Air traffic control
versus pilots. Eva015 heavy.
What are you doing? Coming up! Hey, 74 crew! Welcome back! If you don't know me,
my name's Kelsey. I'm a 747 pilot. My channel 74 gear
is all about aviation. I appreciate all of you in the 74
crew for sending me these clips. If you have a clip with Air traffic
control that you wanna see in the series, the two easiest places to send them to
me, is either on my Instagram or post it on the free forum 74gear.com Let's get into it! Departure EVA015 heavy
climbing passing 1900 for 5000 Hello EVA015 heavy
SoCal departure radar contact climb maintain
7,000 flying heading 090 Climb maintain 7000
confirm the heading 090 7000 EVA015 heavy Heading 090 7000 EVA015 heavy Climb maintain 7000 Left heading 180 climb and
maintain 7000 EVA015 heavy EVA015 heavy
request high speed climb EVA015 heavy
approved as requested approved EVA015 heavy Something that I'm often asked
about is why is something called heavy? And so before I get into this audio, I
just wanna address that issue real quick. A heavy means that the aircraft
weights over 300,000 pounds or more. It has the ability to take off weighing
over 300,000 pounds or more. Now I've seen two different
numbers, but we're just gonna use that 300,000-pound
number as the general rule here. The reason that's important is
that if you're in a small aircraft and you were to fly behind
that aircraft, a heavy aircraft, it's gonna be very
turbulent and dangerous. Water and air have
a lot of similarities. So the easiest way I can
explain it is that because you can see water easier
than you can see air. If you were had a huge cruise
ship and you looked off the back, you can see how turbulent
that water is back there. The air is kind of similar. Right behind a jet, when
we take off or we're flying, that air behind us
is very turbulent. Especially at lower altitudes. There's a risk to extreme
turbulence if you got behind it. Imagine if the big
cruise ship drove past, and then you went by in a very small boat,
it's gonna be a very rough ride for you. It's the same concept. So having that classification
of heavy, just lets you know other aircraft in the area, there's a
risk if you were to get too close to them. That's basically it. One more thing is that you hear
this pilot asks for a high-speed climb. EVA015 heavy
request high speed climb When you're on a larger aircraft,
you want to get the flaps up. And if you're not familiar
what a flap is on an aircraft, are these right here. Those flaps allow us to fly slower
and you need that for takeoff and landing but you don't need it once you're up in the
air and you're heading to your destination. You want to get those up because
they make you a lot less fuel-efficient. So what you do is you
ask for a high-speed climb. That high-speed climb allows you to go
faster than 250 knots below 10,000 feet. There's a rule in aviation that
you can't go above 250 below 10, but when you're flying a large aircraft
like this, you can ask for permission and they'll usually give it to you in
just about everywhere in the world. So ladies, if you wanna date a
bad boy, we're breaking this 250 rule, like every single day. I mean, we're
asking for permission, but we're doing it. Now that's cleared up, let's talk about
this departure and what's happening here. Typically, planes that are leaving
LAX, we're taking off to the west. we're taking off over the water. But these guys are
taking off to the east, which means the winds
are favoring that direction. But 90% of the time, you'll always
see the planes taking off to the west. This right here is the
chart of the departure procedure that
these guys are flying. As you can see out
here is just water. We typically take off that way but they're headed on
this way, headed out east. And what this says is basically Air traffic control
is gonna give you vectors once you start
heading out this way. They're gonna give you vectors
to get to this point right here. Which is gonna be a
series of different headings. Something that I do when I'm briefing
at departure and I'm leaving an airport, is that I make it really simple. I'm not that smart. So I wanna
make it really, really basic. So in this scenario here
where you're taking off to the east, you're gonna have
mountains to your left-hand side. So instead of briefing something
like from this degrees to this degrees, we have mountains
at this altitude, like. My brain is not big enough to
handle all those numbers in my head. So what I say is: "We have mountains to our left. We're not gonna want to go left. And if we
go left, we have to keep it really tight. So that way we don't get over
towards those mountains there". I just leave it like that. You know the right
you're okay to go and you can go any other
directions but going left, you're gonna want
to keep turning. So if you just got turned left, you'll be heading north, right? If you're going east and they turn you
left 90 degrees, you're headed north. You don't want to be doing that
because you're headed towards mountains. So that way, if you get
some type of a vector or you get some type
of a heading assignment that has you going left, everybody's on full
alert of what's going on because you're hoping that
you're gonna be going right. That's the way I do it. So when the
plane takes off east, the controller tells the
pilots turn left heading 180. Listen. Climb maintain 7,000 left heading 180 climb and
maintain 7000 EVA015 heavy So if you're taking off to the
east and they say left 180, you're gonna be making a 270 degree
turn to head the south heading, right? Now, what I would've
done in that scenario is I would've asked them and I
could've asked it a few different ways, but I would've
said something like: "Confirm, you want us
to go left heading 180 or do you want us to
go right heading 180?" That would've made
the controller think: "Why are they asking me that?" They would've looked probably at their map
again and seen exactly what we were saying. And then if they
said "No, left 180" Then okay, then
that's what they want. But that's turning 270 degrees
versus just 90 degrees to go south. If you're going east and
now you want me to go south, but what they're saying is: "Turn
