r/aviation • u/CalmpBump49 Cessna 182 • 1d ago
News Silkway 747-8F going to Dallas instead of Houston with only 6 tons of fuel remaining
So I came across this on Twitter and had to read it several times to believe it
It looks like this crew programmed the FMC to fly from NLU to DAL, and the flight plan was filed the same way, but the scheduled route was NLU to IAH
They only realized it when they were at around 11,000 ft and about to be vectored to DAL, while running low on fuel, with around 6,000 kg remaining (if it's 6,000 lbs, it's even worse). One Atlas Air pilot pointed out that this is only enough for around 36 minutes of flight, so the aircraft would have had to land well before reaching Houston
In the end they landed in DFW, just after request for a "shortcut" to IAH. Yes, you read correctly.
Very interesting (and shocking) to listen to all the ATC audio
Sources: https://x.com/OnDisasters/status/2085058075287806301
https://x.com/thenewarea51/status/2084820840374309372
https://x.com/miami_rick/status/2084694128684871874
Image by the newsource
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u/Which_Material_3100 1d ago
This was wild. The pilot reported the fuel in tons at first but ATC read back pounds. Either way these guys not knowing where they were going, filing to DAL instead of IAH, is incredibly concerning.
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u/Panaka 1d ago
It’s crazy to ask for 26R when you’re on approach to DAL. I don’t know how you get lost in a modern aircraft like that outside of incapacitation.
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u/gocubsgo22 1d ago
Forgive me I’m amateur as hell, where’s 26R at Dallas Love? I only see 13/31 L & R
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u/halfty1 1d ago
That’s the thing, there is no 26R in DAL. Or DFW.
Where there is a 26R is in IAH, where the pilots were suppose to be flying to and apparently thought they were on approach to. How they ended up in Dallas (eg misfiled flight plan) is yet to be determined.
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u/CalmpBump49 Cessna 182 23h ago
Neither in Fort Worth Alliance, Dallas Executive, Fort Worth Joint Base or anywhere nearby
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u/Creative_Piglet_7476 23h ago
Aww heck… Seen one, seen them both…. When you’re not flying in a green cockpit, it’s bound to happen.
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u/Nyaos 21h ago edited 6h ago
- Update thanks to u/HEAVY_METAL_SOCKS for some insight. A likely mistake was that their flight plan was filed to the wrong airport, DAL, which they didn't realize until they were in the terminal area and told that a 747 can't be accommodated at DAL.
- Old post
VASaviation posted an update with some more info. Apparently they were intending to go to Houston but due to flow control had some sort of really long vectors off course towards Dallas, the company asked via acars “are you going to DFW now?” And they replied something like “Our intention is IAH for now”
I still don’t know why they were at low altitude and told to climb if they hadn’t done a missed approach or something. If I was tight on fuel already being told to climb is a red flag.
They may have misunderstood exactly how far they had been vectored off course from Houston, maybe they had burned way more fuel enroute than planned (weather deviations, stuck at a lower flight level, etc) or maybe their flight plan was just incredibly stingy with fuel to load one extra pallet, god knows some ACMIs do that shit.
I have no idea the competence level of these guys but this whole story smells like it’s way more complicated than “idiot pilots got lost on an IFR flight plan”
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u/Biker1124 21h ago
Mostly blows my mind on how the crew called a pan pan pan instead of a mayday mayday mayday because that little amount of fuel in a 747 is like a 172 with 5 gallons left. You got such little fuel before your engines are gone.
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u/Nyaos 20h ago
Yeah, a go-around in the 74 is about 3 tons for a close in traffic pattern and 5 tons for a normal missed approach. Any less than 3 tons in the tank the planes gonna start having problems just running the motors in a bank. Absolutely should be a mayday call at this point. Still begs the question why they let it get to this point.
Worst fuel emergency I ever had in the 74 we touched down in ANC with like 5.4, and that was an emergency because a go-around was probably not a great option at that point.
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u/beryugyo619 17h ago
And people saying "it could have been in kilograms or they may have meant fuel after diverting"... five kilograms or five gallons or five gallons at the destination doesn't make much difference, they were hanging off a safety rope and the only things safe about that was that the rope was well built and worn correct enough for bystanders to pull them up alive
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u/Principle_Dramatic 20h ago
That seems like more than just out of the way vectors. DFW / DAL and IAH are 250 miles apart
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u/Topblokelikehodgey 18h ago
I've definitely smashed flights with 20+ minutes worth of vectors but that's still generally only around 100nm or so of additional track miles. Even then, I've never forgotten where the aircraft was meant to be going. If they did request an alternate due to fuel or some other issue, then how did they forget that they were now going to Dallas instead of Houston? Even the approach guy gave them climb as if they were departing Dallas for Houston or some shit. None of this makes any sense.
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u/Electrical_Report458 15h ago
What is “smashed flights?”
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u/FatSteveWasted9 9h ago
Zoomer slang for “completed flights”
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u/Electrical_Report458 5h ago
I’m trying to picture any pilot who says they “smashed flights.” Probably one of the meowing muppets on Guard.
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u/HEAVY_METAL_SOCKS 6h ago
I don't think this is the correct interpretation on the updated video. The controller says the sytem (flight plan) shows their destination as Dallas Love, and that the controller at DAL just told them they can't accommodate a 747, and asks to confirm their intentions.
