System knowledge

ppragman said:
It also seems (from what I’ve read) that they had a bad case of confusion between the crew members too. If memory serves there were opposite control inputs being made the whole way down and one was getting overrridden.

In any case the old adage of “if what you’re doing isn’t working, try something else.” Seems like it could have saved the day.

Not trying to Monday morning qb but if the airplane is pitched way the hell up with a wicked high descent rate and you can’t arrest the descent, try lowering the nose - you’re dead anyway if you get it wrong might as well try something different to get out of the upset. That said it’s awful hard to will the mind to lower the nose when you’ve got a high descent rate.
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If it had been that simple...
 
typhoonpilot said:
Having been exposed to test pilots and manufacturer's pilots I would tend to disagree with this. While there are some good people at the manufacturers who can help design the normal and non-normal procedures the actual test pilots and a large portion of the other pilots that a manufacturer employ tend to be very poor at operating the aircraft as it is intended to be in normal airline operations.

Someone with a military test background who then goes into the civilian sector tends to be a very "special" type of individual. They do not tend to think like most normal pilots. Really, they are about the last person you want to have designating what is important to know. Certainly consulting is okay, but not determining what is important.

So, anyone hear about the Boeing pilot who got "stuck" between 04s at JFK a few years ago? He was describing in intricate detail how the brakes must be frozen, locked, blah, blah, blah. Actual problem was he was in a little bit of a depression at max landing weight and was not using enough thrust to get out of it. :biggrin:
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We are only talking within the scope of systems, to include flight control systems. Aerodynamic properties would also be in there. Not operations.
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
Wasn't there some Gulfstream GV (or some large new type) that was on a test flight that ended up crashing on a takeoff (or go around?) when the crew decided to do something completely out of the normal envelope of what they were expected and supposed to do. I'd have to look it up, but IIRC the NTSB came down hard on Gulfstream and their testing/certification/test pilots.
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G-650 if that's the one you're thinking of.

But it had nothing to do with the crew as far as I know. It's been a while since I read the report but the criticism was generally pointed at their use of improper methods to determine the test parameters. There was also a lot of talk about their flight test department safety culture.

We had a crew in the area at the time and they gave the test crew a ride to the airport from the hotel a few days before that.
 
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tcco94 said:
Interesting reading some of the responses here! All a good read. I am just a little bit past my first year in the 121 field, coming from the instructor world. My most complex airplanes were a Bonanza and Baron. I had a pretty uncomfortable conversation about all of this with a captain a few months ago.

We were talking about the training at my company and I said I thought it was good. Going to my systems test I had confidence in my knowledge with the aircraft and everything inside the cockpit. Most of our information came from a document that was pretty much condensed information. If you really wanted to dig deeper there was another manual. We were told to not go diving in there as it would confuse you even more and it was more of a not needed to know. Which was fine with us, all new regional pilots trying to drink from the fire hose. We didn't want to open another.

Anyways, when I said I thought the training was good it was like I hit a nerve. I didn't realize he was a A&P and I got blasted with all sorts of questions. "How is the oil system cooled" "Draw the hydraulic system other than the synoptic page" etc etc were some of the questions I got. He then stated that I really don't know anything at all, which I said okay touché! Maybe I don't, I thought? Then he went on a rant about upgrades and asked how I was ready for upgrade without having this knowledge and started asking me Ops Specs off the top of my head. (I never brought up upgrading or saying I'm taking first avail or really anything related to upgrade)

Found this whole short trip to be really odd. The more I wondered why would I need to know as a Captain how to draw the hydraulic system? Have an Op Spec off the top of my head. When I was in a junior base prior all my new captains were awesome. They also verified stuff in the manuals and didn't go off memory and when something arose we did the full QRH procedures. We didn't say "I'm an A&P, I know more than the mechanic" and laugh?

I just didn't understand this logic. Don't get me wrong I think my systems knowledge could grow. I am by far the hardest person on myself for that. I love learning and want to know stuff even more. I'm not trying to sound lazy. I just thought procedures were largely more important than let's say, memorizing a QRH procedure or knowing every schematic drawing of the airplane in my brain.
Click to expand...

