American Airlines now arriving at Terminal 5 at LHR

[Zach1213]

14 hours ago, Globaliser said:

 

No, it wasn't quite like that. IIRC, the first officer (who was properly licensed for airline flying and for that aircraft type) still had one more flight to do under the supervision of a training captain within Virgin Atlantic's line flying training, before he was fully released to line flying. After takeoff, some chat between them revealed that the captain of that flight wasn't a training captain, so they decided that the best thing to do was to return to Heathrow. Obviously, it was a rostering stuff-up, but it wasn't nearly as dramatic as the media made out. I imagine that each of the pilots assumed that there was no problem with them flying with the other one. I remember reading something on another board that said that a crew that's rostered to fly together on a trip doesn't usually start by challenging each other's qualifications in the briefing room, which seemed quite reasonable to me.

 

This is how I recall it too. Of course, the media made it sound like a Cessna 172 pilot somehow ended up flying an A330 for Virgin, but that wasn't even remotely true. All pilots on board that aircraft were fully qualified and licensed to fly the aircraft, but as you mentioned, one of them should have been a "training captain" (which is NOT a "captain in training") and wasn't. 

[FlyerTalker]

1 hour ago, Zach1213 said:

This is how I recall it too. Of course, the media made it sound like a Cessna 172 pilot somehow ended up flying an A330 for Virgin, but that wasn't even remotely true. All pilots on board that aircraft were fully qualified and licensed to fly the aircraft, but as you mentioned, one of them should have been a "training captain" (which is NOT a "captain in training") and wasn't. 

 

Correct.  OTOH, the DL incident did schedule a "non-qualified" pilot to his flight - with the issue being that the pilot was not ETOPS-certified for the ETOPS flight to Hawaii.

[Globaliser]

10 minutes ago, FlyerTalker said:

OTOH, the DL incident did schedule a "non-qualified" pilot to his flight - with the issue being that the pilot was not ETOPS-certified for the ETOPS flight to Hawaii.

 

Presumably, though, getting an ETOPS ticket is something that requires some additional training on specific procedures and differences for a pilot who already knows how to fly that aircraft? If nothing goes wrong, flying from Seattle to Kona shouldn't in itself be that different from flying from Seattle to Fort Lauderdale. What's different is all the "what if" stuff that goes in to ETOPS.

[Zach1213]

21 minutes ago, FlyerTalker said:

 

Correct.  OTOH, the DL incident did schedule a "non-qualified" pilot to his flight - with the issue being that the pilot was not ETOPS-certified for the ETOPS flight to Hawaii.

 

Yeah, what a screw up by scheduling. Seems like a big thing to miss. 

 

5 minutes ago, Globaliser said:

 

Presumably, though, getting an ETOPS ticket is something that requires some additional training on specific procedures and differences for a pilot who already knows how to fly that aircraft? If nothing goes wrong, flying from Seattle to Kona shouldn't in itself be that different from flying from Seattle to Fort Lauderdale. What's different is all the "what if" stuff that goes in to ETOPS.

 

I would assume so. I am familiar with ETOPS requirements on aircraft and airlines from a regularly standpoint, but not on crew. Crew side of operations just isn't my specialty. I like dealing with metal, not people 🙂

 

But it reminds of me of those many, many years when people would complain about Southwest not flying to Hawaii, and I would always have to tell people that Southwest wasn't ETOPS approved and didn't seem to have any desire to be (at the time). So many folks thought they could just up and fly to Hawaii, not realizing the big commitment an airline has to make in regards to training and maintenance in order to fly those routes (in addition to needing ETOPS-approved aircraft in their fleet in the first place). To be fair, I wouldn't expect the average person to know it. 

Edited May 26, 2022 by Zach1213