east and go Northwest then south". It's a lot, lot
bigger of a turn. So usually they won't give
you something like that. So I would ask that question. So it's fine to do this
left 270 degree turn. You'll be able to get
around the turn before you get to these
mountains right here. But everybody will be on alert
because you're turning to left and you already talked
about it on the ground. We don't want
to turn to the left. So that's a setup
for this event. It started off on the wrong
foot by them turning to the left because that's what the
controller was told to them. The audio got cut out for some reason,
but you heard the pilots read back. left heading 180 climb and
maintain 7000 EVA015 heavy So they're turning to
the left, which is not the direction they
wanted to be turning in. That's the setup on how
this whole event takes place. All right, let's get into this. turn right right
turn heading 180. copy right Heading
180 EVA015 heavy EVA expedite your right turn EVA015 heavy Roger passing
heading 010 continue right turn heading Air Canada 788 expedite your turn
and stop your climb and turn correction expedite your climb
turn left heading 360 Left 360 stop the climb
at 7000 Air Canada 788 EVA015 heavy stop your climb Stop climb EVA015 heavy Air Canada 788 expedite your
climb climb maintain 12,000 OK confirm 12,000
for Air Canada 788 Air Canada 788 affirmative 12,000 Air Canada 788 EVA015 heavy turn left left
turn heading of 29 correction 270 left heading 270 EVA015 heavy EVA015 heavy,
what are you doing? Turn southbound now
southbound now stop your climb confirm EVA015 heavy maintain
5,000 left right right heading? You hear that
intensity in her voice? I've had something
that happen to me once. I was in cruise and we were actually on
a head-on collision with another aircraft that was on the exact
same altitude we were at. When the controller came on, I
could hear that same intensity. So when I hear that
intensity in their voice, I'm really alert to
exactly what's being said. Not that I'm not normally
paying attention but you hear that intensity in
their voice and you go like: "This is gonna be very
important to listen to". And I listen to it, whether they're
talking about my plane or any other plane, because I want to have kind of a mental map
of everything that's going on around me, in the area that I'm at, right? So we get to this heading. Go this heading
immediately, turn left. And then, this other aircraft
gets incall right after us turn left heading this. And so I thought: "Hmm, that's interesting". And so way out in the distance,
maybe another 20 or 30 seconds later, I can see this tiny
little plane out there. So we were like really far apart
but we were on the same altitude. How did that happen?
I don't really know. But there's alerts on the
air traffic control system because it's obviously let them know
that we were on a collision course, like way out. So far out that they weren't
even showing up on our radar. On our aircraft, we have
an avoidance system. This avoidance system actually
has both planes talking to each other. So if the controller hadn't said
anything, what would've happened is as we got closer,
those two planes, our plane and their plane
would've talked to each other. And they would said: "Hey, we're
gonna go down. You're gonna go up." And then we would get a command
from our plane saying "Climb". And they would get a command
in their plane saying "Descent". And that would keep
the separation there. So even if a controller really messes
something up, you're gonna be safe. And that's something that we
practice in the simulator all the time. So for those of you that are
watching this and are scared of flying and are worried about that
particular situation happening, they're trying to keep these Air Canada
and Eva plane away from each other. And because they have a
certain amount of distance that they're
allowed to get close, they've obviously
breached that distance and she's getting real anxious
about getting them separated. Which is true. That's
important to do. But I just want you to know that in the other side, if you are a
pilot and you're experiencing this, we're gonna get a message and we're
gonna be able to avoid that other aircraft, even if Air traffic control
were not do their job. So there's a lot of
safety measures that are put in place to prevent
this from happening. And what happens is if Air traffic control were to give
incorrect advice about telling you to climb when you should be descending, the rule is that you listen to your
plane over what this controller is saying. Because these two boxes
are talking to each other and one saying: "Hey, we're
gonna climb, you guys descend" So we follow that
over Air traffic control. And we tell Air traffic control: "Hey, we're complying
with this resolution advisory which is what our
plane's telling us. And we're gonna be descending
or we're gonna be climbing" or whatever it is that
it's telling us to do. So in this particular situation, the
controller was doing the right thing about getting the people
away from each other. But if you're worried about what if
she didn't do that, what would happen? That's what would've happened. Air Canada would've
been told to climb and maybe the Eva plane would've been
told to maintain their current altitude or whatever it is. And they would've kept that
separation from each other. Just so you know. Now, let's get back to
this confusing situation here that this
controller has created. When a controller is snapping
at you about what are you doing, as a pilot, you typically
feel like you've messed up. Because they've told you what to
do. And they kind of see the big picture. And here you are in your
own little world of your airplane. So when she snaps at
him and snaps at the pilot and I've had them say
something to me like: "Hey, what altitude are you at?" I'm like: "Oh, I'm
at flight level 360" "Okay, cool" I'm like: "Why did you
ask me in that way? Because it felt like I wasn't
supposed to be a 360." So the tone that people ask
you things puts you on alert. The way she's saying it to
them though makes it sound like and would make me
sound like, if I was the pilot, that I would be doing
something wrong. Listen to how she talks. Eva015 heavy.
