Possible pilot deviation...any comments from the controller experts?

Boris Badenov said:
Agree, "ready for takeoff" sounds too stilted, I generally just let "Short of X, ready to go!" suffice. What?
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Just remember, telling the controller you're short of X doesn't relieve you from properly reading back the hold short clearance he gives you because you called ready while a 737 was on 1/2 mile final.
 
Bernoulli Fan said:
This thread has taken a turn toward helpful information exchange, which is nice.

With regard to deviations, I'll give you whatever you need without much question no matter what I'm depicting, but I don't agree that onboard radar shows the same as ATC mosaic. Onboard does not penetrate very far into the precip as radar naturally attenuates quickly. The advantage of ATC mosaic is we can see how far along the route the precip extends, but we only have a picture of the bottom of all the weather. Onboard's advantage is you can tilt up and down a bit to find better altitudes, though you can't see very far into it. This was probably contributory to AFR447.
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Isn't it clear-and-a-million 363 days a year out there?

Kidding asside, I recently saw an aircraft go about 50-75 nm left of course, because a large cell was obscured by a smaller cell to their weather radar, with about a 3nm gap in between each cell. The controller did not give a precipitation advisory, if he had, I am sure the aircraft would have gone about 20 right and been back on course in 10 minutes. A lot of times I notice my colleagues have the attitude that the pilot knows better what he wants and needs, but in this instance, it wasn't the case. I am sure "area of moderate to heavy precipitation, 10 to 1 o'clock, 40 miles, extending for 30 miles" would have been enough to convince the pilot to go right.
 
greg1016 said:
Isn't it clear-and-a-million 363 days a year out there?

Kidding asside, I recently saw an aircraft go about 50-75 nm left of course, because a large cell was obscured by a smaller cell to their weather radar, with about a 3nm gap in between each cell. The controller did not give a precipitation advisory, if he had, I am sure the aircraft would have gone about 20 right and been back on course in 10 minutes. A lot of times I notice my colleagues have the attitude that the pilot knows better what he wants and needs, but in this instance, it wasn't the case. I am sure "area of moderate to heavy precipitation, 10 to 1 o'clock, 40 miles, extending for 30 miles" would have been enough to convince the pilot to go right.
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We can't shoot a 3nm gap when it's clear that we can deviate around a group of cells. Every airline's FOM will have a prohibition from flying within 20 miles of a cell unless you absolutely have to, and you'd better be up wind of it when you do.

Flying 3nm downwind of a cell is asking to get hit with hail, and that's not something most of us are interested in attempting to explain when we could have added a few minutes to the leg to go around the weather.
 
jtrain609 said:
We can't shoot a 3nm gap when it's clear that we can deviate around a group of cells. Every airline's FOM will have a prohibition from flying within 20 miles of a cell unless you absolutely have to, and you'd better be up wind of it when you do.

Flying 3nm downwind of a cell is asking to get hit with hail, and that's not something most of us are interested in attempting to explain when we could have added a few minutes to the leg to go around the weather.
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I wasn't talking about shooting a 3 mile gap, I was talking about a small intense cell, followed by a large intense cell, that was no doubt obscured on on-board radar due to the first cell. I guarantee the pilot had no idea the larger cell was there until he was around the first cell and already committed to going left of course instead of right.
 
jtrain609 said:
Well, a few things.

First, some carriers have access to that same mosaic that you're talking about through on board EFB's. Not many, but a few.

Second, that mosaic isn't valid from our perspective for avoidance, but only planning and long range decision making. This is where you'll hear us say, "If you can just give us [X] shortcut, we can avoid the weather," what we mean is not that we want a shortcut, but instead that if we're given a small turn from a long distance out, we'll be able to make a strategic decision about avoiding weather, instead of having to tactically avoid the weather in 100 miles. But, the level of fidelity that is reflected in mosaic pictures commonly has nothing to do with what we're actually dealing with once we're into the flight levels. This is why you guys will commonly advise us about some horrible looking storm cell that we're about to penetrate in cruise, and we'll verbally shrug because we're so far on top of it with no build up coming out of the top of those cells that we didn't even notice we were about to fly over a cell.

Third, I've never actually used the tilt function to find a better altitude to punch through weather. I'll scan a cell at a few different altitudes to see if it's a legitimate cell (there's a lot of crap that shows up on the display that isn't actually weather), and then I'll also use those multiple views to get a determination of how far away from it I want to fly.

Fourth, on both EMB products I've flown, the onboard radar has an attenuation function that shows where rain shadows are pretty well. If the radar isn't able to penetrate to the other side of a cell with this function turned on, it'll paint everything behind it in blue. This warns us that the radar doesn't know what's back there, resulting in the assumption that it's probably another cell and that we shouldn't fly anywhere near it.

In summary, I think pilots and controllers look at weather deviations in some fundamentally different ways. Where controllers are forced to view deviations through the prism of the weather radar mosaic that you have provided to you, juxtaposed against the information that pilots feed to controllers in the way of deviation requests. Pilots, on the other hand, do 90% of their deviations visually, simply spinning the heading bug until we're not going to fly through something that looks like it will hurt. And what hurts? I'd say any build up that extends above about 15,000'.
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You left out:
(5) One peek is worth several thousand sweeps.
 