It's been my experience that a LOT of professional pilots don't know much about the regs. It's really important to understand the vagaries and nuance of the various opspecs under 135 (not to sure what it's like under 121) and almost no one knows them. At least in my world, not being able to explain the opspecs (even if you can't quote them writ-verse) means you can't do your job - yet somehow people are flying around part 135 not knowing how to derive alternate mins, or being confused about when they can take off.

The captain you flew with is "wrong" but he's also right. You don't know enough to upgrade, you know what's required to upgrade - there's a difference, albeit a subtle one. You never know "enough" when you jump into your first turbine airplane as PIC (and honestly, sometimes subsequent airplanes if they are really different from what you flew before). Still, learning to be PIC is 30% good mentors and training, the rest is OJT. You don't know enough to upgrade, but holy crap, there you are, so you keep learning, and keep studying, and you learn everything you can about the airplane and the operation so that when you're tested (and I don't mean by the company or the feds) you'll be able to do the right thing. That guy sounds like an ass-hat, but I think it's a good idea to target the level of knowledge of "I'm going to try to know literally everything about this airplane, so that when I inevitably have deficiencies in my knowledge I'll know enough so that I'll be alright."

To be fair, 99% of the time the "right thing" is going to be "take out the appropriate checklist and run it" but you might (and likely will) run into things that don't fit into the nice boxes of a checklist.

As for the question about "how is the oil cooled," in most airplanes I've flown I'd bust your balls if you couldn't at least half-ass an answer. You may not be able to do much to control it, but understanding how oil cooled is on the pretty low end of the systems knowledge, and depending on the airplane could be critical knowledge. As for being able to "draw" the schematic from memory, that's the standard I held myself to when I was a check airman (and mostly failed, I had the electrical system down though), but I only wanted my people to be able to explain the system in sufficient detail to know that they could handle all the potential failure modes - which is pretty basic.
 
trafficinsight said:
G-650 if that's the one you're thinking of.

But it had nothing to do with the crew as far as I know. It's been a while since I read the report but the criticism was generally pointed at their use of improper methods to determine the test parameters. There was also a lot of talk about their flight test department safety culture.

We had a crew in the area at the time and they gave the test crew a ride to the airport from the hotel a few days before that.
Click to expand...

Wasn't that accident associated with testing accelerate-go performance too? I don't remember, but I'd imagine that that's a particularly gnarly flight regime to play around with.
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
Wasn't there some Gulfstream GV (or some large new type) that was on a test flight that ended up crashing on a takeoff (or go around?) when the crew decided to do something completely out of the normal envelope of what they were expected and supposed to do. I'd have to look it up, but IIRC the NTSB came down hard on Gulfstream and their testing/certification/test pilots.
Click to expand...


Executive Summary

On April 2, 2011, about 0934 mountain daylight time, an experimental Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation GVI (G650), N652GD, crashed during takeoff from runway 21 at Roswell International Air Center, Roswell, New Mexico. The two pilots and the two flight test engineers were fatally injured, and the airplane was substantially damaged by impact forces and a postcrash fire. The airplane was registered to and operated by Gulfstream as part of its G650 flight test program. The flight was conducted under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident.

The accident occurred during a planned one-engine-inoperative (OEI) takeoff when a stall on the right outboard wing produced a rolling moment that the flight crew was not able to control, which led to the right wingtip contacting the runway and the airplane departing the runway from the right side. After departing the runway, the airplane impacted a concrete structure and an airport weather station, resulting in extensive structural damage and a postcrash fire that completely consumed the fuselage and cabin interior.

The National Transportation Safety Board‟s (NTSB) investigation of this accident found that the airplane stalled while lifting off the ground. As a result, the NTSB examined the role of "ground effect" on the airplane‟s performance. Ground effect refers to changes in the airflow over the airplane resulting from the proximity of the airplane to the ground. Ground effect results in increased lift and reduced drag at a given angle of attack (AOA) as well as a reduction in the stall AOA. In preparing for the G650 field performance flight tests, Gulfstream considered ground effect when predicting the airplane‟s takeoff performance capability but overestimated the in-ground-effect stall AOA. Consequently, the airplane‟s AOA threshold for stick shaker (stall warning) activation and the corresponding pitch limit indicator (on the primary flight display) were set too high, and the flight crew received no tactile or visual warning before the actual stall occurred.