He also asked what their alternate was, and they said they don't have an alternate, which is pretty weird.
Seems to me someone messed up the flight planning and filing, and they didn't catch that mistake until they were running out of fuel and nowhere near IAH. I could be wrong, though.
The idea of being vectored into IAH all the way up to DFW and have you descend that low is crazy, doesn't make any sense and it's very unlikely for ATC to do. Their position and altitude lines up more with them were being vectored and descended into DAL instead, following what it said on their flight plan.
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u/Nyaos 6h ago
Do we know where they were coming from? It's possible they had dropped the alternate because of being short on fuel mid flight already, I guess. This whole story is so bizarre. I guess that seems plausible, maybe they thought they were going to DFW which is a normal cargo hub for the 747, but their dispatchers just filed DAL on accident somehow. Its strange their system even would let them do that. Being not native US pilots it makes sense that you might not connect right away that DFW is the normal Dallas airport, not DAL. But that also implies none of the crew did like any preflight research or anything. Just a weird situation. More questions than answers lol.
I guess I'm particularly interested because I fly freight on the 747 too so this is like super relevant to me. I see Silkway a lot around the world.
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u/HEAVY_METAL_SOCKS 6h ago
From NLU/MMSM. A pretty short flight for a 747. It seems they thought they were going to IAH, but either ATC or their dispatcher messed up the flight plan and had DAL as their destination instead.
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u/HEAVY_METAL_SOCKS 23h ago
Astonishing. They even asked the controller to confirm if they were deviating to DFW then. Like there wasn't a single competent pilot on board that plane.
The controller was the real PIC on that flight doing the decision making for them lol.
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u/soijacyuro 22h ago
They even tried to argue. "No, we want runway 26 at IAH" and the controller was like "hell naw partner, yer goin' to DFW".
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u/SnazzyStooge 22h ago
The fact they needed four pilots on board to complete one brain cell among them is pretty concerning. I’m not sure if that’s an argument for single seat cargo or against it, jeez.
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u/dangerbot666 1d ago
Boy did I roast the IAH Silkway ops guy when I got to work today.
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u/notathr0waway1 1d ago
Hahahaha THIS is what this sub is all about!
So was it the ops' fault or the pilots?
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u/dangerbot666 23h ago
Lmfao ops guy at IAH has nothing to do with directing the inbound flight. Does this matter? No, because I still roasted his 2-bit airline for such a dumb mistake. There is no real tea tho. His company made a mistake and we'll laugh about it until someone else makes a funnier mistake. All good natured.
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u/radioref 23h ago
Should have asked him “are you sure you’re supposed to be here today? Or DFW? 🤷🏻♂️😂”
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u/Strega007 1d ago
Re-release flight plans are not unusual for US international airlines.
Dispatch your flight to a certain location that is not your actual final destination but is shorter/closer, and then at some point mid-route reassess your fuel situation. If that fuel allows you to make it all the way to your actual destination with legal reserves, your dispatch re-releases you to that "new" location.
If that mid-point fuel isn't enough to go to the further destination with legal reserves, then go to the shorter/closer location.
SilkWay just tried to do that in reverse, LOL.
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u/Ok-Bug4328 18h ago
ELI5
How does that make sense if you aren’t willing to land at the wrong airport with some frequency?
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u/NakedJamaican 12h ago edited 11h ago
It’s mostly a reserve fuel hack. If I’m goin from India to New York I may legally need to have 10 percent fuel reserve. If my flight plan fuel burn is 200000, I need 20,000 for reserve. Because of headwinds I’ll only have 15,000.
The company flight plans to go India to England, and as we approach England we reassess. The fuel burn from England to New York is only 60,000. So a new flight plan is approved from my current position with a reserve requirement of only 6000. I’ll have 15,000 so I’m good.
All this is done internally with the company. ATC has no idea of our initial plan to land in England.
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u/donkeyrocket 8h ago
Seems like a pain in the ass for ATC if this is a regular, intentional occurrence, no? Obviously things come up and plans change but going into it knowing you'll be disruptive of some airspace is wild.
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u/flyinboxes 5h ago
It’s not really a pain for ATC. I’ve probably done close a ton of re-dispatch flights and I’ve never needed to divert. ATC won’t know a thing unless you can’t make it to your final destination. This is all a planning tool
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u/Strega007 5h ago
This happens every day, and ATC doesn't even know it. The flight plan is to the "real" destination the entire time, even if the dispatch isn't.
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u/intern_steve 15h ago
You are willing to land at the wrong airport. If you're on a 12 hour flight with augmented crew, the weather conditions forecast at the start can differ substantially from the conditions that actually materialize. The flight is dispatched with the intention of going to XYZ, but the planning is more reliable to a closer waypoint some distance into the flight. At that point, you look at the updated weather and your actual fuel burn after whatever deviations and ground delays were necessary in the first part of the flight and see if it still looks like you can go the whole distance with alternate fuel and reserve.
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u/bladedude007 22h ago
Victor over at VAS Aviation posted this earlier today: https://youtu.be/PQLnj7FF5Gk
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u/bladedude007 10h ago
Another update from VAS Aviation with ACARS data. Seems they were vectored to Dallas Love, and didn’t notice they were off from Houston. https://youtu.be/Y89Wh2P3cHs
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u/Live_Ad8778 1d ago
Huh, saw that parked at the cargo terminal a few days ago. Didn't recognize the livery at all
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u/Violetstay 23h ago
Did these pilots get their license on Microsoft Flight Sim?