Falcon50driver said:
So here goes ....flying along fat DUMB and happy FL410 on our cleared flight plan...realized the rad io was TOO silent .scrambled to regain communications .called the freq and the controller asked me to go to my previous freq ..no answer...came back to the original freq and he ask my position ( so he wasnt my controller,must have changed something inadvertently )i told him, he gave the freq i should be on and i called and she acknowledged my presence ......good so far......she called me back a few minutes later and asked to call this number when i get on the ground....we didnt wait we called from the flitephone( they were startled we called from the airplane)
They explained that we had been given a hand off and hadnt checked in to the next freq.i couldn't really explain it ,i was confused ,the supervisor spoke to the pic and told him he would do his report but did know wether it would be pursued.we were off air for 15 min. 121.5 was dialed in but the audio was off ( i guess that doesn't help).I know its not procedure to call ARINC and send a message thru the box but i have heard of that being done.Don't get me wrong,I don't have an excuse. We both filed NASA reports
I have had nothing like this happen to me in 36 years of flying
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Wow, I didn't read each post in this thread but, as a controller.

We have airplanes miss frequency changes, get lost while already on a frequency, take the wrong frequency changes.. MULTIPLE TIMES A DAY.

It happens to and from the FAA unit I work beside, I am utterly amazed you were asked to call, while obviously there is an inherent danger in not talking to somebody, I have never seen it pursued except in the most extreme cases.

In fact the only time I've seen any serious action taken other than a verbal "don't do that"... a biz jet departed Miami, on hand-off climbing out of FL230 or so, he never checks in... he flies 4-5 hours en-route through procedural airspace never talks to a soul, shows up in my airspace, right on where we all estimated him to be, doesn't call then either... takes another 45 minutes, he gets to his TOD then he starts calling on guard to find a frequency to get a descent clearance. @greg1016

Now unless you had traffic or safety was jeopardized maybe that would be why they wanted to speak to you. I know people complain about people using guard as a chat frequency, but always be listening to it, it is ALWAYS our first option to go looking for you.
 
I'm sure everybody knows this already, but with the proliferation of Ipads and those electronic map thingys, it's really easy to highlight an airport nearby and find out the center freq in that area. It may be the low sector but they will point you in the right direction. If the freq gets quiet and you can't raise anyone, I'd do that before I call on guard.
 
Vector4Food said:
Wow, I didn't read each post in this thread but, as a controller.

We have airplanes miss frequency changes, get lost while already on a frequency, take the wrong frequency changes.. MULTIPLE TIMES A DAY.

It happens to and from the FAA unit I work beside, I am utterly amazed you were asked to call, while obviously there is an inherent danger in not talking to somebody, I have never seen it pursued except in the most extreme cases.

In fact the only time I've seen any serious action taken other than a verbal "don't do that"... a biz jet departed Miami, on hand-off climbing out of FL230 or so, he never checks in... he flies 4-5 hours en-route through procedural airspace never talks to a soul, shows up in my airspace, right on where we all estimated him to be, doesn't call then either... takes another 45 minutes, he gets to his TOD then he starts calling on guard to find a frequency to get a descent clearance. @greg1016

Now unless you had traffic or safety was jeopardized maybe that would be why they wanted to speak to you. I know people complain about people using guard as a chat frequency, but always be listening to it, it is ALWAYS our first option to go looking for you.
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It usually is just a verbal "don't do that" but they need to call in to hear that in the first place. In the FAA, IFR NORDO more than 5 minutes is a mandatory occurrence report, and that usually involves trying to get a statement from the pilot involved if able. It's not optional on the part of the FAA facility. VFR NORDO more than 5 minutes may be subject to this as well, only if the lack of communication or aircraft behavior is "suspicious."

If facilities are letting this stuff slide, that's all well and good for pilots. But it is a required process, so don't be surprised when it happens. Mind those frequency changes/radio volumes!
 
FM_Weasel said:
It usually is just a verbal "don't do that" but they need to call in to hear that in the first place. In the FAA, IFR NORDO more than 5 minutes is a mandatory occurrence report, and that usually involves trying to get a statement from the pilot involved if able. It's not optional on the part of the FAA facility. VFR NORDO more than 5 minutes may be subject to this as well, only if the lack of communication or aircraft behavior is "suspicious."

If facilities are letting this stuff slide, that's all well and good for pilots. But it is a required process, so don't be surprised when it happens. Mind those frequency changes/radio volumes!
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Thanks

The guys and gals across the border never made this clear to us before.

I've always been adamant that this sort of procedure should be in place, but so often it's hard to prove if the controller gave a bad freq. or maybe someone early missed something...

Sometimes though it is clearly the pilots mistake, we do have procedures for extended lost comm, it's more pressing if they're heading into American airspace
 
It is my understanding that the mandatory reporting is for national defense purposes, not faa/regulatory purposes. Like v4f said, it happens on a regular basis.

Communication requirements over international waters outside the ADIZ are governed by ICAO and vary from domestic requirements
 
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