The accident flight was the third time that a right outboard wing stall occurred during G650 flight testing. Gulfstream did not determine (until after the accident) that the cause of two previous uncommanded roll events was a stall of the right outboard wing at a lower-than-expected AOA. (Similar to the accident circumstances, the two previous events occurred during liftoff; however, the right wingtip did not contact the runway during either of these events.) If Gulfstream had performed an in-depth aerodynamic analysis of these events shortly after they occurred, the company could have recognized before the accident that the actual in-ground-effect stall AOA was lower than predicted.

During field performance testing before the accident, the G650 consistently exceeded target takeoff safety speeds (V2). V2 is the speed that an airplane attains at or before a height above the ground of 35 feet with one engine inoperative. Gulfstream needed to resolve these V2 exceedances because achieving the planned V2 speeds was necessary to maintain the airplane‟s 6,000-foot takeoff performance guarantee (at standard sea level conditions). If the G650 did not meet this takeoff performance guarantee, then the airplane could only operate on longer runways. However, a key assumption that Gulfstream used to develop takeoff speeds was flawed and resulted in V2 speeds that were too low and takeoff distances that were longer than anticipated.

Rather than determining the root cause for the V2 exceedance problem, Gulfstream attempted to reduce the V2 speeds and the takeoff distances by modifying the piloting technique used to rotate the airplane for takeoff. Further, Gulfstream did not validate the speeds using a simulation or physics-based dynamic analysis before or during field performance testing. If the company had done so, then it could have recognized that the target V2 speeds could not be achieved even with the modified piloting technique. In addition, the difficulties in achieving the target V2 speeds were exacerbated in late March 2011 when the company reduced the target pitch angle for some takeoff tests without an accompanying increase in the takeoff speeds.
Gulfstream maintained an aggressive schedule for the G650 flight test program so that the company could obtain Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) type certification by the third quarter of 2011. The schedule pressure, combined with inadequately developed organizational processes for technical oversight and safety management, led to a strong focus on keeping the program moving and a reluctance to challenge key assumptions and highlight anomalous airplane behavior during tests that could slow the pace of the program. These factors likely contributed to key errors, including the development of unachievable takeoff speeds, as well as the superficial review of the two previous uncommanded roll events, which allowed the company‟s overestimation of the in-ground-effect stall AOA to remain undetected.

After the accident, Gulfstream suspended field performance testing through December 2011 while the company examined the circumstances of the accident. In March 2012, Gulfstream reported that company field performance testing had been repeated and completed successfully. In June 2012, the company reported that FAA certification field performance testing had been successfully completed. Gulfstream obtained FAA type certification for the G650 on September 7, 2012.

The NTSB determines that the probable cause of this accident was an aerodynamic stall and subsequent uncommanded roll during an OEI takeoff flight test, which were the result of (1) Gulfstream‟s failure to properly develop and validate takeoff speeds for the flight tests and recognize and correct the V2 error during previous G650 flight tests, (2) the G650 flight test team‟s persistent and increasingly aggressive attempts to achieve V2 speeds that were erroneously low, and (3) Gulfstream‟s inadequate investigation of previous G650 uncommanded roll events, which indicated that the company‟s estimated stall AOA while the airplane was in ground effect was too high. Contributing to the accident was Gulfstream‟s failure to effectively manage the G650 flight test program by pursuing an aggressive program schedule without ensuring that the roles and responsibilities of team members had been appropriately defined and implemented, engineering processes had received sufficient technical planning and oversight, potential hazards had been fully identified, and appropriate risk controls had been implemented and were functioning as intended.

In its party submission for this accident investigation, Gulfstream stated that it accepted "full responsibility" for the accident and, in response, implemented corrective actions to preclude such an accident from recurring. One of these actions was to integrate safety management system principles and practices into the company‟s flight test operations. As a result of this investigation, the NTSB is issuing two recommendations to Gulfstream to commission an audit to evaluate the status of the company‟s safety management program before the start of its next major certification program and share lessons learned with aircraft manufacturers and flight test industry groups.

Additional actions to help improve the management and safety of flight test programs include providing aircraft manufacturers with flight test operating guidance and flight test safety guidelines based on best practices in aviation safety management. The NTSB is issuing two safety recommendations to the Flight Test Safety Committee (an independent flight test safety organization) and two recommendations to the FAA regarding the development of this guidance. The NTSB is also issuing one recommendation to the FAA to incorporate the flight test safety guidelines in an agency document.

