Viral debrief.
Coming up!
Hey, 74 crew! Welcome back!
If you don't know me, my name's Kelsey.
I'm a 747 pilot.
My channel, 74 gear, is all about aviation.
Now I can't thank all of you enough for sending in these different videos.
If you have a video that you think would be great for this series,
the two easiest places to send to me,
my Instagram or the free forum 74gear.com.
Now there is a monsoon or so it seems like outside.
So if you hear a bunch of weird noises in the background,
it's all the rain that's hitting the window.
I am happy to be here inside instead of doing a walk around right now,
but let's get into it.
I really empathize with these pilots because I've been in a car crash before.
I've had it be totally my fault.
I crashed a car.
So I know how that feeling is on the inside.
So I can only imagine,
it must be significantly worse when you crash your 300 million dollar aircraft.
Something which is crazy, which most of you will never see in real life
is watch this canister right here.
Watch what happens.
It just got sucked straight into the engine there.
Now I've talked about it in some of my Hollywood versus realities
and some of the other videos,
just how much air these large engines are sucking in.
So if you have the canister there on the ground,
it's relatively heavy,
but it just sucked it right in like it was nothing.
So you can imagine if there was a human nearby,
he would possibly, or she could get sucked into that engine.
That's why our beacon is on, which are these things right here.
Every time the engines are running or about to run.
The next thing to look at is look at the speed that they're coming in.
I don't think the tape is sped up
because the beacon is flashing at a normal rate.
The 747 fully loaded is a very heavy aircraft.
The problem is is that when you have a very heavy aircraft
or anything that's very heavy,
once the momentum starts going in a direction,
it's going to keep going in that direction for a while.
However, typically taxing when your aircraft is very heavy is easier.
Any truck driver, and I know there's a lot of truck drivers who watch these videos,
any truck drivers will tell you, driving with the full load is a lot easier
than driving with an empty trailer.
It's the same thing when you're having a jet.
When you're flying a jet, it's easier to fly when it's really heavy.
It's easier to fly when it's full of passengers
or full of freight, it's just a lot easier.
It lands easier.
And then especially on something like a wet or snowy or icy taxiway,
having it heavy that gravity's pushing it towards the ground.
So it just taxis better.
Holds to the ground as less likely to skid.
I don't know what the weight of this aircraft is, but it did not go well.
What surprises me is they should be parking right here.
So they way overshot their entry into this parking area.
But something they could have done to slow down,
if their brakes weren't working,
would be to use your thrust reversers.
Now, are you supposed to use your thrust reversers to slow down
because you came into the parking area like Lewis Hamilton?
No, that's not what you're supposed to do,
but at the end of the day, if that's what it takes to stop your aircraft
from flying or skidding or sliding into a bunch of canister
or a wall or anything like that,
then that's going to be an easier conversation.
Sometimes what will happen is your brakes,
obviously are connected to your tires on the ground.
And if the ground is full of ice, it's not going to do you any good.
So you can use your thrust reversers and that will help push your plane
or slow your plane down.
Now it's not ideal and it doesn't always work.
And you have to think it's going to take a second for those things to spool up.
And it's just not a normal thing that you would do,
but that is one thing they could have done,
but you would've had to really thought that out.
I've seen people do it in real life, on really icy days,
but I've never seen that happen on a 747.
What I'm really happy about though, is there wasn't a wing-walker.
Typically when the planes are going in,
you'd see a wing-walker right in this area here.
And they're there to verify that the wing is not going to hit anything.
If a wing-walker had been there,
they could have easily got sucked into that engine.
Now I've taxied into this ramp and I've taxied in this ramp with snow and ice.
And I've taxied in a lot of places with snow and ice on the 74.
And I usually try to go very slow to prevent this situation.
Because let's say you're taxing in 4 knots
and you hit a patch of ice and you're on a hill
and your plane starts to slide.
