As a 747 pilot, seeing something like this
really hits close to home.
And you're probably wondering
how does this 747 end up in the grass missing an engine?
As pilots we do lots of training in very expensive simulators
and we spend months in the schoolhouse
just so we never have this problem.
And normally in these videos,
I give you just my reaction straight off of the facts of
what I hear in the audio or what I see in the video.
But this one had something that didn't really make sense that required me to do
a little bit of research.
And you'll see what I mean later.
Halifax tower good evening Sky Cube 4854 heavy for the ILS 14
Sky Cube 4854 heavy Halifax tower good day.
Runway 14 wind 260 at 15 altimeter 29.67 information Tango number 1
Roger that, we have...
Sky Cube 4854 heavy current wind is 260 at 16 gusting 21.
Just confirm runway 14 is still acceptable?
Affirm, still for 14.
You've heard me talk about a crosswind landing before.
That is when you see a plane flying like this.
This is a 747.
As you can see,
it's not going straight towards the runway.
It's coming at an angle.
And that's because there's a crosswind
that's pushing it and making the plane come in at an angle,
which we call crabbing.
Now that's something that we learned since the very early days of flight school.
But when a controller says this.
Tower good day. Runway 14 wind 260 at 15 altimeter 29.67 information Tango number 1.
My thought as a pilot is wow,
14 and 26?
That's a big difference.
Usually you want those numbers to be very close together.
Or if you have, me as a pilot,
you want it to be exactly the same number.
If you're landing here on runway 14 and the winds are 140,
it's coming right down the pipe as we say.
But if you're landing runway 14,
and the winds are coming at 260, like it is right now,
that means it's coming from over here.
You want the wind to be coming directly at your nose because your plane doesn't
care how fast it's actually going across the ground.
It cares how much air is going over its wings.
So in this scenario here where the wind is coming
50 knots directly at the nose of the plane,
it means you can fly a little bit slower as you're coming into land.
And when you're flying a big, heavy jet,
you wanna be able to come in as slow as possible because you wanna stop.
That also means that if you're flying with the wind coming from here,
you're gonna have to be flying extra fast over the ground,
which means when you touch down,
you're going faster than you wanted to be going.
My first thought,
when I'm landing on a specific runway and I hear a wind number
that's significantly different from the direction I'm planning to land is wow!
That's a really big number.
And while I didn't do very well in high school,
fancy math like trigonometry.
I crushed it in third grade.
So I know 26 minus 14 is 12,
which means it's 120 degrees off the nose of my plane.
And that's not the way I want to be landing.
Also for those of you that are wondering,
no, this was not me in third grade.
I sadly don't look that good in orange.
Now you heard the controller say information Tango,
but listen to what the response is from the pilot.
Tower good day. Runway 14 wind 260 at 15 altimeter 29.67 information Tango number 1
Roger that, we have...
He told the pilots that it was information Tango.
At the airports every hour, they update the weather.
And instead of giving a time of when they did it,
they just give a letter to it.
That letter was Tango.
So that way they can say information Tango, instead of saying,
Hey, the weather at this time,
it just makes it easier.
So he says,
we have information Tango now and you heard the pilot respond with nothing.
Here's an example that I pulled out of Miami.
This is basically what would print off in the plane.
And you can see here at the very beginning, it says information Echo.
When you check in with the controller and he says that the current information
is Tango,
but you know that that paper that you had just printed off says Sierra on the top,
when you check in with him and he says,
your current information is Tango,
your response is gonna sound something like this.
Roger that, we have...
Usually as a pilot, you'll respond and say something like, oh,
let me grab Tango.
And you just have to hit a couple quick buttons.
And there was a third pilot up there so that pilot could have done it.
But you would just get that new weather generated right now
with that information so you can see if there's any changes.
However, he chose not to do that.
Then you hear the controller verify that runway 14 is still acceptable.
Sky Cube 4854 the winds now 260 at 16 gusting 21.
Just confirm runway 14 is still acceptable?
You're landing on a short runway.
That's something to be cautious of,
but it's still absolutely doable.
But you have a quartering tailwind.
That should be a red flag.
Then it just got windier.
That's an even greater red flag.
And you'll know because you've already looked at this airport chart that
you're on this very short runway and there's a very long runway option there.
Then the third red flag is when the controller asks and hints
Hey, are you sure that 14 still acceptable for you?