In addition, the NTSB is issuing three other recommendations as a result of its investigation of this accident. One of these recommendations, addressed to the FAA, discusses the potential for domestic and foreign airplane manufacturers to overestimate an airplane‟s stall AOA in ground effect. The other two recommendations, addressed to the FAA and the Flight Test Safety Committee, discusses advance coordination of high-risk flight tests among manufacturers, airport operators, and aircraft rescue and firefighting personnel.
 
ppragman said:
trafficinsight said:
G-650 if that's the one you're thinking of.

But it had nothing to do with the crew as far as I know. It's been a while since I read the report but the criticism was generally pointed at their use of improper methods to determine the test parameters. There was also a lot of talk about their flight test department safety culture.

We had a crew in the area at the time and they gave the test crew a ride to the airport from the hotel a few days before that.
Click to expand...

Wasn't that accident associated with testing accelerate-go performance too? I don't remember, but I'd imagine that that's a particularly gnarly flight regime to play around with.
Click to expand...
The crash happened on takeoff after a simulated engine failure and one of the criticisms was Gulfstream aggressively trying to validate lower safety speeds to make field performance targets.
 
typhoonpilot said:
Executive Summary

On April 2, 2011, about 0934 mountain daylight time, an experimental Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation GVI (G650), N652GD, crashed during takeoff from runway 21 at Roswell International Air Center, Roswell, New Mexico. The two pilots and the two flight test engineers were fatally injured, and the airplane was substantially damaged by impact forces and a postcrash fire. The airplane was registered to and operated by Gulfstream as part of its G650 flight test program. The flight was conducted under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident.

The accident occurred during a planned one-engine-inoperative (OEI) takeoff when a stall on the right outboard wing produced a rolling moment that the flight crew was not able to control, which led to the right wingtip contacting the runway and the airplane departing the runway from the right side. After departing the runway, the airplane impacted a concrete structure and an airport weather station, resulting in extensive structural damage and a postcrash fire that completely consumed the fuselage and cabin interior.

The National Transportation Safety Board‟s (NTSB) investigation of this accident found that the airplane stalled while lifting off the ground. As a result, the NTSB examined the role of "ground effect" on the airplane‟s performance. Ground effect refers to changes in the airflow over the airplane resulting from the proximity of the airplane to the ground. Ground effect results in increased lift and reduced drag at a given angle of attack (AOA) as well as a reduction in the stall AOA. In preparing for the G650 field performance flight tests, Gulfstream considered ground effect when predicting the airplane‟s takeoff performance capability but overestimated the in-ground-effect stall AOA. Consequently, the airplane‟s AOA threshold for stick shaker (stall warning) activation and the corresponding pitch limit indicator (on the primary flight display) were set too high, and the flight crew received no tactile or visual warning before the actual stall occurred.

The accident flight was the third time that a right outboard wing stall occurred during G650 flight testing. Gulfstream did not determine (until after the accident) that the cause of two previous uncommanded roll events was a stall of the right outboard wing at a lower-than-expected AOA. (Similar to the accident circumstances, the two previous events occurred during liftoff; however, the right wingtip did not contact the runway during either of these events.) If Gulfstream had performed an in-depth aerodynamic analysis of these events shortly after they occurred, the company could have recognized before the accident that the actual in-ground-effect stall AOA was lower than predicted.

During field performance testing before the accident, the G650 consistently exceeded target takeoff safety speeds (V2). V2 is the speed that an airplane attains at or before a height above the ground of 35 feet with one engine inoperative. Gulfstream needed to resolve these V2 exceedances because achieving the planned V2 speeds was necessary to maintain the airplane‟s 6,000-foot takeoff performance guarantee (at standard sea level conditions). If the G650 did not meet this takeoff performance guarantee, then the airplane could only operate on longer runways. However, a key assumption that Gulfstream used to develop takeoff speeds was flawed and resulted in V2 speeds that were too low and takeoff distances that were longer than anticipated.