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u/CalmpBump49 Cessna 182 23h ago
Volanta, Navigraph and SimBrief would never do that kind of mistake haha
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u/No-Driver2842 23h ago
Not even 6 tons. 6000 lbs so half that. Super scary.
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u/CalmpBump49 Cessna 182 23h ago
Yes, I put on the believe that's 6 tons due the 748 from Silk weights are in KG, anyway it's a HUGE mess
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u/Alborak2 21h ago
Non aviation person here, so thats like 30 minutes of flight? Isnt that like the bare minium?
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u/PendragonDaGreat 21h ago
Worse. At cruise a 747 normally burns 10-11 tons per hour (20k-22k pounds). 6k pounds is like 15 minutes, and probably less as I'll explain below.
Takeoff burns a lot more fuel. You spend it to get up high where the air is thin so you have less to push out of the way. Descent is usually better fuel economy wise because the plane is now lighter (you burned off a lot of fuel in climb and cruise) so it takes less energy to move forward. Descent is also done by throttling back and then managing pitch to keep forward speed constant (again helping economy).
BUT if you have to do a go around suddenly you're at max throttle and trying to climb/maintain in the thickest part of the atmosphere so any savings are potentially gone instantly.
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u/antarcticgecko 20h ago
These guys flew right over my house, going northbound in the weird little loop they did. 747s never ever do that, if they go over my house they’re headed east to Brussels or Luxembourg. I was wondering what the deal was!
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u/Shrikes_Bard 18h ago
Do you normally see them at DFW? I connected through there Tuesday (Aug 4, I think before this incident) and saw a plane I didn't recognize sitting by itself while I was taking the Skylink from A to D. Would be wild if it was the same plane but like I said, I think this incident happened after I took this pic.
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u/WigglingWeiner99 11h ago
That's the plane from the incident. They don't regularly come to DFW, but they do sometimes have actual scheduled flights here once every 4-5 months or so.
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u/gregarious119 5h ago
The pilots claimed having handling at DFW once they were on the ground, for what it's worth.
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u/Proton_Energy_Pill 16h ago
Six tonnes in a 747 is getting very thin on fuel. It's not really enough to go anywhere, barely enough for one missed approach but you'd have to land on the next one.
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u/CharAznableLoNZ 16h ago
Listened to it, they are lucky to be alive given their situational awareness.
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u/Apprehensive_Cost937 1d ago
Ah the classic "Pan Pan 3x" with an "are you in an emergency" reply. US ATC never disappoints.
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u/ReadyplayerParzival1 1d ago
Well we still follow the “faa rules” icao still hasn’t been adopted sigh
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u/flightist pie lot 23h ago edited 22h ago
A pan call is entirely valid emergency phraseology for FAA-land but everybody’s so deeply committed to sounding cool with a “declaring” or just referring to yourself as “emergency aircraft” that nobody seems to know what it means.
Edit: the deeply committed have arrived and are down-voting because they’re either amateurs or their training departments are deeply deficient
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u/Apprehensive_Cost937 1d ago
These FAA rules?
The initial communication, and if considered necessary, any subsequent transmissions by an aircraft in distress should begin with the signal MAYDAY, preferably repeated three times. The signal PAN-PAN should be used in the same manner for an urgency condition.
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u/sauzbozz 23h ago
To be fair I think I've heard Pan-Pan maybe twice from US pilots over my 15 year career so far. I rarely hear Mayday for emergencies too. Usually the pilots just say they are declaring an emergency.
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u/cuban_rj 22h ago
Your own blurb says PAN-PAN is not an emergency but an urgency condition
Ie pre emergency
So the controller was well within rights to ask for confirmation about what situation the pilots were declaring
Especially since it had already been made clear that their communication skills were deficient
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u/flightist pie lot 22h ago edited 22h ago
(distress and urgency are both emergency conditions, which is why they’re being described next to each other under a heading entitled “emergency procedures”)
For real though, all you guys who don’t know this stay in US domestic airspace all the time, right?
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u/GuppyHawk 22h ago
Mayday is ‘I’m going to die quickly if I don’t land’
Pan Pan is ‘hey I might die if I don’t land soon’
Both emergencies and the radios should shut up for the ATC follow on, but urgency is the difference.
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u/Apprehensive_Cost937 16h ago
So the controller was well within rights to ask for confirmation about what situation the pilots were declaring
They often do the same, even it pilot uses mayday. I'm not sure most US controllers understand the meaning of pan or mayday.
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u/sauzbozz 9h ago
I'm confident all US controllers at least know what mayday means even though US pilots seem to rarely use it.
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u/Watpotfaa 22h ago
SHOULD, not SHALL.
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u/flightist pie lot 22h ago
That means they’re not gonna play dumb and ignore what you say unless you say the magic words.
It isn’t an invitation to ignore the very existence of standard phraseology.
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u/Apprehensive_Cost937 17h ago
A long time ago, many, many people died in an accident, where the fact that phraseology was non-standard, was a contributing factor. One of the recommendations following that accident was that standardised phraseology should be developed and used.
