ATC Doesn’t Like Delta’s Comment

next time runaway changes more than 30 seconds notices oh okay I'm not sure what to even make out of this entire interaction but here's how it all starts Delta 1384 plan 28 right for departure cautions up last for the farting goal stream cross to eight left from way to it right one of them wait all right we're gonna need uh we're gonna need two minutes for uh taking off on the right person okay perfect two out uh 10 out so cross straight left straight right lineup and weight advisory so before Pilots ever leave the gate which is the area where you get on the plane or the ramp area which is where we're getting the cargo loaded before we even leave that area and start moving there's a few things that happen we brief what the weather is we brief the runway that we're planning to use how we're planning to taxi to get there what the engine failure procedure is off of that Runway we go over all those details so that way once everything's loaded all the cargo's loaded or all the passengers are loaded we're ready to just push back and be on our way that's just the way that everything is set up and so that way while you're taxing the aircraft you're not talking or looking away everybody that's sitting up there can be focused on what's going on now this Delta cruise over here next to 2 8 left and it seems like they were actually planning on doing two eight left which makes sense especially based on the side of the runway they were on or they do what I do sometimes when there's a bunch of different runways and I want to save myself some headache and that is I call ground and ask them that time our flight is and what our departure is going to be and I asked them what Runway I should plan for that's just to save me from doing the same work twice that's something that I like to do sometimes and that's to avoid a last minute change like this right here Delta 1384 plant Suite right for departure here's what's going to happen in this situation you're going to have one pilot taxing the aircraft over to 28 right while that pilot is doing that they have the easy job the other pilot that you hear talking on the radio has the hard job because they're communicating with air traffic control as well as loading everything up into the computer and while they're doing that they have a bunch of other tasks that they're going to have to do as they get over there so it's a lot of tasks to do and there's a plan that's 10 miles out one of the other things you're going to have to do is load up the performance numbers and they have to be exact this is a performance sheet and you can see one Runway may be different from a parallel Runway now those numbers could be different because there could be an obstacle at the end of one Runway or there could be a length of one Runway it's longer than that other Runway there's a bunch of different factors of why those numbers could be different but typically on a commercial aircraft those numbers are different and it takes time to get that all loaded up but the controller says Perfect Two out of 10 out now she says traffic but she doesn't specify what kind of traffic it is that's 10 miles out and that matters because you could have some smaller aircraft that let's say is doing 120 knots on their approached and so they're going to be roughly taking two miles a minute so they have five minutes on the runway before that aircraft is going to get to the runway obviously they can't wait the full five minutes but you get the idea now if you have the heavily loaded 747 that's doing let's say 160 knots which would be a normal approach speed for us we're going to be doing about three miles a minute so now you have about three minutes on the runway but this pilot said they needed about two minutes all right we're gonna need uh we're gonna need two minutes for uh taking off on the right so that's the setup of everything that's going on right now next Delta calls up to make sure they heard the instructions clearly Supreme watch across three of us wait on two eight right and advise ready Travis on a nine or mile final you said you need two minutes It'll be five minutes before they land if you're not comfortable with it hold sort of two eight right and advise ready oh we'll go with uh five minutes and we'll line up and wait on two eight right now well that answers the question about what type of plane it was that was coming in obviously they're light or small they're not heavily loaded but whatever the situation is and they have five minutes before that plane gets there now Delta did the right thing here a hundred percent by verifying what the controller is saying they want to make sure that they're able to go on that Runway because that's not a normal clearance you're going to be given oh you need to get the performance stuff loaded into your computer just go ahead and get on the runway anyways even though this other plan is coming into land so these Pilots did the right thing and verifying what it is that they the controller wanted them to do so they didn't make a mistake that was the right move so far no problems but here's where the drama starts 84 any left on the numbers one more minute before okay so longer than two minutes exited Charlie to get behind the heavy able to experience okay welcome to Charlie Q get behind the head for uh right now to 1384 although I know you are not ready there is traffic about a mile behind you exactly that's possible please hurry next time runaway changes more than 30 seconds noticeably oh okay so did you get the Ada right there where she did that oh okay I knew she was waiting for this opportunity for someone to say something to her so here's the thing to keep in mind these two pilots had they known that they were going to get a Runway change they surely could have loaded everything and done everything but that is not a normal situation you're going to get that close to take off you're typically not going to have that and you're typically also not going to be under the gun with another plane coming in behind you you know that saying slow is smooth and smooth is fast sometimes when you are in that time crunch and it's not something that you're normally doing you can be getting too fast with punching in the keys maybe mess something up but no matter what's going on with the other plane behind you have to make sure that you do that correctly because if you don't do that quickly if you don't correctly load everything in there you could have a problem down the road and you can't then go back to your Chief pilot because you're definitely going to be meeting them if you do something really bad or make a mistake or turn left when you should have turned right or there was a performance problem or let's say you're in engine exploded then they're going to start looking into everything