8,153.4	1,005.8
CC	ATPL(A)	20,144.8	806.4
SCC	ATPL(A)	17,692.8	1,345.9

         Idid the math so you don’t have to.Combined, the five had nearly 76,000 flight hours 5,000 of themon the A380. Keep in mind, this is an airplane which has been in commercialservice for only three years.  

     Theirexperience was called into action during Flight 32’s nearly three hour ordealas the crew received more than seventeen notifications of malfunctions, most ofwhich, if occurring solely, would be considered a major event. From losing oneengine and having two others in degraded mode, to partial loss of flightcontrols and warnings about the weight and balance of the airplane, fewin-flight emergencies with this many airplane malfunctions have landed withouta single loss of life or injury, Mr. Woodward told me. 

     “Enginefailure is a big ticket problem, the loss of hydraulics is a big ticketproblem, the loss of control authority and electrical capability, any one ofthem is fairly substantial,” he said. 

     I’m guessing the ATSB shares Mr.Woodward’s opinion. “The aircraft would not have arrived safely in Singaporewithout the focused and effective action of the flight crew,” the chiefcommissioner Martin Dolan said to reporters at a news conference the day the report was issued. 

     This kind of statement has to be a balmfor airline pilots today. They’ve been through some public relations – how shallwe say - challenges lately. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board held a symposium on the issue in May and I’ve written about a few of the more peculiar ones on my blog. 

     Pilotless airplanes are alreadybeing dispatched on military missions. I regularly hear from folks who promise cargo flights will be next.  This “progress”requires that we buy into the premise that the human weighs heavier than the machine on the scaleof fallibility. I know a few folks who don’t buy that, starting with Denny Fitch. 

      “You cannot have all the experiencein your life to equal 76 thousand hours of experience. These airplanes arepiece of machinery and it will occasionally break down though in one of a milliondifferent forms. At the end of the day it is the human factor that counts.”