I’ll admit I didn’t listen to the whole video, don’t know the experience level of the Capt or crew, nor do I know about any additional mechanical issues or problems the crew may have been dealing with prior to the flight or soon after. But, it appears they were simply dealing with an autothrottle inop situation? Does that about cover it?
I flew 5 different fleet types during my 34 yrs at UPS. 4 had auto throttles (B727 didn’t). I flew the 4 equipped with auto throttles..without them either by MEL’ed or they simply stopped working at some point. Yea, you have to pay attention and do some of that basic pilot stuff, the naps are shorter and not as restful but it’s more of an annoyance than a full blown emergency. Backside of the clock flying was considered normal ops on the freight side. Yea, not ideal obviously, didn’t have the rules protection in place that crews have nowadays, but it was the nature of the beast. After running checklists and such….about the only call would’ve been to dispatch with a conversation about whether or not we can legally land at the destination without auto throttles due to autoland capabilities etc…not, I’m too tired to manipulate the throttles.
A fatigue call is something you do before the flight and preferably before reporting for duty…no shame in that. Once you report for duty for your normally schedule flight and it departs, assuming on time, you can’t cry foul simply because you lost your auto throttles and now have to do pilot stuff on a 5 hr flight. I wouldn’t want to be at the end of that table doing a rug dance trying to defend that decision. There’s a difference between an inflight system emergency and a simple annoyance.
BTW…the B757 (also true for the A300 and MD11) without auto throttles (not talking about an inop thrust management computer where you have to reference manuals for thrust settings since they’re not be displayed) should be a non event even for the average crew regardless of time of day. This is a failure of the training center and/or lack of knowledge/experience specifically with the Capt of the flight. One good thing this crew did was get multiple people involved to “problem solve”. At UPS we could talk to Mx after block out but always had to contact Dispatch first and they would connect us to Mx while they listened to the problem. The dispatcher is just as responsible for the safety of flight so I never had an issue with that. Many times I used the SatCom over VHF simply because it was a clearer connection and more private if warranted.
Also, in closing, I’ve never been a fan of these zero to hero posts and social media stories of folks getting to the left seat in as few years as possible. While it gets the requisite “likes and follows” and constant stream of selfies to show mom, experience does account for some things in life and aviation is one of those. It’s what you fall back on when you run out of luck and options at the same time. I feel all these uber quick upgrades is resulting in a severe lack of “situational experience” when things go bump in the night…