What are you doing? So when she's talking to you
like that, now keep in mind, this is not their primary language.
This is their second language. You're thinking: "Man, we're up
here really messing things up". But they're not. This controller keeps telling
them to go left then go right. And then go left. So she keeps making them make
these massive turns in degrees, but she keeps giving them
direction "Turn left this way". "Okay, now go all the way back
right. Now, go back left again." So they're following the
instructions that she's giving to them, but they're basically just continuing
to go towards the mountain, which is the direction
they don't want to go. Listen to these instructions
that she gives them. Climb maintain 7000. left heading 180 climb and
maintain 7000 EVA015 heavy turn right right
turn heading 180 EVA015 heavy turn left left
turn heading of 29 correction 270 She's continually sending them
back towards this other aircraft, which she's trying to
keep them away from, and towards a mountain, which she obviously shouldn't be
sending them towards that mountain. Really, really dangerous. Now, for those of
you that are thinking, What if they hit the mountain? Just so you know, you
have something again, just like that collision
avoidance system. We have a ground
proximity system. So if you're getting
towards a mountain and you hear something
which is called, like terrain, terrain,
something like that, that gives you so much leeway that you're able to
get out and power out and get away from any
type of terrain or mountain. Even with the controller,
really messing things up, you're able to avoid
any type of bad situation. Just so you know. All right, let's get
back to this video. EVA015 heavy climb
maintain 5000 and are you are you southbound now I
see you're going northbound climb maintain 6000 6000 Maintaining
5000 EVA015 heavy EVA015 heavy climb maintain 7000 Climb maintain 7000 EVA015 heavy EVA015 heavy I see
you going southbound turn south correction I see
you going northbound turn south now
climb maintain 7000 Eva015 heavy climb maintain
7000 and turn south now Right turn to southbound
and continue 7000 EVA015 heavy affirmative. Continue right turn and
climbing 7000 to a heading 180 SoCal EVA015 heavy 180 7000 EVA015 heavy affirmative
climb maintain 7000 maintain 7000 EVA015 EVA015 heavy turn
right heading of 210 EVA015 heavy EVA015 heavy
climbing maintain 13000 15 heavy First, I'm not sure
what's going on. It sounds like everyone
in the flight deck is having their chance
to talk on the radio. There's so many different
voices that are coming out there. I don't know. I don't know
how many pilots are up there, but it sounds like
three different voices or maybe they're using
the hand mic. I don't know. But, this is something that I
thought was kind of interesting. But you could hear, as they
got away from the other plane, and away from the mountain,
how much calmer the controller got. So you're gonna hear that
controller get more and more calm. And so you know that
the danger in her mind of where she's sending
to you is now relaxed. Just something to note. She obviously
was twisted around. She's saying left and right. She's confused
with north and south, she's kind of spun around
situationally unaware. It happens to pilots as well. You typically don't see it
happens with controllers because they're
looking at a big screen. So they're not moving. You as a pilot, you're continually
moving the direction that you're going. So sometimes, you're
having to figure out "Okay, what
direction is this way?" It takes you a second to kind
of look at your chart or your map or your screen or whatever to get a situational awareness. They're set in a focus spot so they
can see the direction that you're going and typically, not something
that happens for you. But it obviously
happened in this case here. What happened here? The vast majority of
the responsibility of how this thing turned
into a total hot mess, in my opinion, was
on this controller. I think most people
would agree with that. I guess we'll see in the comment
section when this video comes out but I'd say the vast
majority of the reason, this thing turned out to be a total
mess was because a controller. They're given these lefts
and rights and all these things, when they should
never have been that. It probably should have
been a right-hand turn to 180. They would've gone south. And then they would've gotten
a vector out to that initial point. Like I showed you in
the beginning of the video. I always like to look
at something like this. What could I do as a pilot in this
situation to prevent this from happening? Because I like to look the
responsibility a little bit different. I don't wanna just blame: "Oh, this controller
messed it up". And then, you know, this was the
situation. So I just went along with it. Because at the end of the day, if this controller were to
vector me into a mountain, because I was flying
