Hilarious Lego Airline satire video

[SlumTodd_Millionaire]

On the contrary, we are married. We paid the most.

Exactly.

 

[PhilosopherPilot]

On the contrary, we are married. We paid the most.

Wait, some married people get to have sex?

 

[Cptnchia]

Wait, some married people get to have sex?

Yes, it's called "having an affair." Or did you mean with their actual spouses?

 

[PhilosopherPilot]

Yes, it's called "having an affair." Or did you mean with their actual spouses?

Oh an affair...that is VERY expensive sex.

 

[Tommay85]

Missing small insignificant things and phraseology has in my experience had no indication whatsoever on the big picture. If anything the opposite.
It's the guys that are concerned with the missed word that don't see the crossing restriction or the mountain under it. Because they're far too hung up on rediculous things. Your thoughts on this make me think of eastern 401.
When a training department gets hung up on such things they usually miss far more important deficiencies that could be caught and trained in the sim.
You also need to remember threats are much harder to see when you don't have every route and frequency memorized. If you're spending thought capacity on irrelevant minutia you're missing something important.

Yeah, no. There's plenty of training guys in this thread from other carriers that are disagreeing with this. I'm telling you, the majority of the ASAPs at the "lowly freight operator" are known "cowboys" with the company that don't mind the small things. There's a reason training departments/management at other carriers besides the "lowly freight operator" are hung up on the small things. They do matter, and attention to them DOES correlate. What you see as a line pilot is only a TINY portion of the big picture the rest of the flight department is seeing. I promise you that. You can scoff at AMF and my position with them, but I've seen things, and "attention to the small things means there's attention to the big things" is absolutely WAY more true than any other correlation out there. Consistently at least. More so than any training/flying/personal background even. Yes, there are those that will fly the SOP into the ground, but the non-compliant are going to hit the ground first.

 

[PeanuckleCRJ]

I still have no idea why that call is there or what I'm looking for but it's required.

I would love to have a 100% perfect operation but it's something you strive for and never achieve.

1000 and 500 are gates for stabilization requirements. Configured and lined up at 1000, on speed and spooled at 500. They are AFE, not RA.

I have always been accused of having extreme attention to detail... never been accused of getting wound up over the small potatoes, though. If someone calls Felch, so be it... I'm far more concerned that they know what the FMA is telling them (and the consequences as such) than some asinine pronunciation of what is shown up there.

 

[Tommay85]

That phrase completely ignores a concept called "task prioritization", in which a human makes a relative value judgment of different tasks and their potential impacts. That judgment allows each task to be given merit relative to both its overall impact on a situation AND the other tasks that are to be performed. Put simply, all tasks are not equal in importance or significance, and thereby failure to perform a particular task has a different impact depending on that importance.

In fact, task prioritization (and the judgment that allows pilots to task prioritize) is a core aspect of airmanship. This is a skill that pilots need, value, and practice on a daily basis. We judge and assign relative importance to tasks with every situation we encounter, and we act in accordance with that. We cannot/don't assign equal value to all required tasks, and perform them all with equal effort all the time.

So, no...just because you are skimping on the small stuff DOES NOT mean that you are also skimping on the big stuff. Wearing a non-standard belt with your airline uniform does not mean that you are also buzzing your home when your leg goes through your home town. Making a non-standard callout, or missing a standard callout, does not mean that you are also forgetting to perform the "before landing check".

There's a lot of General Patton leadership wisdom I admire, but this concept, unfortunately, is not one of them. In my experience as both a military officer and aviator, it is bollocks.

In big generalities, things that look pretty probably are pretty (e.g., if a pilot is doing the small things well, he's probably also doing the big things well), but to make it an absolute is ridiculous.

We've only briefly gone back and forth on this in another thread, but I still disagree. It's not any harder to fly the SOP to a T. Part of that SOP includes task prioritization and if you put yourself in a situation where you run out of time to complete ALL of the tasks, in order, well, you weren't setting up the airplane very well from the beginning. Guilty. I've loaded up an FO/myself before.

The majority of the ASAPs are filed by guys that wear dirty or the reduced uniforms (polo instead of bars and tie/shorts) because "it's just freight"... Yeah, I went there fellow AMFers.

There are some SOP things that are ridiculous and should be left up to the pilot's judgement, I agree, but that's how the company wants it. If it's unsafe, file an ASAP. I've found things get fixed or clarified very quickly in that case. Ameriflight is relatively small though.

 

[Tommay85]

I disagree. When I zone in and focus on small things sometimes I lose sight of the big picture.

Well, you shouldn't...

I'm gonna be a dick and say that you probably aren't minding the small things on a regular basis. We're talking the SMALL things, right? Small things don't require much, if any, mental effort. That's why they're the small things.