Rather than determining the root cause for the V2 exceedance problem, Gulfstream attempted to reduce the V2 speeds and the takeoff distances by modifying the piloting technique used to rotate the airplane for takeoff. Further, Gulfstream did not validate the speeds using a simulation or physics-based dynamic analysis before or during field performance testing. If the company had done so, then it could have recognized that the target V2 speeds could not be achieved even with the modified piloting technique. In addition, the difficulties in achieving the target V2 speeds were exacerbated in late March 2011 when the company reduced the target pitch angle for some takeoff tests without an accompanying increase in the takeoff speeds.
Gulfstream maintained an aggressive schedule for the G650 flight test program so that the company could obtain Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) type certification by the third quarter of 2011. The schedule pressure, combined with inadequately developed organizational processes for technical oversight and safety management, led to a strong focus on keeping the program moving and a reluctance to challenge key assumptions and highlight anomalous airplane behavior during tests that could slow the pace of the program. These factors likely contributed to key errors, including the development of unachievable takeoff speeds, as well as the superficial review of the two previous uncommanded roll events, which allowed the company‟s overestimation of the in-ground-effect stall AOA to remain undetected.

After the accident, Gulfstream suspended field performance testing through December 2011 while the company examined the circumstances of the accident. In March 2012, Gulfstream reported that company field performance testing had been repeated and completed successfully. In June 2012, the company reported that FAA certification field performance testing had been successfully completed. Gulfstream obtained FAA type certification for the G650 on September 7, 2012.

The NTSB determines that the probable cause of this accident was an aerodynamic stall and subsequent uncommanded roll during an OEI takeoff flight test, which were the result of (1) Gulfstream‟s failure to properly develop and validate takeoff speeds for the flight tests and recognize and correct the V2 error during previous G650 flight tests, (2) the G650 flight test team‟s persistent and increasingly aggressive attempts to achieve V2 speeds that were erroneously low, and (3) Gulfstream‟s inadequate investigation of previous G650 uncommanded roll events, which indicated that the company‟s estimated stall AOA while the airplane was in ground effect was too high. Contributing to the accident was Gulfstream‟s failure to effectively manage the G650 flight test program by pursuing an aggressive program schedule without ensuring that the roles and responsibilities of team members had been appropriately defined and implemented, engineering processes had received sufficient technical planning and oversight, potential hazards had been fully identified, and appropriate risk controls had been implemented and were functioning as intended.

In its party submission for this accident investigation, Gulfstream stated that it accepted "full responsibility" for the accident and, in response, implemented corrective actions to preclude such an accident from recurring. One of these actions was to integrate safety management system principles and practices into the company‟s flight test operations. As a result of this investigation, the NTSB is issuing two recommendations to Gulfstream to commission an audit to evaluate the status of the company‟s safety management program before the start of its next major certification program and share lessons learned with aircraft manufacturers and flight test industry groups.

Additional actions to help improve the management and safety of flight test programs include providing aircraft manufacturers with flight test operating guidance and flight test safety guidelines based on best practices in aviation safety management. The NTSB is issuing two safety recommendations to the Flight Test Safety Committee (an independent flight test safety organization) and two recommendations to the FAA regarding the development of this guidance. The NTSB is also issuing one recommendation to the FAA to incorporate the flight test safety guidelines in an agency document.

In addition, the NTSB is issuing three other recommendations as a result of its investigation of this accident. One of these recommendations, addressed to the FAA, discusses the potential for domestic and foreign airplane manufacturers to overestimate an airplane‟s stall AOA in ground effect. The other two recommendations, addressed to the FAA and the Flight Test Safety Committee, discusses advance coordination of high-risk flight tests among manufacturers, airport operators, and aircraft rescue and firefighting personnel.
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Holy crap, that was almost 6 years ago already?
 
ppragman said:
It's been my experience that a LOT of professional pilots don't know much about the regs. It's really important to understand the vagaries and nuance of the various opspecs under 135 (not to sure what it's like under 121) and almost no one knows them. At least in my world, not being able to explain the opspecs (even if you can't quote them writ-verse) means you can't do your job - yet somehow people are flying around part 135 not knowing how to derive alternate mins, or being confused about when they can take off.

