Kikapu wrote:Paphitis wrote:Kikapu wrote:To get back to AF flt 447, 4 hours into the flight to what was to be an 8 hour flight I believe, and having an extra flight crew on board to relive the Captain and the First Officer for limited breaks, for a short nap perhaps on these long overnight flights, it would be just about the right time when either the Captain or the F/O was replaced. If the Captain was relieved for an hour to get a short nap, I'm just wondering if the other 2 pilots did everything correctly. Did they have enough or any experience with this kind of bad weather flying before. We will never know who were the two pilots sitting in the front and who was taking a short nap until the CVR is recovered.!
Paphitis wrote:I don't fly passengers and so there is no in flight trolley Dolley service
Oh well, will have to "brown bag" lunch in that case.!
All crews break up their duty with a rest period to avoid fatigue. But I'm pretty certain the Captain would have been on duty at such a critical time.
We have catering on board, it is just that it is all self service.
We even have good coffee.
That's the beast...Much better than A330s....
All crews break up their duty with a rest period to avoid fatigue. But I'm pretty certain the Captain would have been on duty at such a critical time.
It all depend really, because if everything happened so suddenly, the captain may have been in a deep sleep at that moment and then it was too late for him to do anything. The reason why I see this as a probable time period for the captain to be taking his nap break on these "Red Eye" flights is, once the plane had cleared all bust traffic around Brazil's air space, they were going to have couple of hours of "quiet time" over the Atlantic, which would have made him fresh for the next busy traffic segment of the flight approaching African and European continents.
We have catering on board, it is just that it is all self service.
We even have good coffee.
The many flights that I had with FedEx pilots in the "jump seat", they also had a platter of food provided for them by the company, which they would share them with me.
The middle of the Atlantic would have been the ideal place for the Captain to take his rest, under normal circumstances, because there is little traffic. Whilst the aircraft is in cruise, the workload is also low and it is at this point where the cruise pilots can take over..
As the aircraft approached closer and closer to thunderstorms, the FO would have summons the Captain back to resume command and make some vital decisions such as whether they should press on, diverting around the CB formations, or make an air return back to Rio.
The FO has no authority to be making any decisions, because the Captain is ultimately responsible for the safety of the aircraft and passengers.
Before the crash, AF447 would have experienced a
gradual deterioration in weather conditions. I doubt whether the Captain would be sleeping knowing that there were CBs dead ahead.
All pilots have had experience with bad weather, such as what AF447 had experienced. There is not a single experienced pilot that has not made a bad decision to continue the flight and
entrapping the aircraft within no mans land surrounded by CB thunder cells.
With accidents such as these, I always ask myself, what I would have done when faced with the same scenario. Unfortunately, I would have done the exact same thing as the AF447 Captain and would have had the same fate. I have also asked my colleagues, and most of them said the exact same thing. I even asked some young inexperienced pilots what they would do, and one of them told me he would turn back to Rio. This guy had about 2,000 hours flight time. He was adament about it as well, when I questioned him further.
When I get back to work, I will provide you with the actual SIGMET report on which the AF447 Captain would have based his decision on.