Two examples. In the 120, whoever is flying is supposed to announce to the other pilot what mode they're using/changing to (separate flight control panels). Simple, small detail. If we're dealing with an emergency and you don't tell me what you're doing over there and my flight director is doing crazy things, well, you've just distracted me from the QRH.

Single pilot, Metro (UGH, yeah whatever! ), your uniform isn't very nice looking day-to-day. Weird, you're the subject of my passive aggressive emails about various items every week, or your line check is the worst out of the rest of the pilots.

 

[Autothrust Blue]

Since when was this a serious discussion again?

 

[ASpilot2be]

Well, you shouldn't...

I'm gonna be a dick and say that you probably aren't minding the small things on a regular basis. We're talking the SMALL things, right? Small things don't require much, if any, mental effort. That's why they're the small things.

Eh. Everybody suffers from tunnel vision from time to time. Not saying it happens all the time, but it can happen quite easily.

 

[alaskadrifter]

Since when was this a serious discussion again?

Welcome to JetCareers, work work work, union! Work work work, cake!

 

[Tommay85]

Eh. Everybody suffers from tunnel vision from time to time. Not saying it happens all the time, but it can happen quite easily.

Edited a little.

Oh and @Hacker15e

I model my leadership between a combination of Patton and Roosevelt (at least for now). I like Patton, but I like that Roosevelt ran up the hill first!

 

[Tommay85]

Since when was this a serious discussion again?

Because intranets.

 

[Tommay85]

Or do what a real pilot would do, and raid the free ones in BOS on the way up to the terminal...

@UAL747400 When a wide range of line pilots, 121 and 135, are saying, "No, that's not quite the case," I think a slice of humble pie is in order.

FTFY and bolded. As far as 135s go, I rank 99.9% of 135s below AMF operationally speaking... 121s? Eh, not going to get to specific on that, but I would definitely rank some WAY below any part 91 operation even. Not meant at all to be condescending, but like I mentioned earlier, the training department, management, and I'll include the union reps, see WAY more of the big picture.

The consensus seems pretty clear to me, both here and at other companies. If you're not paying attention to the small things, the big things are slipping as well. It is probably ridiculous to make that an absolute qualifier, but it has been true most of the time for AMF, and others as well I'm sure.

Before you lump me in with being "out of touch". I'm the highest flight time pilot in the entire company for the year, because freight is LAME! I'm no desk jockey is what I'm getting at, but I still see things...

I will make that correlation because I've yet to find it to be false. There probably is ONE person that can do their own thing, but I would not be surprised at all at their future incident and I would not have their back...

 

[ppragman]

Well, you shouldn't...

I'm gonna be a dick and say that you probably aren't minding the small things on a regular basis. We're talking the SMALL things, right? Small things don't require much, if any, mental effort. That's why they're the small things.

Task saturation is a thing, you know, right? I mean, I've also seen guys in the actual airplane in flight say the "right callouts" and miss dropping the gear even though they said, "Gear Down, Three Green, One in the Mirror." I've seen this in very experienced and "good" aviators who are profile-nazis. To which I said, "uhh...I don't think so." I've also seen guys get so focused on something that's "out of the ordinary" that they miss the point when it comes to flying the airplane and things get out of hand. This is especially easy to "manufacture" in the simulator, and can usually be allowed to continue to the red screen.

Fly the airplane first, do the safest thing you can, always check your work, adhere to the FOM/GOM. In that order. The most important thing is that you focus on flying the airplane and taking the safest course of action before you do anything else.

If you miss a "500' AGL" callout or some other silly thing that someone has decided (usually without any data to back it up) that it will make pilots safer or more efficient, that doesn't mean you're going to forget to put the gear down. I'd be interested in seeing if there's any data that isn't anecdotal to support your claim that missing the little things means you'll miss the big things. I suspect that there may be some correlation, but only vaguely so. Realistically, I would suspect that the guys who "try to do the right thing" all the time tend to "do the right thing" most of the time, whereas the guys who don't care...well, they do what they want and they don't care what you think. Ultimately, that I suspect that means that the guys who "try to do the right thing," tend to have fewer problems than the guys who don't care, but if a guy cares and still misses some minutia that doesn't mean he's going to have problems. Clear as mud? Further, there's a bit of research out there that suggests savvy pilots might ignore a particular callout or company required duty if it comes at a time where workload doesn't permit it. I used to work for a company where the SOP was to push the props forward when you touched down before you went into reverse. If the weather was really crummy, I got the props forward outside the marker and was fully configured, where all I had to do was pull the power back and land when I got to minimums. Is that "bad airmanship?" I intentionally broke SOP, my god! Find a rope!

And as for callouts, I started typing this, then went down the rabbit hole.