The captain you flew with is "wrong" but he's also right. You don't know enough to upgrade, you know what's required to upgrade - there's a difference, albeit a subtle one. You never know "enough" when you jump into your first turbine airplane as PIC (and honestly, sometimes subsequent airplanes if they are really different from what you flew before). Still, learning to be PIC is 30% good mentors and training, the rest is OJT. You don't know enough to upgrade, but holy crap, there you are, so you keep learning, and keep studying, and you learn everything you can about the airplane and the operation so that when you're tested (and I don't mean by the company or the feds) you'll be able to do the right thing. That guy sounds like an ass-hat, but I think it's a good idea to target the level of knowledge of "I'm going to try to know literally everything about this airplane, so that when I inevitably have deficiencies in my knowledge I'll know enough so that I'll be alright."

To be fair, 99% of the time the "right thing" is going to be "take out the appropriate checklist and run it" but you might (and likely will) run into things that don't fit into the nice boxes of a checklist.

As for the question about "how is the oil cooled," in most airplanes I've flown I'd bust your balls if you couldn't at least half-ass an answer. You may not be able to do much to control it, but understanding how oil cooled is on the pretty low end of the systems knowledge, and depending on the airplane could be critical knowledge. As for being able to "draw" the schematic from memory, that's the standard I held myself to when I was a check airman (and mostly failed, I had the electrical system down though), but I only wanted my people to be able to explain the system in sufficient detail to know that they could handle all the potential failure modes - which is pretty basic.
Click to expand...
I had nothing against the Captain! I didn't take it personally and I liked being humbled so I could really tell myself "yeah you'll always need to study". Some things he said I was scratching my head over, but a lot I was like "okay, yeah good point". I learned a lot from that trip.

That story took place on leg 1, and he said he can teach me things the whole trip but that's the kind of teacher he was. He told me if he was being too harsh or asking too much that I could ask to stop. I just went along with it. Why not learn more? I did actually get the oil cooling question right, but he said "I'll give you 50%" lol. I didn't know it to the level he expected but you get the point. When we went through the schematic pages is when I was really in for a piece of humble pie.

Anyways, I find after one year a lot of the systems stuff I felt super comfortable about fades away over a period of time. I get in the rhythm of line flying, day to day ops, and just never cover or talk about those subjects for periods of time. I find that's the hardest part is trying to keep that stuff pounded in my head. The same goes for regs but almost worse like you said. You get releases so fast and it's all figured out for you. You check it, of course. Usually when a question arises someone just calls the dispatcher to discuss it (usually PIC). I mean I had a restriction last month that I verified wasn't on the MEL, wasn't in our manuals, wasn't in the dispatcher manuals but on his computer it told him that was the restriction but nobody knew where it came from? So, we complied! I don't even remember what it was but it wasn't that big of a deal. I thought 135 was better on those areas since a lot of people do their flight planning themselves (or I assume at least).

Since I'm still new, I haven't figured out the perfect formula. I'm not afraid to admit it though. I figure as long as I have an attitude to keep up and never settle than I should be fine. That way I still open up the manuals, open up my binders at home, and push myself to learn more and more.
 
ppragman said:
It's been my experience that a LOT of professional pilots don't know much about the regs. It's really important to understand the vagaries and nuance of the various opspecs under 135 (not to sure what it's like under 121) and almost no one knows them. At least in my world, not being able to explain the opspecs (even if you can't quote them writ-verse) means you can't do your job - yet somehow people are flying around part 135 not knowing how to derive alternate mins, or being confused about when they can take off.

The captain you flew with is "wrong" but he's also right. You don't know enough to upgrade, you know what's required to upgrade - there's a difference, albeit a subtle one. You never know "enough" when you jump into your first turbine airplane as PIC (and honestly, sometimes subsequent airplanes if they are really different from what you flew before). Still, learning to be PIC is 30% good mentors and training, the rest is OJT. You don't know enough to upgrade, but holy crap, there you are, so you keep learning, and keep studying, and you learn everything you can about the airplane and the operation so that when you're tested (and I don't mean by the company or the feds) you'll be able to do the right thing. That guy sounds like an ass-hat, but I think it's a good idea to target the level of knowledge of "I'm going to try to know literally everything about this airplane, so that when I inevitably have deficiencies in my knowledge I'll know enough so that I'll be alright."

To be fair, 99% of the time the "right thing" is going to be "take out the appropriate checklist and run it" but you might (and likely will) run into things that don't fit into the nice boxes of a checklist.