That should be something that you should be thinking:
Okay.
He's seeing something that I'm not seeing but they just continue.
Listen what happens next.
Sky Cube 4854 heavy. Tower roger wind is 260 at 16 gusting 21, cleared to land runway 14.
Cleared to land - cleared to land runway 14 Sky Cube 4854 heavy
Roger.
Wind 250 at 15 gusting 21.
First I wanna talk about something that I don't think
I've ever talked about in any of these videos
and that's this noise right here.
This is something that you'll only typically hear in the US.
Sometimes you'll hear it in Canada.
That double click is basically an acknowledgment.
Instead of saying roger or okay or I understand,
you'll do that double click.
And that's your way of letting them know you understood what they said.
I don't think that that's an official thing.
You don't really hear that anywhere else.
I don't recommend you do it,
but just because it happened there, I thought I would explain it to you.
Then you hear the controller update the wind just as they're getting ready to land.
Listen here.
Wind 250 at 15 gusting 21.
That's normally something that you'll see
when you have any type of an adverse condition.
Low visibility, really windy gusty days, things like that.
The controllers obviously want you to be safe and successful in what you do,
land your plane.
So they're going to update you. Not always.
It's not something that they have to do,
but it's slow, I guess at Halifax.
So he's just giving this pilot an updated,
Hey, this is your current weather condition.
If the winds are calm or there's nothing going on, they're not gonna do that.
So that should be another thing that you should be thinking.
Why is he updating me with the winds 15 gusting 21?
He's probably saying,
Hey, you have some adverse condition that you're gonna be dealing with
here in just a second.
Watch what happens next.
Sky Cube 4854 do you read?
Halifax tower Sky Cube 4854 is off the runway.
Requesting full emergency assistance.
Sky Cube 4854 roger emergency has been activated.
Ground south 52 you have the crash emergency been activated?
South 52 affirmative.
What's the situation?
Halifax...
South 52, no response from the pilot...
Sky Cube 4854 requesting full emergency support.
Sky Cube 4854 ground say again?
I've mentioned before that humans are bad monitors of things and that's why
plane manufacturers do things like
when the autopilot goes off,
it makes an alarm.
So on a Boeing plane,
when the autopilot or the auto throttle is turned off,
whether done by the pilots or the plane itself, it makes this sound.
And they have that
so just in case you have me as your pilot staring out the window,
which is something I love to do.
And my teacher said I would never get paid to do.
But staring out the window,
if your autopilot goes off, then your plane has alerted you.
Hey, this is something that.
This is a noise that sounds like it needs attention.
Well, air traffic control has the same thing.
I don't know if you heard it.
Listen to this clip.
Sky Cube 4854 do you read?
I think that's a really cool feature.
It's obviously something that I never really get to hear,
but just in case your controller is busy
or staring out the window or playing on TikTok,
something happens at his airport, they're gonna be alerted to it.
That noise sounds like, Hey, you need to pay attention.
But in this case,
the pilot did the right thing.
4854 is off the runway. Requesting full emergency assistance.
The max tailwind a commercial aircraft can have
is usually about 10 to 15 knots depending on the plane
and with the direction that the wind is coming from
and the gusts that they're encountering,
this plane is getting very close to their max tailwind component.
Something you never wanna have is a very short runway
and a very strong tailwind especially when you have this big, long runway
where the wind would almost be off your nose.
So why would they choose to land on that very short runway?
I will tell you my initial gut when I first heard about this situation
is that I thought possibly they chose a shorter runway
because it was gonna be a shorter taxi.
That's just,
when I first heard about it out on the line flying
someone said, Hey dude,
a 747 just went off the end of the runway in Canada,
I thought
Really? How short was it?
And then he said, oh, he chose this really short runway
but there was not a lot of information of how it all came about,
but my thought was maybe this runway was closer to his parking,
but as you can see, there's no parking down here.
Which made me think,
why did they do this?
Luckily for me, the Canadian investigation team put together a nice little summary,
which made it very easy for me to see exactly what happened.
Do you remember when they checked in?
And the controller said information Tango is current.
And the pilot said this.
Roger that, we have...
Well, that was because the pilots only had information Sierra.
And as you can guess, information Sierra said,
we're currently landing on runway 14 and we're taking off runway 23.
And on information Tango,
it said we're taking off and landing on runway 23.
