Virgin Airbus A330 Return due UNTRAINED PILOT?!

on monday the 2nd of may a virgin atlantic airbus a330 was on its way from london over to new york when it suddenly got told to turn back again and return into london now there was nothing wrong with the aircraft none of the crew or the passengers were sick so what actually happened well as the captain put it when he made a pa to his passengers explaining the turnback there had been an administrative error within virgin atlantic and that was the cause of this air turnback but that is not what was written in the world's press in this episode i will tell you what actually happened here but i will also tell you why the way the world's press reacted might actually be a bigger problem than the air turnback itself this story happened to virgin atlantic flight vs3 which was flown by an airbus a330 it's a normal scheduled flight from london heathrow up towards jfk international in new york we don't know exactly which one of the pilots was pilot flying but we do know that they departed normally from runway 2-7 right in heathrow on time they started to climb up towards the irish sea and then they would fly overhead ireland join their transatlantic route and continue towards jfk about half an hour into the flight as the aircraft had just passed overhead of the irish coastline it suddenly leveled off its climb but like the two four zero that's 24 000 feet and then it made a 180 degree turn around and it returned back into heathrow landing safely only about half an hour after that then it took about two hours and then the same aircraft departed again with the same passengers on board towards jfk landing about two hours and 40 minutes later than they should have so what had actually caused this done well it appears that just after the aircraft had deported some of the employees of virgin atlantic that was in charge of the rostering noticed that the crew pairing didn't make any sense turns out that the first officer who was flying on this flight was actually in a training program and the captain who was very experienced by the way was not a line training captain like i am once this was noticed it was obviously a decision taken within virgin atlantic where they decided that the best thing to do is to ask this aircraft to return back to base and to replace the first officer with their first officer that was not in training virgin atlantic actually released a statement where they said that due to a rostering error flight vs3 from london heathrow to new york jfk returned to heathrow on monday the 2nd of may shortly after takeoff the qualified first officer who was flying alongside an experienced captain was replaced with a new pilot to ensure full compliance with virgin atlantic training protocols which exceeds industry standards we apologize for any inconvenience cost to our customers to arrive 2 hours and 40 minutes later than schedule as a result of this crew change well that sounds great but i was tagged in so many twitter facebook instagram posts where people said well you know there must be something else staged here surely there is a safety aspect of this because otherwise why wouldn't they just have continued toward jfk so here's where there's a little bit of explanations needed that was not included in these statements the captain that was on this flight he was hugely experienced okay 17 years in virgin atlantic thousands and thousands of hours but he was not a line training captain a line training captain is a captain that both is experienced has a good training record and is suitable to train on top of that he or she has been trained to become a trainer right to focus on specifically the training part of it and the checking part of it so this means that not all senior captains are line training captains and you need to be a line training captain to fly with very inexperienced pilots to do line checks on other pilots but also to fly with experienced pilots that might need a little bit of return to normal operation training during the pandemic the airline industry has suffered a lot we went from a very healthy industry with a lot of people flying to basically going down into hibernation within the scope of a few months this forced a lot of airlines to start furloughing and firing some of their crew in the case of virgin atlantic they fire 500 crew in the first month and a further i think 1150 or so later on during 2020 so it was a great upheaval the first officer who was flying on this flight he had been working for virgin atlantic from 2017 so that's five years ago but it is a very real possibility that he or she was either furloughed or fired during this time now the problem is as an airline if you do this if you suddenly just fire or furlough a lot of your crews and they start to go out of hours then when the industry starts picking up again which it is doing right now we're seeing a large influx of people wanting to travel again and the restrictions being lifted well then you can't just take your pilots put them back into the cockpit and have them operating again you need to train them now there's different parts of the training first you have the mandatory part right this is where the authorities stipulate that any pilots who's going to operate this particular aircraft need to have this experience this training and this checking done this is generally not that much especially if like in this case we're dealing with an experienced pilot that might or might not have kept the ratings going during the pandemic