that you did wrong so any of those things you're going to have to justify why you did them so if you rush them and don't do them right now you're putting your whole career on the line so it's not worth it to give you an example this is a departure and I have no idea if this is the departure that Delta was on on this day but it doesn't really matter the pilots would need to be verifying all these different points off of this Runway to make sure the computer have properly pulled all the points from the database now I have never downloaded something had those points not match but I can guarantee you the one time that I don't check those points is going to be the time that it doesn't pull it and I'm going to end up making some Wrong Turn and then I'm going to be invited to the chief Pilot's office and let me tell you where there are no snacks it's it's a chief Pilot's office they have literally zero snacks in there but they are on the plane now there is a scenario in which you could load this departure off of this Runway and then copy the flight plan and then load the second departure off of the other Runway and then swap those two things in the last minute it but if I'm being honest with you that is a lot of work that most Pilots are never going to do because you're typically not going to get a Runway change at the very last minute and even if you do you're going to want to verify all the things are in there correctly because if you don't just like what I said earlier you're going to be in a lot of trouble now you could make the argument the controller here is irritated with Delta and being a little passive aggressive when she says this okay the law longer than two minutes but to be fair to her the pilots did say they only needed two minutes and the traffic was five minutes out so they obviously exceeded their two minutes by probably double she's gonna want them to get off the Runway obviously not just seconds before that plane gets there so they've obviously exceeded that two minutes time so she they did give her that time and she did accept okay two minutes is fine and they didn't get it done in those two minutes and probably were closer to three and probably pushing up onto four when that transaction happened of course the pilots had the choice instead of to getting onto the runway and lining up here they had the choice to pull up here and hold short of the runway and say hey we want to get our numbers right here and then We'll advise you when we're ready but that's not what they said they said no no we want to get up there and line up and wait we'll go with uh five minutes we'll line up and wait on two eight right so the controller did give them the last minute Runway change that is true and the pilots did confirm they were supposed to go on the runway they did tell the controller that they needed only two minutes and they obviously exceeded that by probably a minute or two and then they you could tell the controller was a little bit irritated with them and they probably would have died but the pilot didn't want to let it die and kind of spun it up with this comment right here next time runaway changes more than 30 seconds and you know she'd been waiting for that and here's what happens next I'm going to take silence as the fact that you probably did not read the atis we did read the edits but we're set up to a left language but our our information says that you do need to have those numbers and free briefs for this for this exact reason we have the man that's setting up takes at least three to four minutes okay and you asked me for two and that's what I gave you and you needed more we got to be honest about our numbers here Runway changes do take time and like I said they have to be done right because if something's done wrong the pilots are putting their career on the line and the lives of all their passengers if they uploaded the wrong engine failure procedure or whatever or they plan for something that was different than it was supposed to be off of that other Runway there could be some bad circumstances that could happen so Pilots are always going to double check that and this is where she starts to get a little bit snarky of those numbers and free briefs for this for this exact reason and here's where I'm going to defend the pilots on this so San Francisco Air Traffic Control you can write whatever you want on the atis there and tell the pilots they should do this and they should do that but this is the problem the air traffic controllers aren't spending enough time with the pilots on the line flying with them and seeing what it's like in a real world situation while the pilots are up there dealing with the circumstances because while they can say in their in their control room hey we want you to do this the real the reality is that a pilot on the line isn't going to brief and put in their head two different situations in case one happens and we'll do this backup thing that's just not going to work you're going to brief that Runway the taxi out to that Runway the engine failure present for that Runway because you don't want to be thinking about okay if not this Runway then that Runway and on this one we're going to have this other thing you're going to want to brief one Runway and one plan and then if you're going to a different Runway you're going to go over to that Runway you're going to verify all those points are going to verify the performance numbers on there you're going to verify the engine failure procedure for that you're going to talk about it quickly all that will have to happen again regardless of it being pre-briefed you're going to go over it again at least I would and so I would want to review all of that before we take off because like I said if you do something that is different from when you download that into your computer when you download it from that database if something were to be wrong air traffic control is going to say why didn't you go over it before you took off and you say oh you told us the pre-brief both then it doesn't matter you're the one flying the plane so it you would have no protection over that so this is where I think there's a disconnect between air traffic control and those controllers in my opinion that are running this that are coming up with these ideas they should be writing in their airport at least once a year if not more do one departure and one arrival and see what it's like and don't tell the pilots in this situation like hey uh I can hear what's going on I would start briefing 2A right don't say that just obviously if there's something that's dangerous that's life-threatening say that but in this situation they should just sit there and then watch what happens and watch what the pilots do in the real world situation so that way they can go be better teammates for these Pilots