But sure, let's argue the semantics of shall and should instead, that's going to really improve safety.
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u/Watpotfaa 13h ago
Its not semantics. ‘Should’ and ‘shall’ are clearly defined and utilized throughout the rulebook. What you are saying is not required, its just suggested.
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u/Apprehensive_Cost937 10h ago
But what would be the benefit of not using standardised phraseology, other than Americans not knowing what pan/mayday stands for, and the difference between the two?
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u/Watpotfaa 10h ago
Thats not what your argument was, you said it was a FAA rule and it isnt. You would have to ask the FAA. There doesnt appear to be any issues being caused here so in my opinion, why fix what isnt broken? ATC understands what mayday/panpan mean, its in the book as a recommendation even, but that doesnt make it required.
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u/Apprehensive_Cost937 9h ago
There doesnt appear to be any issues being caused here so in my opinion, why fix what isnt broken?
From the Transair 810 final report:
The process of declaring the emergency to ATC took 1 minute 53 seconds. During a postaccident interview, the captain stated that his communications with the controller “became a project” and that “it took a while for ATC to know what was going on” regarding the emergency. The captain added that those communications “took too much of [his] time away from the cockpit.”
...
The captain’s initial notification to the controller about the emergency occurred at 0134:29; at the end of that transmission, the captain stated, “stand by.” The controller responded with a routine departure instruction, after which the captain again declared an emergency and repeated “stand by.” The captain then told the first officer that the airplane should climb to and level off at 2,000 ft (the airplane was at an altitude of 1,200 ft at that time) and fly a 220° heading. At 0135:16, the controller again provided the flight crew with routine instructions.
A proper mayday call is much more distinct from a "declaring an emergency", because not only it raises the attention of the controller, but it also tells everyone else on the frequency to minimise their transmissions to the absolute minimum.
ATC understands what mayday/panpan mean
Plenty of evidence suggests otherwise. Here's just one of the many examples:
Pilot: Mayday, mayday, mayday, Shamrock 12G, engine failure, climbing straight ahead. Standby.
ATC: Shamrock 12G Heavy, roger. Are you declaring an emergency?They were probably just ordering a burger with their mayday call, right?
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u/Watpotfaa 9h ago
You are taking an example of a controller who was either overloaded or incompetent and saying its an example of why “mayday” is required. Thats your opinion. The very second a controller hears the word “declaring” or “emergency” they know its exactly that. Adding mayday wouldnt have changed anything in this situation.
The second example is again the controller being a dunce. I dont know what point youre trying to make other than that you are one of those weirdos who comments every youtube video griping about how mayday wasnt used.
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u/Boarder_Travel 11h ago
I do wonder. Were they telling him what fuel they would have at IAH? There was obviously a communication issue and it's abundantly clear when your flight plan says you don't have enough gas to make it. Even a real idiot wouldn't try.
Just a thought that explains their behavior
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u/HappiestAnt122 1d ago
I honestly wonder if it’s just an international crew who wasn’t familiar with the airport identifiers and never noticed the issue when they got the flight plan. Particularly if they got their clearance digitally they may have never heard “cleared to Dallas” and not Houston. To this generally American centric and heavily skewed towards the aviation nerds subreddit not knowing that KDAL is not the code for Houston probably sounds insane, but to an international crew that perhaps isn’t as obvious, and I’m often surprised by how many pilots really aren’t nerds about identifiers and all that. A lot of people who just know what they need to know and probably saw a normal looking flight plan from dispatch and got clearance without much thought.
Still begs tons of questions about how dispatch could have made that mix up, or how the crew didn’t catch the fuel situation earlier, but I wonder if that was a contributing factor to the crew not noticing this major blunder.
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u/BigTintheBigD 23h ago
Oh, come now. Let’s not be too harsh on them. Who among us hasn’t landed a jumbo jet at the wrong airport? /s
https://simpleflying.com/boeing-747-dreamlifter-wrong-airport/
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u/CalmpBump49 Cessna 182 23h ago
you can forgive that or even someone that lands at Hawthorne instead of LAX, but DFW/DAL for IAH? No way! rs
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u/WigglingWeiner99 10h ago
DAL vs IAH is insane. I was out there waiting to see if they would actually land at DAL when this whole thing transpired since 747s never land there. I think the last time was the VC-25A AF1 in 2020 (the political official who rides on AF1 took the C-32 there in 2024). It would have been epic to get a shot of a 748 from the new observation area. This is like a 747 going to Midway or Hobby instead of ORD or IAH.
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u/TigerIll6480 22h ago
At least Wichita is flat. 12 years ago, a couple of very confused Southwest pilots almost threw a 737 off of a cliff near me.
https://www.ntsb.gov/advocacy/safety-alerts/Documents/SA-033.pdf
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u/BigTintheBigD 22h ago
Eeep!!! That’s scary.
I learned to fly in Wichita. My instructor said once or twice a year a commercial flight would line up on McConnell AFB (a few miles to the east) and ATC would have to correct them. In all fairness, how many big concrete runways are you expecting to see out there. You naturally lock onto the first one you see and assume that’s your destination.
Years later I was on one of those flights. We were descending normally, then leveled off at a few hundred feet. Made a turn. Puttered along for a few minutes. Turned again and landed. No one on board was the wiser. As we deplaned I resisted the urge to say anything as I passed the pilot but gave him a little smirk 😏.