As for the question about "how is the oil cooled," in most airplanes I've flown I'd bust your balls if you couldn't at least half-ass an answer. You may not be able to do much to control it, but understanding how oil cooled is on the pretty low end of the systems knowledge, and depending on the airplane could be critical knowledge. As for being able to "draw" the schematic from memory, that's the standard I held myself to when I was a check airman (and mostly failed, I had the electrical system down though), but I only wanted my people to be able to explain the system in sufficient detail to know that they could handle all the potential failure modes - which is pretty basic.
Click to expand...
It blows me away the amount of people on the 121 side that hardly know what an opsec is let alone enough to actually do the job legally. For the most part they are all blended into our FOM at my shop, but they are referenced below the section. Bottom line is, if you don't know them, or the plain English FOM part off the top of your head, you're probably violating them. Every month, 135 121 doesn't matter in my experience.
 
z987k said:
ppragman said:
It's been my experience that a LOT of professional pilots don't know much about the regs. It's really important to understand the vagaries and nuance of the various opspecs under 135 (not to sure what it's like under 121) and almost no one knows them. At least in my world, not being able to explain the opspecs (even if you can't quote them writ-verse) means you can't do your job - yet somehow people are flying around part 135 not knowing how to derive alternate mins, or being confused about when they can take off.

The captain you flew with is "wrong" but he's also right. You don't know enough to upgrade, you know what's required to upgrade - there's a difference, albeit a subtle one. You never know "enough" when you jump into your first turbine airplane as PIC (and honestly, sometimes subsequent airplanes if they are really different from what you flew before). Still, learning to be PIC is 30% good mentors and training, the rest is OJT. You don't know enough to upgrade, but holy crap, there you are, so you keep learning, and keep studying, and you learn everything you can about the airplane and the operation so that when you're tested (and I don't mean by the company or the feds) you'll be able to do the right thing. That guy sounds like an ass-hat, but I think it's a good idea to target the level of knowledge of "I'm going to try to know literally everything about this airplane, so that when I inevitably have deficiencies in my knowledge I'll know enough so that I'll be alright."

To be fair, 99% of the time the "right thing" is going to be "take out the appropriate checklist and run it" but you might (and likely will) run into things that don't fit into the nice boxes of a checklist.

As for the question about "how is the oil cooled," in most airplanes I've flown I'd bust your balls if you couldn't at least half-ass an answer. You may not be able to do much to control it, but understanding how oil cooled is on the pretty low end of the systems knowledge, and depending on the airplane could be critical knowledge. As for being able to "draw" the schematic from memory, that's the standard I held myself to when I was a check airman (and mostly failed, I had the electrical system down though), but I only wanted my people to be able to explain the system in sufficient detail to know that they could handle all the potential failure modes - which is pretty basic.
Click to expand...
It blows me away the amount of people on the 121 side that hardly know what an opsec is let alone enough to actually do the job legally. For the most part they are all blended into our FOM at my shop, but they are referenced below the section. Bottom line is, if you don't know them, or the plain English FOM part off the top of your head, you're probably violating them. Every month, 135 121 doesn't matter in my experience.
Click to expand...

What opspecs do you need to know in day to day 121 ops? If we follow SOP then anything weird that comes up we will have covered.

If i ever have a question i just call the dispatcher. Let’s not make things harder than they should be.
 
Kingairer said:
Even if you are complete ignorant of an airplanes systems, if you were trained in scenario based training, you would follow a QRH procedure that would describe things such as this.
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There are scenarios where there is no published procedure, particularly with IMA systems.
 
Kingairer said:
Even if you are complete ignorant of an airplanes systems, if you were trained in scenario based training, you would follow a QRH procedure that would describe things such as this.
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Under 121 I would hope so, under 135 I’ve definitely seen a QRH that says, “Fire Warning: Refer to engine feathering and securing checklist.”
 
Great article @seagull. Coming out of the school house recently I was never so prepared from an operational/procedural standpoint but I've also never known so little about the airplane I'm flying. There's a pretty large gap in knowledge between the experienced captains trained the old way and the fresh FOs trained the new way. I can spot the errors when he jumbles up his flow but when a light comes on my right hand immediately reaches behind me for the QRH. The internet is great for research but it all falls under the dreaded title of "gouge" in my goodreader app on my company iPad.
 
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