be and because the pilots are going to be taking the instructions from Air Traffic Control so if they see how the pilots are reacting to this then they can be a better teammate on the other side so this thing right here our our information says that you do need to have those numbers and free brief for this for this exact reason in my mind is a terribly dumb idea I think the air traffic control if they were up there and they watched the pilots do this more than once every three years I rarely have air traffic control ever sit with me up there A lot of times if they have a seat in the back they go sit in the back because it's more comfortable but if they're going into their airport really they should be sitting up there if that if they saw that how that interaction happened in real life they would say this is great for us it gives us the flexibility to change runways as we see fit but the reality is is that this doesn't work for them and that's making us a bad teammate because air traffic control is giving us the direction so it's not usually going the other way of course you can say well pilot should be up in the control tower more and watching everything that's going on okay that's true and I've done that but they're giving the instructions to us so watching how their instructions are received by us and seeing how we handle those is going to give them a better idea of how they can help us in doing what it is we need to do safely so here's what's going on once they make this change right here they get told that they need to switch runways that means One Pilot is taxing the plane but the other pilot that needs to make all the changes also right here is going to have to verify that there's nobody on the runway to a left that's coming into land so they're gonna have to stop doing what they're doing look up look out the windows possibly turn on all the lights and verify that there was nobody that was going to hit them as they cross the runway which is normal procedure then as they start taxing again they're going to start looking down loading the departure loading the speeds checking the different waypoints now they're gonna have to stop what they're doing look outside again verify that they're on their correct Runway of two eight right verify there's no other plane that's coming into land as they get onto that Runway because you're not going to want to get onto a Runway if the plane is about to hit you then they're going to line up on that Runway they're going to go back to checking and verifying all the points making sure the speeds are correct rebriefing the engine failure procedure because even though these are parallel runways that's not always going to be the case that the engine failure procedure is going to be the same you're going to have different procedures in some cases so you're not just going to assume hey oh I'm sure that's the same Runway we're going the same direction same engine failure procedure that might be the case but that's not always the case then they're probably going to have to complete a Runway change checklist confirm they are ready to go and then go now it is possible and I don't know if they did this or not but it is possible that the pilots only pulled the performance off of one Runway two eight left that's possible I don't know only they know if they did that or not but either way maybe the there's a new Adis out new weather they need to put that information in get new performance numbers because again if there's a problem the investigation is going to happen they're going to say why did you not take off with the most current weather information maybe that had nothing to do with what was happening or why the engine exploded on takeoff but the investigators are going to say that to the pilots and the pilots say something like oh well we didn't have a lot of time because we had this other plane that was five mile five minutes out and we wanted to get off the ground that's never going to work for the investigators so maybe the other Pilots decided to get some new numbers all of these things air traffic control is is not factoring in that that's what's going to be going on in the Pilot's mind when they're down there verifying all that stuff in their mind they're like we want full flexibility to do whatever we want whenever we want it I think it's a terrible idea but the pilot takes responsibility for saying he'd only needed two minutes right here Roger and I can assure you that he was gritting his teeth as he said that and probably verified the mic wasn't stuck and then would have said something to the other pilot up there just to guess I'm not sure that that happened but if it were me I probably would have said something to the other pilot after verifying I wasn't transmitting when you see this full list of all the things that Pilots had to do here I really think Air Traffic Control was setting them up for failure I don't think it's a very smart idea to I get the flexibility but it's not a smart idea to put the pilots in this situation where they're rushing to get everything loaded now the pilots I think should have not accepted to get onto the runway I would have said let's hold short of the runway right here and load up the numbers and not be in a rush because when you're in a rush you can make mistakes so the pilots should have made that decision hey let's not do it now I'm not saying that they could have done it because right now I guarantee you if you give me those two pilots and you say hey we're going to do this new situation all over again they could be prepared for that exact situation and then be ready for it but that's not a normal thing that that happens so they could do it now but it's not a normal thing and so they weren't ready for it there and then they decided to put themselves into a pickle by trying to get on the runway and try to smash it out real quick because when Pilots are on the plan they want to get going they don't want to be sitting behind a bunch of other traffic waiting for the plane to land that's a few minutes out then waiting for the other guy to take off that's ahead of them that heavy they don't want to do all that they want to get going and they thought well let's try to smash these numbers and get it all done quickly I just don't think it was a great idea they should have said hey uh let me just hold short here and we'll get everything done as quickly as we can and if we didn't do get it done in time then we'll give you a call that's what they should have done but you know hindsight's always 20 20. I look forward to hearing from you until then keep the blue side up

Channel: 74 Gear

Views: 1,110,707

Keywords: pilot, airline pilot, 747 pilot, 74 gear, pilot Kelsey

Id: JZAWl-pyivk

Length: 17min 28sec (1048 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 30 2023