757 A/T failure

Inverted said:
The FD on the 73 sucks elephant ballsack. I find myself almost ignoring them at times and letting the pitch bar come to my pitch attitude more than I pitch to them lol. Airbus FD was spot on and if you weren't in the center you turned them off.
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Good to know it’s not all me sucking
 
Inverted said:
The FD on the 73 sucks elephant ballsack. I find myself almost ignoring them at times and letting the pitch bar come to my pitch attitude more than I pitch to them lol. Airbus FD was spot on and if you weren't in the center you turned them off.
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You get the dimwits that blindly follow the FD, whatever it’s showing, to include on takeoff when it rises to about 25 degrees pitch; rather than just set a climb pitch and allow it to settle to that.

But for some, flying the airplane as a pilot, is hard. Or scary. Or both.
 
MikeD said:
You get the dimwits that blindly follow the FD, whatever it’s showing, to include on takeoff when it rises to about 25 degrees pitch; rather than just set a climb pitch and allow it to settle to that.

But for some, flying the airplane as a pilot, is hard. Or scary. Or both.
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I had an FO tell me I didn't follow pitch a lot with regard to the FD. I said "because it is wrong a lot". The takeoff pitch portion of the FD from rotation to 250 kts is so annoying and you for sure see those who don't know what the FD is telling you to do with the information it is giving. People really chase that thing which in some cases, makes the FD pitch fluctuations worse lol.
 
Wow. Where to begin? The children of magenta can’t even magenta anymore.


First. You just took out of SFO. Both engines still operating. No smoke or fire. You perceive a potential control issue with AP and AT. Why the heck would you ask for a low level off like 2,000 or 3,000??? Altitude would be your friend while you work things out. And headed northeast or east bound, there’s mountains there. No surprise ATC sent them to 5,000 ft. Use common sense, overall picture.

IMO - I’d hate to be as low as 2,000 ft while dealing with an AP or AT issue. Manually climb the airplane (like they were, handflying anyway) and get up to at least 5,000 ft.




Second, I’m shocked Delta policy allows pilots to directly talk to MX in flight.

We used to do that. Until one day, MX took a crew down the wrong rabbit hole on a flight to Hawaii. Now, we are prohibited from talking directly to MX when inflight. MX is usually limited to ground related stuff, eg, MELs. Their mindset in general is always from a reference frame of a plane on the ground. The 4 CBs he told them to pull, was that in the QRH? Or, is that for a plane at the gate/hangar under MX control? If Boeing wants those 4 CBs pulled, wouldn’t that be in the QRH? Rabbit hole. He’s talking about finding a reset for the crew? STRICTLY prohibited on our end - the only reset we are allowed to try is what’s in the QRH.

But backing up some more - we can’t even talk directly to MX. We have to call dispatch, who will get the FODO on the line. And then FODO goes through to maintenance on our behalf. He’s the check valve to make sure the crew isn’t sent down the wrong rabbit hole when in flight.





End result, no autothrottles. A 5 hr flight may be highly fatiguing? I’m gonna venture a guess this guy has never done an AT deferred flight before. Or fly much with AT off.




The overweight questions are ridiculous. He should know what the procedure is if you are landing overnight. Maybe not memorized word for word, but the general idea of it.

“Do I have to put an overweight landing in the MX book as a write up?”


- actual question posed by a Part 121 airliner Captain. Yikes!


First approach seems all over the place, with the female voice doing radios. Implies the CA was PF. Then the botched approach, overshooting as the CA has to manually control the power. Next approach, now CA voice comes on the radio for approach, which implies the female was now PF. Lands successfully. Either the CA realized he was in over his head, or the FO spoke up after realizing she’s had enough of this crap.



I’d expect this out of a 3rd world airline. Not Delta.
 
thevideographer said:
If you want to return return, I don't see the point of going back and forth with dx, ops, and the duty pilot trying to call it fatigue. Why is the CA of the plane begging people on the ground to return for a mechanical issue?
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MikeD said:
My question is, why was fatigue even brought up? Why was that back and forth even discussed on an open line (not to mention ways to cover it up by renaming it). Isn’t the Mx issue good enough justification for the return? I would have no problem flying with no A/T, as I do it all the time, but if someone isn’t, just call it as that. No need to rename it or refile it under something else.
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There are CAs like this in 121. They are the ones who’ll never make a decision. They’ll beg and plead with suggestions and ideas, but will never make a decision until dispatch or flight ops officer tells him what to do. As one Captain told me after he accepted the dispatch recommendation, “it’s out of my hands at this point.”

That dispatch is sitting in an air conditioned office while we are up here alone. If things get screwy, no one is going to buy that it was “out of your hands.”


It’s certain types of personalities. And it’s not just pilots. My older brother is a family doctor he literally cannot make a decision. Ever. Any big decision, my parents have basically made it for him, because he can’t. When he goes to buy shoes, he’ll bring home 3 pairs that look very similar. Again, he couldn’t choose one. (And he only needed one). He would be a classic case of a CA who would always look around to find someone else to make a decision for him.




And did you see how this CA led with the fatigue thing when talking to dispatch, how it’s not safe to go across the country with no ATs. But once switched to the flights ops officer, his language immediately changes to “they” said fatigue can be an issue and “they” were saying how we can return to SFO.


I kinda agree with the flight ops officer for calling this CA out. Don’t BS how you are now fatigued. You aren’t fatigued now. You are returning for a mechanical failure (lol , at AT off). So stick with that. This CA couldn’t even stick to his thought process.



This is the worst kind of CA, an indecisive one who needs his hand held by others. No command decision making. That was hard to listen to.
 
We have one weirdo who types in every single freq change we get from ATC into the scratch pad of the INS. I ask why he doesn’t just twist the freq into the radio as he’s reading it back, instead of doubling work. He says he might forget it as he’s reading it back to ATC. And can’t apparently do two things at once. Sheesh.
 
MikeD said:
We have one weirdo who types in every single freq change we get from ATC into the scratch pad of the INS. I ask why he doesn’t just twist the freq into the radio as he’s reading it back, instead of doubling work. He says he might forget it as he’s reading it back to ATC. And can’t apparently do two things at once. Sheesh.
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Ask him to pat his head while rubbing his belly...
 
MikeD said:
We have one weirdo who types in every single freq change we get from ATC into the scratch pad of the INS. I ask why he doesn’t just twist the freq into the radio as he’s reading it back, instead of doubling work. He says he might forget it as he’s reading it back to ATC. And can’t apparently do two things at once. Sheesh.
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But how many guys have you flown with who show up with their own custom-printed full page TOLD cards?
 
roundout said:
Straight out of the Airbus AFM. If the FD commands aren't going to be followed, the FDs must be turned off.
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Doesn’t change my statement.

Yes, I know what it says, and yes, I know why it says that. My point is, if you understand the system, you can hand fly it without blindly following the FD’s. An example is the Mt. Vernon visuals into DCA. If you already armed the approach, I’m not going to make you disarm the FD’s for a little zigzag.
 
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