So has it happened to me when I'm getting close to land
and the weather has changed and they update me and they say,
Hey, this is the current weather
and I didn't have it at that time?
Absolutely. That's absolutely happened.
The smart thing you should do if you're the one that's working on the radios
at that time,
and there's someone else that's sitting behind you,
like there was in this case is tell them,
get the weather.
That lets them do something because their job is there just to help you.
One of the things about being a pilot that is really important is
your ability to delegate other tasks that people that they can do.
So that way, you as the pilot,
who's talking on the radio can be as focused of everything that's going on.
And that third person that's there,
they're your assistant,
but they need you to tell them,
get the weather.
So that person can now get the weather,
have a light on.
Back behind there, there's a little spot where you can look at some light
because it's nighttime when they're landing and say,
Hey, this is the updated information of the airport.
Now that maybe something like
no big changes or the new barometric pressure is this,
but that person back there,
their job is to now update both of you.
Hey, this is a situation.
And had that person printed that off and he said,
Hey, now they're landing on runway 23.
The crew could have said,
okay, Hey, let's do that because we got a quartering tailwind on a very short runway.
Let's go to 23.
That could have been and what they should have done.
But the information the pilots have here is they're looking at information Sierra
and it's saying this:
Winds are 230 at 10 knots.
Now a 10 knot direct crosswind
because that's 90 degrees off from the direction they're landing on
a 10 knot direct crosswind is really not a big deal.
There's no...
I've done that. I'm much windier than that.
It's not a big deal to land in that.
But if you have the option to land on a longer runway where it's going directly
at your nose, that is something that you should do.
You've heard me talk about pilots being lazy.
Well,
this would be the time we're being lazy works to your advantage because
instead of having to work hard, land on the short runway
with the crosswind,
I mean, in something like Halifax,
see if they'll let you land on the big, long runway,
which has the wind going directly at your nose.
That just makes logical sense to ask for it.
You know, like they say,
you never get the sail you don't ask for.
And for all of you av geeks out there who might be wondering
because the clouds were low,
maybe they were thinking they couldn't get in on that approach for runway 23,
the clouds were at 500 feet.
And as you can see here,
no matter which approach they did,
they would've been able to get underneath the clouds.
These altitudes right here,
show how far above the ground they would be when they would have to go around.
But unfortunately the pilots didn't ask for that.
They also didn't update their performance.
Meaning before you land,
you put in the current wind, the runway,
all the conditions that you're dealing with
and then your plane spits out some information to you.
It says, yes, you can land on that runway.
This is the brake setting that you need. And it gives you all that information.
Now the pilots didn't put that new information in
because they were behind the airplane,
trying to get everything done, trying to land.
So they didn't put that information in there.
Had they, they would've seen that they could have still landed.
And been fine and stopped in time.
But there's some other things that happened.
This knob right here controls the auto brakes
and most bigger planes have auto brakes.
And by using the auto brakes, which we almost always use,
you delegate that task to your aircraft of braking in the most
efficient way possible because it can see how the brakes are working.
If it hits a patch of ice or whatever,
it can handle that a lot better and react immediately
compared to you who can just add pressure
and unadd pressure like...
You can do it,
but you're plane, your machine is gonna do it better.
It's trained to do this exact thing
and it will give you the amount of brake stopping distance that you need
in order to stop the most efficient way possible
without you ending up like this.
But if the pilot who's flying makes a mistake and does something like adds power,
Well, your auto brakes are gonna think,
well, you don't wanna be stopping anymore.
So it's going to turn off.
Something else you're gonna lose is your speed brakes.
These things come up automatically
as soon as you land to help push your plane towards the ground
and make your braking more effective.
But of course, if you add power,
then your speed brakes are going to go down.
Your plane is going to do what you tell it to do.
Now, there is a thing that comes up on the screen when the auto brakes go off.
It says auto brakes.
Now the pilot that's not flying.
That's sitting there that's working the radios
is supposed to say auto brakes off.
So that way the pilot that is flying can know,
Hey, that's not what I intended to do,
to have the auto brakes go off.
I had this situation happen in the simulator.
I don't know about a year ago
where the guy in the back of the simulator,
who's doing all the stuff that set us on fire and trick us
and try to see,
to make sure that we're paying attention to all the things that was going on.
We did that.
We came in and we landed and there was a lot going on.
I don't even remember what the situation was, but I said auto brakes off.