Frankly, I doubt half of the places out there have any truly logical reason for the callouts they have or the profiles they fly other than someone always did it that way, or that's how the old chief pilot did it at his old job and now brand X has these procedures. Which callouts are truly important? I mean they're being used to orient your attention, at least that's the general idea. But is a particular callout necessary? Why did we pick them? Did we do any science to determine which ones we use? I don't know, I've searched around "teh googles" a little bit, with limited success. The only real info I could find was some work done by the FlightSafety Foundation that suggested that an absence of standard calls was a factor in numerous ALAR accidents, but really, were the lack of callouts the problem, or was the total disregard for terrain SA the problem? Personally, I don't think the data is there to suggest that all callouts are created equally, or that all callouts do the same thing, even when it's the same callout made under different circumstances. Can someone out there show me more science? I WANT MOAR!

This article suggests to me that despite all of the pats on the back we've given ourselves, it might not be the case that our error sieves are that effective.

Here's a cool article about how some callouts may simply be information transfer between the pilots (FMA callouts in the article) rather than actually being used as a mnemonic.

 

[ppragman]

FTFY and bolded. As far as 135s go, I rank 99.9% of 135s below AMF operationally speaking...

In what regards?

The consensus seems pretty clear to me, both here and at other companies. If you're not paying attention to the small things, the big things are slipping as well. It is probably ridiculous to make that an absolute qualifier, but it has been true most of the time for AMF, and others as well I'm sure.

Before you lump me in with being "out of touch". I'm the highest flight time pilot in the entire company for the year, because freight is LAME! I'm no desk jockey is what I'm getting at, but I still see things...

Citation needed.

 

[Tommay85]

Task saturation is a thing, you know, right? I mean, I've also seen guys in the actual airplane in flight say the "right callouts" and miss dropping the gear even though they said, "Gear Down, Three Green, One in the Mirror." I've seen this in very experienced and "good" aviators who are profile-nazis. To which I said, "uhh...I don't think so." I've also seen guys get so focused on something that's "out of the ordinary" that they miss the point when it comes to flying the airplane and things get out of hand. This is especially easy to "manufacture" in the simulator, and can usually be allowed to continue to the red screen.

Fly the airplane first, do the safest thing you can, always check your work, adhere to the FOM/GOM. In that order. The most important thing is that you focus on flying the airplane and taking the safest course of action before you do anything else.

If you miss a "500' AGL" callout or some other silly thing that someone has decided (usually without any data to back it up) that it will make pilots safer or more efficient, that doesn't mean you're going to forget to put the gear down. I'd be interested in seeing if there's any data that isn't anecdotal to support your claim that missing the little things means you'll miss the big things. I suspect that there may be some correlation, but only vaguely so. Realistically, I would suspect that the guys who "try to do the right thing" all the time tend to "do the right thing" most of the time, whereas the guys who don't care...well, they do what they want and they don't care what you think. Ultimately, that I suspect that means that the guys who "try to do the right thing," tend to have fewer problems than the guys who don't care, but if a guy cares and still misses some minutia that doesn't mean he's going to have problems. Clear as mud? Further, there's a bit of research out there that suggests savvy pilots might ignore a particular callout or company required duty if it comes at a time where workload doesn't permit it. I used to work for a company where the SOP was to push the props forward when you touched down before you went into reverse. If the weather was really crummy, I got the props forward outside the marker and was fully configured, where all I had to do was pull the power back and land when I got to minimums. Is that "bad airmanship?" I intentionally broke SOP, my god! Find a rope!

And as for callouts, I started typing this, then went down the rabbit hole.

Frankly, I doubt half of the places out there have any truly logical reason for the callouts they have or the profiles they fly other than someone always did it that way, or that's how the old chief pilot did it at his old job and now brand X has these procedures. Which callouts are truly important? I mean they're being used to orient your attention, at least that's the general idea. But is a particular callout necessary? Why did we pick them? Did we do any science to determine which ones we use? I don't know, I've searched around "teh googles" a little bit, with limited success. The only real info I could find was some work done by the FlightSafety Foundation that suggested that an absence of standard calls was a factor in numerous ALAR accidents, but really, were the lack of callouts the problem, or was the total disregard for terrain SA the problem? Personally, I don't think the data is there to suggest that all callouts are created equally, or that all callouts do the same thing, even when it's the same callout made under different circumstances. Can someone out there show me more science? I WANT MOAR!

This article suggests to me that despite all of the pats on the back we've given ourselves, it might not be the case that our error sieves are that effective.

Here's a cool article about how some callouts may simply be information transfer between the pilots (FMA callouts in the article) rather than actually being used as a mnemonic.

Once again, it is getting late! I will definitely read those tomorrow! First logical rebuttal so far rather than rhetoric or line pilot gossip!