in some small plane that didn't have all bells and
whistles that my aircraft has, if they were to vector
me into a mountain and I were to fly
into that mountain, they'd be in trouble,
but I would be dead. So that's not the way I like to look at
things of this kind of victim mentality. Here's what the
pilots could have done. One, they could have
queried and asked: "You want me to turn
left, heading 180?" Like I talked about earlier, that would've been the first
thing they could have done. Then if the controller said: "Yes,
I want you to turn that direction". Okay, that's what I
would've done as a pilot to help reduce the possibility of even
getting in this situation to start with. Good situation awareness, common
sense and not being afraid to ask them to clarify what it is
they're telling you, will help you stay safe, especially when you're flying
smaller general aviation aircraft. On a commercial aircraft that any
of you would ride on as a passenger, there's so much protections
and everything that are built-in to prevent from there
ever being a situation. Obviously, this was very close and not
good and should never have happened, but there's a lot of things
that are in there to help. If you're flying a
small aircraft, a controller could vector
you into a mountain, they're in trouble, you're dead. So just keep that in mind. When you're taking
off for an airport, have an idea of the
layout, especially at night, what's around you. So
you're not flying around. And we make this joke
when we're in the simulator, when you're flying over mountains
and you're doing something, because they do this,
the part of the training, they fly you right up to a
mountain. And they say: "Even though you're
getting the warning, just wait, wait, wait, like
wait till the very end." Even though you want a
full power and climb out of it, they want you to
wait till the end. And then we always
make these jokes like: "What are these Billy
goats doing up here?" Because you know, the
controller's sending you at like towards a mountain
at like 12,000 feet. And so you're making this joke
that you see these Billy goats. So you don't wanna have
that ever happen in real life. All right, let's see
the next video. Departure good evening UPS
764 heavy 2.3 climbing 5000 UPS 764 heavy, Louisville departure
radar contact climb and maintain 10,000 10,000 UPS 764 heavy All right and UPS 764 heavy
we're going to return to the field. If we get this level off here, maybe
4,000 for now and we'll go back to you. UPS 764 heavy maintain
4,000 and let me know whenever you can take a turn if
you need any assistance. All right we'll go present heading
up to 4,000 UPS 764 heavy We'll take a turn now
for UPS 764 heavy UPS 764 heavy turn
right heading 270. Right. turn 270 UPS 764 heavy. UPS 764 heavy. Do you
guys need any assistance? Standby one And UPS 764 sir, we're
going to be returning to the field here and we're
gonna need it downwind turn It looks like we've got an
avionics smoke warn. Oh excuse me, Avionics smoke warning
so, We'll declare an emergency. UPS 764 heavy Roger
expect runway 17R UPS 764 heavy turn
right heading 345. Right to 345 UPS 764 heavy UPS 764 heavy when able
say souls and fuel on board Yes, sir, we've got about 5 hours
of fuel onboard and souls are three. I really like this audio
because this is textbook. It's textbook from what the
pilots are supposed to do and what the controllers
are supposed to do. These UPS pilots
did this perfectly. This is exactly what
we do in the simulator. And they executed
it really well. You can hear
during their check-in, you can hear an
alarm that's going off in the background, while the
guy is on the radio transmitting. That's not like a Billy forgot
to put a seat belt sound on. It's gonna be some type of an
indication that there's a problem. 10,000 UPS 764 heavy. So that ringing that you're
hearing there is most likely, I can't say for sure, because
I've never flown this aircraft, but I'm guessing that that was
the alert that they were getting about the Avionics
smoke warning. Avionics are basically
all of our computers and stuff that we use
while we're out flying. So they're getting
that smoke warning. So now they declared an
emergency. And like I said, it's transitioning from being declaring an
emergency to a PAN-PAN or a Mayday. So you can kind of decide
what you would do here. And honestly, you can
make arguments for both. They're not smelling smoke because the
guys aren't putting their oxygen masks on. It doesn't sound like at least when
they're making these transmissions. So they're not putting
their oxygen masks on. And if you're not smelling
smoke, there's really no reason to. And then, you could
make the argument Mayday because if a plane's on fire, that's the
worst possible situation that you can have. A fire on the engine. I don't really care,
not a big deal. Fire inside the plane? That's
a massive, massive problem. So it sounds like they're getting the