in that case it's just basically getting them into a simulator do a license proficiency check and that generally is it the pilot gets his or her license back and they could theoretically start operating but the airlines almost always goes above and beyond what the minimum requirements are so when the pilots are coming back in again they first do the mandatory part of the training which is what i just explained but then on top of that the airlines stipulate that you need to do some line training as well and this is where they will fly with the line training captain a certain amount of sectors normally or as much time as they need in order to re-familiarize themselves with maybe new call-outs procedures or just getting themselves back feeling good and comfortable again that second part of the training is not mandatory right this means that these pilots are perfectly qualified to fly safely together with any other captain and since this is what the airline has decided to do to both comply with the minimum requirements that the aviation authorities have but also to increase data training so that all of their crew feel that they have the confidence needed to fly after they've been away for a long while well then they implement that into their training manuals and those training manuals are then given to the rostering personnel and the rostering personnel sets up their rosters accordingly so i know a lot of you might say that can't they just make an exception then you know this mistake has happened can they not just continue to fly and then return no that's not how we work if we have set up a certain training protocol that's what we fly with and this is likely what happened on this flight so this means that what you were actually seeing here is an airline going above and beyond what they need to do in order to keep everyone as safe as possible this would have cost virgin atlantic thousands and thousands of pounds they would have had to return the flight that means a lot of extra fuel burn that means delaying fees it means an extra landing fee it means re-rostering of crew all of that cost them loads of money they also reported this directly to the caa so that they were aware what's happened and what the caa actually responded to this was virgin atlantic has made us aware of the incident both pilots were suitably licensed and qualified to undertake the flight right so that punto after this there's really not much more you need to say about this event but this is where it took a really nasty turn and that's because of the sheer amount of these ridiculous headlines in the world press regarding this event i've seen headlines like virgin atlantic fury as passengers not told of untrained pilot in mid-air horror and this is your co-pilot speaking i'm only a trainee and whilst i understand that the newspapers only put these headlines to get as many people to read them as possible they're doing a huge disservice to the industry because i was at the pilot expo this weekend and i was talking to loads and loads of people and many of them were nervous passengers who told me that they had used my channels to reduce their nervousness even though i speak a lot about accidents and incidents and i think that the reason that that type of content actually makes them feel better is because it shows the unbiased truth about how the aviation industry works how we deal with every incident and accident and how every time that we see that a safety barrier is being crossed we erect another safety barrier and another one to keep making this industry as safe as it's possible to do but when a nervous flier sees a sensationalistic headline like this there is a possibility that they might not read beyond that headline and they might get a feeling that they're actually risk-taking going on in the aviation business or that you know we are as safe as we are just by chance and actually there could be much more accidents happening and that couldn't be further from the truth that is the message that i am trying to give this is actually proof of that this is an airline that has gone above and beyond what they need to do in order to keep their passengers safe and that's what we should be focusing on but of course that is not as sexy it's not gonna sell as many newspapers so they go down this route which will make more people afraid of flying more people nervous and that will keep people from being able to travel to see their relatives or go on that dream vacation and that really pisses me off i want you guys to continue to tag me in any ridiculous aviation related headline that you find out there you can find my twitter handle down here and you can find me on facebook on instagram and of course on youtube i love dissecting these kind of things for you check out this video next which i think that you're really going to enjoy and if you want to support the work that i do here and on my mentor pilot platform consider becoming part of my patreon family or you can also buy yourself some merch have an absolutely fantastic day and i'll see you next time bye [Music] you

Channel: Mentour Now!

Views: 84,934

Keywords: captain, mentour pilot, mentor pilot, crash investigation, full epsiodes, aviation, pilot, crash, air crash investigation, final report, boeing, airbus, piper, cessna, disaster, fatal crash, air incident, air disasters 2022, virgin atlantic, a330, heathrow airport, london, london heathrow airport, training

Id: Drc4f2M8Z00

Length: 10min 20sec (620 seconds)

Published: Thu May 12 2022