I think the point you're bringing up is complacency though. I would argue that you could become just as easily and maybe even more dangerously complacent without standardization though. Gimme a few hours, will read and comment.

Our call outs in the Metro/1900 are 1000 feet for configuration and 500 feet for stabilization. In the 120 it's similar, but Vref is referenced continuously from 500 feet to the ground. We fly ref+10 or 130 for flaps 25 to the threshold, slowing to vref by the threshold. The 1000 foot call matters most obviously, but a quiet FO can get interesting in the 120 if the PF is focused outside too much.

 

[Tommay85]

In what regards?


Citation needed.

The first part, standardization, or at least the intent of standardization. I've compared our GOM to Air Wisconsins, page by page. It's identical in intent, and there isn't any shadiness what-so-ever with rest. *cough* most 135 charter *cough*
Whether or not the pilots and management follow that intent could be debatable. haha

The second part of what you quoted, there isn't. My word against those in the thread that work for companies that are better than 135 freight. If that makes them more credible, so be it. They are "just line pilots" though...

I do mean that only slightly condescendingly, only because most line pilot gripes don't even have half of the big picture in mind. Again, I've seen and learned things. Still am.

 

[ppragman]

The first part, standardization, or at least the intent of standardization. I've compared our GOM to Air Wisconsins, page by page. It's identical in intent, and there isn't any shadiness what-so-ever with rest. Whether or not the pilots and management follow that intent could be debatable. haha

The second part of what you quoted, there isn't. My word against those in the thread that work for companies that are better than 135 freight. If that makes them more credible, so be it. They are "just line pilots" though...

What I'm getting at is that there are great 135 outfits out there that are "together" have an excellent culture, and by and large at least make the attempt to do the right thing. Amflight isn't special in that regard, nobody wants to have an accident - and GOMs are by and large the same industry wide. AMF has it's merits, that's for sure, but I think you're wrong when you suggest that AMF is better than 99.9% of the 135 outfits out there operationally. The tiny little 135 I worked for in Anchorage before flying EMS had an ASAP program, the beginnings of a real SMS, we were doing full risk assessments which required dispatch involvement for all flights, we had onboard satellite tracking of all of our aircraft with two-minute pings, and did much more training than the bear minimum required by 135. In fact, we did training well beyond the requirements of 135, ran our guys in ATDs and did a yearly CFIT course that was developed to match how we flew operationally. I think the case could be made that you know not of which you speak. Not trying to be a dick or anything, but there are good 135 companies out there - really good ones. Hell, the one I work for is damn good. We're hiring.

As for the bolded, maybe not as many as you think. Also, though some of those guys may be "line pilots" now, many of them have a lot of other experience to draw from when it comes to where they are developing their opinions. There's certainly some truth that assertion, but just because a guy flies the line at his current job doesn't mean he didn't do more at the last gig.

 

[Tommay85]

What I'm getting at is that there are great 135 outfits out there that are "together" have an excellent culture, and by and large at least make the attempt to do the right thing. Amflight isn't special in that regard, nobody wants to have an accident - and GOMs are by and large the same industry wide. AMF has it's merits, that's for sure, but I think you're wrong when you suggest that AMF is better than 99.9% of the 135 outfits out there operationally. The tiny little 135 I worked for in Anchorage before flying EMS had an ASAP program, the beginnings of a real SMS, we were doing full risk assessments which required dispatch involvement for all flights, we had onboard satellite tracking of all of our aircraft with two-minute pings, and did much more training than the bear minimum required by 135. In fact, we did training well beyond the requirements of 135, ran our guys in ATDs and did a yearly CFIT course that was developed to match how we flew operationally. I think the case could be made that you know not of which you speak. Not trying to be a dick or anything, but there are good 135 companies out there - really good ones. Hell, the one I work for is damn good. We're hiring.

As for the bolded, maybe not as many as you think. Also, though some of those guys may be "line pilots" now, many of them have a lot of other experience to draw from when it comes to where they are developing their opinions. There's certainly some truth that assertion, but just because a guy flies the line at his current job doesn't mean he didn't do more at the last gig.

Indeed to all of that, but I'm mostly positive that most in this thread did not do any additional duties. Your previous company sounds like one of the .1%. There are many out there remember. There are many and I would have put AMF in the bottom .1 a year ago for sure. Honestly, AMF only improved when they couldn't fire people anymore because they needed them. Isn't it weird that incidents also dropped when they put forth the effort to fix problems rather that terminate it? Hahaha

Mostly drawing from three main areas. Training, management, union. Maybe recruiters see things too at some places. I get a little crotchety these days over line pilot assertions. Especially when there are guys from the 3 groups I mentioned that seem to be in agreement with what I'm saying. Maybe that complicity across the bored is another issue altogether. UGH, I'm going to bed. I'll argue with all of you tomorrow afternoon!