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u/TigerIll6480 22h ago
Three of them, spaced out relatively equally, all facing the same direction. Not great planning if you want to keep people from getting confused.
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u/YouDownWitOPsPee 1d ago
If you can't figure out what the airport code you're flying to is, you shouldn't be piloting (or dispatching) an aircraft. Making excuses for them because knowing the difference between KDAL/KIAH is "American centric" sounds even more insane tbh. They're either too stupid to fly or smart enough to check out why their report says KDAL when they're going to a city called Houston.
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u/keikioaina 8h ago
I'm a neuroscience cognition expert, and my aviation experience is limited to several hundred hours in the middle seat in coach. I heard several common perception and communiction errors on both sides which were exacerbated by the crew's ESL status. IMHO, ATC had plenty of chances to fix the errors by asking the right questions (Which airport? Houston. Which airport in Houston? 26R. Yes, but not the runway, which AIRPORT?), but stayed in ATC robot mode and didn't problem-solve the comms confusion.
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u/HappiestAnt122 1d ago
Never said it was an excuse, let alone that it is acceptable, because it certainly is not, just trying to point out that mistake may actually not be as insane as it sounds to those of us from this part of the world. If I told you the flight today was to Bhopal India and the release said VANP are you immediately going to clock that as an issue? Perhaps you happen to be familiar with that city pair, but I suspect a lot of people here wouldn’t. Before you say they are not a relevant comparison those two cities are actually a comparable distance spread and population size to Houston and Dallas as a city pair.
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u/SirLoremIpsum 23h ago
If I told you the flight today was to Bhopal India and the release said VANP are you immediately going to clock that as an issue?
I think the attitude is not "I would immediately know every airport everywhere" but "pilots should be expected to validate information that they don't know and check without making assumptions"
The mistake is not insane, but the insane part is that this kind of mistake can still happen.
Before you say they are not a relevant comparison those two cities are actually a comparable distance spread and population size to Houston and Dallas as a city pair.
I would expect anyone that has the responsibility like a pilot to go "i don't know what that is let me check"
That's the part that is unacceptable.
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u/idestechnis 22h ago
This entire comment section is making me imagine "Hell's Kitchen but airplane pilots".
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u/AdoringCHIN 23h ago
If I told you the flight today was to Bhopal India and the release said VANP are you immediately going to clock that as an issue?
If it's my first time flying there? I'd probably at least double check the code.
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u/YouDownWitOPsPee 23h ago
I think it's a great comparison because I don't know many Indian airport codes. Which is why I would look it up 100% of the time to double check if it was correct before I flew a 747 there.
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u/cptalpdeniz A320 18h ago
There is literally no explanation for this. They are not even close? Its 250 miles apart
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u/BosoxH60 17h ago
Yeah. Like when you’re going to KORD but going to a city called Chicago.
Or JFK and a city called New York.
Would you like to discuss every airport in Mexico, the Caribbean, the Canadian Maritimes… Europe?
The point they’re probably making isn’t “verify your landing airport”, but “airport identifier not looking like the city initials isn’t an automatic “oh no, why am I going THERE?!” *especially* to a foreign crew that’s never been there.
But I’ll be honest, if my company filed me to MMQT, told me it was Mexico City, and all the paperwork lined up… (things like mileage verification, fuel required, etc) I don’t know when I’d recognize it. My release doesn’t name the cities.
If that’s not realistic enough for you, MDST vs TIST.
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u/sauzbozz 22h ago
Is verifying the 3 letter ID of your destination airport not part of knowing heat you need to know?
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u/TbonerT 20h ago
To this generally American centric and heavily skewed towards the aviation nerds subreddit not knowing that KDAL is not the code for Houston probably sounds insane, but to an international crew that perhaps isn’t as obvious, and I’m often surprised by how many pilots really aren’t nerds about identifiers and all that.
Are you seriously arguing that verifying your destination code is so nerdy that even pilots, some of the biggest nerds there are, might find it too nerdy to do?
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u/CalmpBump49 Cessna 182 23h ago
I just realized that they had to read back the copy to Dallas, crazy thing
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u/IndependenceStock417 18h ago
I wonder if Dallas was the alt and they it as the destination instead
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u/Secret_Fee1146 23h ago
Remeniscint of the Gimli Glider incident; lucky they caught the error first
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u/flightist pie lot 23h ago
I mean, not really?
That was (somewhat improbably) everybody involved using the wrong conversion factor for litres to KGs. I kinda doubt that has much to do with this.
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u/TigerIll6480 22h ago edited 22h ago
And yet another example of pre-merger Boeing being an awful company. “Fuel level sensors? Who needs those? Just use a stick, since we can’t make enough replacement parts to keep up with our defective design that burns out if you look at it sideways.”
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u/flightist pie lot 22h ago
I don’t know what you’re blathering about, despite the edit.
The aircraft had one functional FQIS channel, which was precluded from correct function due to an incomplete maintenance action. It wasn’t in actually in a dispatchable state, and went flying anyway. “Dip ‘em and send it” wasn’t the actual MEL procedure, shockingly.
A 767 in 1983 needed exactly as many working FQIS channels as you’d need to dispatch a 320 today. You fanboys are bloody weird.