And then the other pilot didn't mean to,
because the auto brakes off indication that shows up on your screen
will also happen when you purposely take the auto brakes off.
So I didn't know if that guy did it on purpose
because I can't see what his feet are doing.
So it's my responsibility.
No matter how fast we're going is to say
auto brakes off.
When I said that the pilot, in this case that was flying,
then jumped and manually put his feet on the brakes
because he didn't mean and
didn't want for the auto brakes to go off.
So he put his feet on the brakes and we stopped and it was no big deal.
And the guy running the simulator said,
Hey, great job that you caught that.
And so that was the reason that you always say that, no matter what,
it's just a reflex.
You're going five miles an hour.
And the auto brake thing shows up there.
You say, auto brakes off.
You're going 130 miles an hour. You say auto brakes off.
It's just one of those things that you say, no matter what you see it,
you say it.
That way, the other pilot can react to it because they're busy flying the plane.
But the pilot that was responsible for that was distracted
by the fact of the hard landing
and probably how fast they were going down the runway,
because of the tailwind.
Now while it's ultimately the pilot's responsibility when they're flying the plane,
and when we're flying to make sure that that plane lands safely,
there's something that I wish the controller would've done differently.
In this part right here.
Just confirm runway 14 is still acceptable?
I really wish the controller would've said something more along the lines of
Runway 23 is also available if you want it
but you can stay on runway 14 if you prefer.
An then read the winds to the pilot
so then they can make that decision.
The pilots didn't have that information
that that runway was even an option.
Now have the controller said that
I think he was thinking that because he said,
Hey, is that still a good runway for you, runway 14?
But if he had said,
Hey, runway 23 is also an option for you. And the pilots had said, no,
no, we'll do runway 14
which is very possible that they would've made that decision and said, yeah,
we'll do runway 14 anyway.
But had the controller told that to the pilots?
And then they said,
yeah, we're doing runway 14.
I would've been even more disappointed with the fact
that they would make that decision.
But the controller had the option to let them know runway 23
was an option even though that it was on information Tango,
that's one of those times that your controller could really help you out
and say, Hey, this is an option for you if you want it.
If they really think that that's gonna be a better, safer option
than he should have said that.
But 100% of the time,
something like this happens, the pilots made a mistake.
I also feel it's important to mention that these pilots had a few fatigue things
that came up in the report and I never have a problem reporting fatigue.
If I have done everything that I could to get my rest and I exercise,
ate something.
I have like a little routine that I'll do
if I have to sleep in the middle of the day,
I've learned all these things over the years that I'll do.
But if I've done those things and I couldn't go to sleep,
I have no problem ever calling in and saying,
Hey, I'm not fit to do this flight for whatever reason.
And that's because I never want to be in a situation
where I've created an incident or an accident
because I failed to make a call about being tired.
I've only flown with a US carrier, but I can tell you that inside the US,
if you ever call fatigue, as long as you're not abusing it or,
or being ridiculous about it,
you’re never gonna have any push back from your airline
because your abilities as a pilot are gonna be significantly degraded
when you're tired.
And that's why they have this rule because there's been accidents where people
have died as a result of being tired and making poor decisions.
It's the equivalent of being drunk.
You're going to be thinking slower and you're going to be making poor choices.
So they made this a rule.
So pilots can call fatigue anytime that they want.
Now, if you're doing it every week or every time
you have something that you don't wanna do,
okay, well maybe you're gonna be in trouble.
But you're gonna fill out a report.
And they're gonna look at all the information.
What caused this person to be fatigued?
And your airline gonna be upset that you called in them fatigue
and they've had to delay the flight and they've had to call the customers
or maybe alert the passengers.
Yes, they're going to be upset about all of those things,
but they're going to be a lot more upset if something like this happens.
4854 is off the runway. Requesting full emergency assistance.
The final piece of what cause this accident you can see right here.
It seems the pilot probably accidentally added power.
Meaning these speed brakes would actually go down and the auto brake would go
from here trying to stop the plane to doing nothing.
And with the first officer being distracted, he didn't alert the captain
the brakes were off.
It took over eight seconds for the pilot to put his feet on the brakes
to manually stop.
But max braking didn't occur until 15 seconds later.
It's important to mention that all three crew members and the passenger that
they had on board all gotten safely and unharmed.
If you enjoyed this video,
check out these two over here.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Until then,
keep the blue side.