And while there's not a lot you can do,
you can do your thrust reversers, you can try to step on your brakes,
but it doesn't always work the way you want it to work.
If that were to happen,
and then you were going 4 knots when your plane just hit a patch of ice
and started skidding,
that's an easier conversation to have with your chief pilot
than I came racing into the parking like you saw here.
When you're doing something that's outside of the norm
or something that's really unsafe
and then it goes bad,
it's a lot hard to justify and explain to them.
There was a time once where there was a bunch of planes
that were getting ready to take off.
They were on a taxiway
and there was this really stiff crosswind.
And there was a little RJ, a little regional jet that was sitting there
and it started getting pushed by the wind.
Now they just happened to have set their brake on a bunch of ice.
They didn't know, they couldn't see that.
So when they set their brake,
that plane out of all the 10 or 15 planes that were in the line,
that plane just got pushed further and further off to the side of the taxiway.
And then they just slid off into the ditch.
Now they are responsible for that aircraft.
As soon as you show up as a crew and you sign for that aircraft,
you're responsible for it.
No matter what, even if mother nature is trying to be very mean to you
and push your plane into the ditch.
However, when you go to the chief pilot
and you go have a review,
or you talk to whoever management about that,
you're going to see,
Hey, we pulled up it right in the middle.
We set our brake. It happened to be on ice.
And we got push off the taxiway.
That's a lot easier explanation than these guys are going to have
when they have to explain why they were coming in so fast.
I don't know what's going to happen or what happened
if their brakes failed or whatever,
but they were coming in way too fast, in my opinion,
for something that has snow and ice.
And at night, it's just a lot of bad situations there.
If you thought the last one was hard to justify,
it's even harder to justify this one.
It's in the daytime.
He has wheels in a truck and it's not snowy
or icy out.
I think the craziest part of this video though, is here.
He totally knew that he hit this aircraft.
Obviously a couple of flights got canceled that day.
I don't know what the driver was thinking as he hit that winglet there.
I don't know if he was thinking I better get out of here
before they realize it's me.
The thing is though, is that every time a fueler goes and fuels an aircraft,
they record the gallons or weight or whatever it is,
depending on where it is in the world.
They record that
and they give a receipt to the crew.
That crew verifies that everything matches
as far as the amount of fuel on board.
That's obviously something you want to be very sure of before you take off.
So there would be a receipt from that fueler.
I'm guessing he just fueled that aircraft.
There would be receipt that that's who was that fueled it.
So I'm not really sure where he thought he was going to run off to
and nobody would notice.
So he ended up doing a lot more damage
by clipping that wing and then running into the leading edge
of the next wing.
The leading edge of this wing here has a bunch of piping in it
because it pumps a lot of hot air along that piping
to prevent there being any ice from building up.
And the backside of this wing is obviously
also going to have to get totally replaced.
I have no idea how much it's going to cost to replace these things,
but to give you an idea, in aviation,
they say you take the normal price and then you times it by four or five
if it has anything to do with an airplane.
So I'm going to guess it's probably going to be a few hundred thousand dollars
to get these things fixed.
And then obviously you're going to have a bunch of canceled flights,
a bunch of planes that aren't going to be flying for a while
because they're going to have to get repaired and checked
before they go out to fly people again.
And then you're also going to have some people there yelling at the gate agent
and asking why their flight is delayed.
They just don't understand.
Can you imagine if you were the one that was flying this jet right here,
you parked your plane all nice here.
Only to come out later to see it looking like this.
So two planes are severely damaged,
but there's only one crew that's in trouble.
I'll let you figure out which crew that is.
But typically you're responsible for a plane
as soon as you get in and you sign for that aircraft,
you're responsible for it, no matter what.
So if that crew, that other aircraft that hadn't moved, if they'd got in
signed for the plane, closed the door, hadn't moved at all,
but they were in the aircraft ready,
then that plane skidded or drove into them
or sped into them because it looked like they kept speeding up,
they would have to explain something,
but because they weren't there,
the plane was parked safely where it was supposed to be,
they're kind of not in any trouble at all.