warning, but they don't think it's real because they don't smell any smoke
because they're not putting on their masks. So you would probably
go with PAN-PAN because it's urgent, but it's not
Life-threatening. At least not right now. UPS 764 heavy when able
say souls and fuel onboard. When you're in an emergency,
the fuel makes sense. They wanna know how long this
plane can fly for, but why souls on board? The fire department, the
people that are on the ground, there need to know roughly how
many people are they looking for. Three people,
that's pretty easy. If you have 400, it's a
a lot more complicated. But also, you could be
transporting dead bodies. You could be transporting
maybe some military troops that have passed away. You could be transporting their
bodies and they're not a soul. It is just a body
that's on the aircraft. They ask for souls, they wanna
know the number of live people that they need
to be looking for. Because these firefighters, I
mean, talk about being brave, to be able to run into a plane
that's on fire that just crashed. I don't have the balls
to do that personally but but they do. So they need to know how
many people they're looking for. I really like this audio
because what these pilots did and what Air traffic
control did were perfect. And you can see how
well it all works together. Exactly what the
pilots did, it's something that we get taught as
we go through training all the way through our career. We go through
this type of scenario. You've taken off,
there's a problem. Make the decision. We're gonna come
back in and land. And that's exactly
what's going on. You can't hear from the cockpit
voice recorder what all is being said, but that stand by one,
they're working out. They make the
decision, let's go back. They say: "Hey,
we're gonna go back". They do all that and
it worked out perfectly. It was beautiful everything
that they did there. And they were going
on the side of caution. Like I said, they weren't
wearing their masks, but you don't wanna
go flying thinking: "Hey, that's probably just a faulty
message. I wouldn't worry about the smoke." That's not what you wanna do. Fire is not something
you wanna play with. You wanna come back in and land. Let the mechanics figure out
why did that alert come up? Because, it could just be something super,
super small. A small amount of smoke. But you don't want to be out over the ocean
or flying at 40,000 feet when you find out: "Oh, we have a full-blown fire and
now we need to get on the ground" That's not when you
wanna find that out. You always want to air on the side of
caution, which is what these pilots did. They came back in and
landed and I don't know. Probably got
cleared up after that. And they found out
what was causing it. And then the plane probably
just left an hour or two later. Now of course,
as our ritual is here, we have to have a
fun one at the end. Listen up. JetBlue 76 any chance
we could get 22R 76 I can pass it along for you the next guy are making the calls
here. I'll let them know you want it. Thank you, sir. JetBlue 76 even though
the guy next to me is a grump he's going to give
you 22R set up for 22R Roger JetBlue 76 22R thanks JetBlue 76 final
approach 32.4 good day 32.4 you have a
good day JetBlue 76 bye-bye New York JetBlue 76 4000 JetBlue 76 New York who told you
that you could get have the right side? the last guy I'm just kidding that's
approved thank you Ok, thanks. he said I was grumpy sounded like you could be a
little bit grumpy there for a minute but that's alright
will let it go did he really transmit that? So sometimes the pilots
will request a specific runway, which is what
they're doing here. They want 22R. And that might be because it gets
them closer to their gate so they can park. So you, as passenger
can get off quicker, it could be so they could park the
plane because they're ready to be done and go home. Who knows? But sometimes what will happen
is we will request a specific runway and then they
can give it to you. Now, like I said earlier, when you get questioned,
just like he said that, who told you, you
could have 22R? JetBlue 76 New York who told you
that you could get have the right side? That type of question is
sometimes they're asking it. Not meaning to be accusatory.
This guy's obviously playing around. It's pretty funny, but they'll do it.
Just asking you: "Who told you could do that?" and you think: "Man, did
I mess something up?" So they have all the tapes
to play everything back. You're up there trying to fly the
plane and not be in any trouble. So this guy's obviously
messing with them. And it's pretty funny. Now, if you wanna see some pilots
making some real bad decisions, you're gonna wanna
check out this video here. And if you wanna see Hollywood
make some poor decisions, because they decided
to make a movie without asking for a pilot's
opinion of how it would really be, check out this video up here. I look forward to
hearing from you. Until then, keep the blue side up.