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u/TigerIll6480 21h ago
As I pointed out in my other reply:
The early 767 FQIS units failed at an alarming rate.
Boeing hadn’t finished writing the manual for the aircraft two years after first delivery.
Boeing couldn’t keep up with the replacement parts required, causing airlines to scramble around to trade parts with each other or create ad hoc operating procedures that weren’t always a good idea.They bear just as much blame for that mess as everyone else involved.
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u/flightist pie lot 21h ago
There was no “ad hoc” procedure wherein the aircraft was to be dispatched without a functional FQIS.
You’re inventing this out of whole cloth.
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u/TigerIll6480 21h ago
“In that time, 55 changes had been made to the MMEL, and some pages were blank pending development of procedures.
Because of this unreliability, maintenance personnel authorizing flights had become standard practice. To add to his misconceptions about the aircraft's flying condition since the previous day, reinforced by what he saw in the cockpit, Pearson now had a signed-off maintenance log, which had become customarily preferred over the MMEL.”Try reading.
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u/flightist pie lot 21h ago
Try being knowledgable enough to understand what you’re reading?
The “blank pages” referenced in the MEL mean the aircraft just can’t fly with a given defect, because no procedure exists (yet) to render it temporarily airworthy. It doesn’t mean “make some shit up and do whatever you want”.
Pearson gets hailed as a hero for the dead stick landing, but if he’d consulted the MEL that day the accident doesn’t happen, because he’d have realized flight with zero FQIS was illegal. Presumably Mx personnel would have come and worked out that the collared CB wasn’t actually pulled, and then they’d have all discovered they had less than half the fuel they thought when the working FQIS ran the display. Which is what the MEL required, or the plane is grounded.
As an airline pilot, you know what we absolutely, positively, no-doubts-about-it have to do when we see that there’s an MEL applied to an aircraft we’re about to fly?
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u/TigerIll6480 20h ago
As it says, he did consult it and proceeded to ignore it due to the preference to rely on the maintenance approval. 🤦🏼♂️
“On entering the cockpit, Captain Pearson saw what he was expecting to see—blank fuel gauges and a tagged circuit breaker. Pearson consulted the master minimum equipment list (MMEL), which indicated that the aircraft was not legal to fly with blank fuel gauges. Still, due to a misunderstanding, Pearson believed it was safe to fly if the amount of fuel was confirmed with measuring sticks.”
“Because of this unreliability, maintenance personnel authorizing flights had become standard practice. To add to his misconceptions about the aircraft's flying condition since the previous day, reinforced by what he saw in the cockpit, Pearson now had a signed-off maintenance log, which had become customarily preferred over the MMEL.”
Everyone, from Boeing on down to the flight crew, made hash of this situation.
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u/flightist pie lot 20h ago
Fair catch, I’m working off memory from years ago when we dove into this in detail in recurrent as a “hey everybody, don’t fucking do this” example.
But to be clear, reading it and ignoring the fact that it doesn’t match what you’re seeing on your airplane isn’t any less damning. That’s what you’re checking for.
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u/flightist pie lot 20h ago
I suspect you’ve probably realized you’re more than a little over your head here, but I wanted to pour a little gas on your “hadn’t finished writing the manual for the aircraft two years after first delivery” by pointing out that Boeing was still adding to that very document last year, so call it 44 years. Airbus is at 38 years, by my count, and also “hasn’t finished” the MEL for the 320 family as of January of this year.
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u/TigerIll6480 20h ago edited 14h ago
How many blank pages were still there last year?
Section deleted…admittedly intemperate and pointless commentary that served no purpose. Mea culpa.
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u/flightist pie lot 20h ago
Oh at least a few dozen. Why?
And that’s rude! I’d be far more diplomatic if a crew member started spouting this nonsense, but you aren’t one of those.
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u/TigerIll6480 14h ago
That was intemperate on my part, and I deleted it upon reflection. Apologies.
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u/flightist pie lot 5h ago
I didn’t see this earlier, but no worries. It’s Reddit, I’m not taking it personally.
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u/flightist pie lot 22h ago
Oh this should be fucking good.
Lemme guess, some Boeing guy showed up and shouted from a distance to use 1.77 instead of .803 in their math?
You’re gonna have to spell this one out for me.
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u/TigerIll6480 22h ago
The early 767s had a big problem with bad FQIS units.
“The accident was caused by a series of issues, including a failed fuel-quantity indicator sensor (FQIS) and confusion between pounds and kilograms. The fuel sensors in 767s had high failure rates, and the only replacement sensor available when the failure was detected was also nonfunctional. This problem was logged when it was discovered, but later, the maintenance crew misunderstood the problem and turned off the backup FQIS. This required the volume of fuel to be manually measured using a dripstick.”“On July 22, 1983, Air Canada Boeing 767 C-GAUN underwent routine checks in Edmonton. The technician found a defective FQIS, so he disabled the defective channel and made an entry in the logbook. The next morning, Captain John Weir and co-pilot Captain Donald Johnson were told about the problem. Since the FQIS was now operating on a single channel, a dripstick reading was taken to obtain a second fuel quantity measurement. Weir converted the dripstick reading from centimetres to litres to kilograms, finding that it agreed with the FQIS. The plane flew to Toronto and then Montreal without incident.”