Tell me if I'm wrong,
but it looks like this other plane sped up as it got closer to the other aircraft.
Now, I don't know the situation behind the systems of this aircraft
that went into the other plane,
but something that I got taught in the 74, or even before that
is if you're not planning to move your aircraft,
you set your parking brake.
Now on the 74, because we're so far off the ground,
what I do is I set the parking brake.
There's a message that shows up on one of our screens.
I verify that it's there.
That that's showing, okay.
The plane thinks that the parking brake is set.
Then I look outside my window to the side
and I point and I say,
okay, we're not moving.
So I do all of those things because if your plane starts moving,
even though you thought you had set the brake,
but the brake didn't set,
and the plane starts moving and go into a taxiway
or hit something,
even though that that message said,
Hey, the plane is set.
And the parking brake is set there.
Even though it's showing that,
you're still going to be in a lot of trouble.
So I set my brake.
I look outside, I verify I'm not moving.
And I do that every time.
I'm not going to move.
And that's a good habit to get into
because if you're not planning to move,
there's no reason to be using your feet
as the only source of brake power.
Now, the pilots maybe didn't think very fast,
but this guy did right here.
He got out of there quick,
but what could the pilots have done differently?
Now, every plane is different.
Even the same type of plane, like the 747,
we have different 747's that are different, different configurations,
different things like that.
So this plane, for example, may not have thrust reversers.
One of the things they could have used if they had thrust reversers
would be thrust reversers.
That would slow the plane from moving forward if the brakes weren't working.
The other thing is they could have turned to the left or right.
The problem is if they turned right,
they would've went right after that guy
that ran to the left, his left,
they would've chewed up him.
So I'm probably very thankful they didn't even go that way.
If the pilots had gone to the left,
it looked like there was probably cars over there.
If they'd gone to the left and hit some cars,
that would've been a lot less expensive than hitting another plane.
So this guy right here,
I'm guessing is very happy that the pilots didn't turn to the right.
Now, it's easy for me to say, oh, he could have used thrust reversers
or he could have...
He's veered off earlier.
The problem is is when something goes wrong,
it usually takes a second or two for you to process and analyze the situation.
That's why, like in the Sully situation,
that when he testified in front of that hearing,
he said, well, yes, they could have turned around immediately
after the simulator and made it back.
But it takes a couple seconds to figure out exactly what's going on
and process everything.
They knew what was going on.
And it's kind of the same thing here.
This pilot did start to correct to try to get out of the way,
but it just didn't happen fast enough.
Typically in aviation, as a fixed wing pilot,
if something goes wrong, you have a decent amount of time.
You want to take your time, analyze the situation.
Helicopter pilots have a lot less time.
They have to react a lot faster,
but your typical fixed wing pilot doesn't need to think as fast
and that's why I fly fixed wings because
it lets me think at my normal slow base.
As you gain experience, your brain works faster on any aircraft.
As you gain familiarity with that aircraft, when things go wrong,
you can think through the problem quicker.
And as you gain experience, you can make a split second judgment call
like this guy here.
He has a lot of experience walking and running.
It took him no time to know exactly what to do.
Now, if this pilot that was in this plane
ever experiences anything like what happened here again,
I guarantee you
they're going to make a much faster decision about what to do,
because they're going to end up replaying this thing a lot in their head.
I could have done this. I should have done that.
They're going to replay that scenario probably thousands of times.
So if they ever end up in a situation like this again, I guarantee you
they're going to make that split second decision to turn the left and hit the car
or turn to the right, but not eat up the guy that's running away.
If you want to see some pilots that probably wish
they weren't on one of these videos,
check it out here.
And if you want to see some pilots arguing with air traffic control,
check out this video up here.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Until then,
keep the blue side up.