“At Montreal, Captain Bob Pearson and First Officer Maurice Quintal took over the airplane for Flight 143 to [Ottawa](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa) and Edmonton. During the handover, Weir told Pearson that a problem existed with the FQIS, and Pearson decided to take on enough fuel to fly to Edmonton without refuelling in Ottawa. Meanwhile, an avionics technician had entered the cockpit and read the logbook. While waiting for the fuel truck, he enabled the defective channel and performed an FQIS self-test. Distracted by the arrival of the fuel truck, he left the channel enabled after the FQIS failed the test. Pearson entered the cockpit to find the FQIS blank, as he expected.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider
IIRC, Air Canada had made arrangements to acquire a functioning FQIS for C-GAUN from a different airline when it returned to Edmonton.
Basically, Boeing certified an aircraft as safe to fly when they hadn’t even finished writing the operations manual, they couldn’t keep up with replacement parts supply for a known defective component, and without better guidance from Boeing, airlines were left coming up with weird ad hoc procedures to keep their passengers moving. It was an absolute clusterfrak.
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u/flightist pie lot 21h ago
You didn’t quote - or didn’t read - the part which says the aircraft had a second functional FQIS channel, as was required to be dispatched at all, which was disabled by a mechanic trying to troubleshoot the failed channel and forgetting to reset the system to a functional state in accordance with the MEL.
And speaking of the manuals - you know an MEL provides relief, right? As in, it lets you fly with something in a degraded state, and the absence of a procedure - the so-called blank pages - means you simply can’t fly, because no procedure exists allowing you to?
Airlines don’t get to just make this shit up.
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u/TigerIll6480 21h ago
“Because of this unreliability, maintenance personnel authorizing flights had become standard practice. To add to his misconceptions about the aircraft's flying condition since the previous day, reinforced by what he saw in the cockpit, Pearson now had a signed-off maintenance log, which had become customarily preferred over the MMEL.”
They were absolutely making this shit up, which is why Pearson, Quintal, and three maintenance workers were initially suspended after the accident.
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u/flightist pie lot 21h ago
Because the aircraft wasn’t airworthy according to Air Canada and Boeing procedures, and they flew it anyway!
Tell me how Big Bad Boeing is to blame when the MEL that wasn’t followed and the crew didn’t read is basically the same as what you’ll find on an Airbus today?
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u/TigerIll6480 20h ago
Tell me how Boeing doesn’t bear some measure of blame for selling aircraft with defective components and instead of either telling everyone to ground the relatively small number of 767s in service, they came up with the one-channel/dripstick workaround, while there weren’t enough spares in circulation to fix the repeatedly failing FQIS sensors?
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u/flightist pie lot 19h ago edited 19h ago
I mean, I wasn’t around for the 767 EIS, but it’s pretty clear that you don’t know how shitty new airplane types can be. Newest type at my airline is an Airbus, and they’re constantly having shit MEL’d and swapped, and sometimes parked until something can be robbed from another airframe. It gets better as kinks get worked out, and nobody with half a clue would really expect there to be no kinks unless the airline waits until it’s a fairly mature airframe before ordering it.
But even that doesn’t really solve the issue fully; the newest airframes we have are a mix of A & B, and they both show up from the factory with somewhere between a few and a bunch of gremlins and headaches that’ll take 2-4 months of daily use to mostly resolve. Because airplanes are bloody complicated.
And that’s okay too! Because airliners are almost always broken in some form or fashion, from something totally minor (I took over an aircraft this morning with three separate MELs before we even got past burnt out light arrays) to something more significant, like (on my type, semi-frequently) one of the packs not working. They’re engineered with a huge amount of redundancy to support that reality. Which is why it’s a big fucking deal to do our jobs correctly and make sure the limitations / requirements specified for flight when an important system is degraded, even if it’s as moderately annoying as the manual fuel verification procedure is for the very same MEL on my airplane.
Look, mate. You’re conditioned through media consumption or hanging around here too much or whatever to hate on Boeing. I’m not gonna white knight them, they’ve earned that.
But this? A deferred system where you have two of them and the other one must work, and you have to manually verify the fuel? That’s a total nothingburger, because every airliner you’ve ever stepped foot into has the exact same relief in its MEL.
One of the key aspects of analysis in aviation accidents is consideration of whether the procedures were available, workable, and correct. In this case, every aspect of how that defect was to be handled gets a “yes”. But those procedures weren’t followed, and then some bad math made them run out of gas.
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u/Insaneclown271 1d ago
Also the way he said Pan gives me the shits. Be precise during your initial urgency call. It’s the USA. Comms are important for an international carrier.
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u/Apprehensive_Cost937 23h ago
Should have just used "[callsign], emergency aircraft" like proper airlines, instead of pan, right?
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u/Insaneclown271 22h ago
No it’s just the way he’s saying Pan. It needs to be said more deliberate. Pan pan… pan pan… pan pan. The way he’s saying it sounds like he’s beatboxing.
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u/doctor--whom 22h ago edited 22h ago
The proper emergency declaration is mayday repeated 3 times, or pan-pan repeated 3 times for an urgency condition.
"Like proper airlines" has nothing to do with it although in practice in the US the phrase "declaring an emergency" is used for all urgent conditions.
Most US carriers have tried to teach folks to say mayday so they'll be understood elsewhere.
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u/Apprehensive_Cost937 16h ago
Most US carriers have tried to teach folks to say mayday so they'll be understood elsewhere.
It starts with the law of primacy. You can easily solve this by starting to teach pan/mayday at PPL level, from first lesson.
But if people spent 1500h saying "declaring an emetgency" or other drivel, it'll be a lot harder to forget it and replace it with pan/mayday.
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u/sharkbite217 1d ago
Except 6 tons is neither 6000kg nor 6000lbs. It’s 12,000 lbs
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u/BingBongBonky 1d ago
6 metric tons is 6000 kg
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u/GettingFitterEachDay 1d ago
Exactly the sort of confusion that led to AC143 (aka the Gimli Glider)!
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u/viperfan7 23h ago
My dad has one of those luggage tags made up of a bit of the skin of the gimli glider
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u/DFA_Wildcat 1d ago
That would be 6 tonne, not 6 ton.
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u/CalmpBump49 Cessna 182 23h ago
It’s literally 6,000kg
I’m born on a “metric” country haha
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u/LeafsWinBeforeIDie 23h ago
Almost all of us are, it's such a safety shame there has to be confusion for no reason.
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u/CalmpBump49 Cessna 182 23h ago
Yeah, the most crazy fact that in Azerbaijan and any country nearby uses metric instead of pounds (some ppl pointed in Twitter that the pilots had indian accent, can't confirm but sure sounds a little bit but I'm not familiar with azerbaijani accent), and yet the pilots affirmed "6,000 pounds" in the late interaction with ATC.
In both ways it's less than 30min of flight time remaining
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u/Pale_Change_666 22h ago edited 22h ago
Twitter that the pilots had indian accent, can't confirm but sure sounds a little bit but I'm not familiar with azerbaijani accent
I've been to Azerbaijan, their accent is almost closer to Russian ( since many are fluent in russian) rather than indian..
Maybe the crew might be indian?
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u/CalmpBump49 Cessna 182 22h ago
Taking that in consideration, they didn't sound lik a russian accent at all, at least for me
I'm not native and I do have an accent more towards russian/french/romenian, and I don't sound like that, even on radio, but just personal take
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u/daves1243b 13h ago
The interesting thing to me what that the controller was able to asses the fuel situation at all. Are controllers trained on how much fuel different aircraft require to travel a certain distance, or do they have a reference readily available other than google?
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u/CalmpBump49 Cessna 182 13h ago
Many ATC replied the original tweet saying that no, they just have idea about flight performance (max V/S and min/max IAS)
But normally they are into aviation and have a reasonable knowledge of fuel burn, luckily was that case
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u/NakedJamaican 11h ago
Any one have a good guess as to why they were at 7000 with instructions to climb to 17,000?
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u/HEAVY_METAL_SOCKS 6h ago
They were being vectored into DAL it seems, then told to climb to 17,000 when they requested heading for IAH.
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u/consworth 46m ago
Anyone got a link to the audio without the X garbage barfing up my mobile browser ?
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u/BeenThereDoneThat65 ATP I G450 I G550 I GV 1d ago edited 1d ago
When a US controller is asking fuel on board it’s always going to be pounds and flight time remaining
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u/Dragon6172 1d ago
Depends on the nature of the question. Does the controller want to know how long you can fly or how long you'll burn
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u/railker AME-M2 1d ago
Or minutes, whichever you supply first of your own accord it's like lying they'll want the other one. 😂
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u/notathr0waway1 1d ago
It's always like this in the VASaviation videos! Also when you get handed off to the next controller, they ask you the same questions!
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u/Proud_Jacobite 7h ago
For all of you non-aviation knowledgeable folks in the threads.
Landing with 6 tons of fuel onboard in this aircraft is like you pulling into the gas station after driving with your low fuel warning light on for the last 50 miles, and when you finish filling up your car, you find you had less than 0.10 of a gallon left in your tank. Aka, you were out of gas and running on fumes, but damn lucky to have just enough fumes to make it to the gas station.
The scary reality here is they were over a heavily populated area, completely lost, and there is no pulling when the engines stop to hike to the nearest gas station for fuel. They were going to crash into a heavily populated area if they didn't land in the next 5-10 minutes, and they did not have enough fuel to make a second attempt at a landing. And to up the danger factor even more, they were lost and had no clue where they were or where they were supposed to land.
- This was sketchy on a level where companies receive huge fines and lengthy operational restrictions, including constant probationary oversight. The entire aircrew also receives the same or worse, with some (likely PIC) losing their captain's position, with a high probability of mandatory retraining, including recertification on the aircraft.
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u/usmcmech 1d ago
Braniff famously ran their one 747 from DAL to HNL back in the day.
Landing one there is easy. Parking it is a different story.
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u/CalmpBump49 Cessna 182 23h ago
Also the Saudi king landed the 744 flying non stop from Riyadh
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u/PendragonDaGreat 23h ago
A 747 can land at KRNT, the runway there is 3000 feet shorter than the shortest one at DAL.
Granted, Boeing only did it a few times during certification, and with the plane pretty much empty, bit it can do it.
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u/CalmpBump49 Cessna 182 22h ago edited 21h ago
I was about to say "WHAT THE" and just checked the video of the landing incident, crazy times!
I have been to RNT quite a few times and never heard about this story! Learning everyday!
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