United Airlines Pilot's Coffee Spill Forces plane to divert (liquid, flight, easy)
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"A United Airlines flight from Chicago to Germany was forced to make an emergency landing in Canada after a pilot spilled coffee on the plane's radio equipment."
In addition, he (or she) accidently set the transponder code for hijacking (7500) while switching to the code for "no radio" (7600). Seriously, they should team this guy (or girl) up with the Indian co-pilot who almost crashed the plane while adjusting his seat.
This is from Wikipedia. I couldn't get the link to work so I pulled out this one paragraph.
"Squawk codes are four-digit octal numbers; the dials on a transponder read from zero to seven inclusive. Thus the lowest possible squawk is 0000 and the highest is 7777. There are 4096 permutations of these four digit codes, which is why they are often called "4096 code transponders." Because these squawks are sensitive, care must be taken not to squawk any emergency code during a code change. For example, when changing from 1200 to 6501 (an assigned ATC squawk), one might turn the second wheel to a 5 (thus 1500), and then rotate the first wheel backwards in the sequence 1-0-7-6 to get to 6. This would momentarily have the transponder squawking a hijack code (7500), which might lead to more attention than one desires. Pilots are instructed not to place the transponder in "standby mode" while changing the codes as it causes the loss of target information on the ATC radar screen, but instead to carefully change codes to avoid inadvertently selecting an emergency code. Additionally, modern digital transponders are operated by buttons to avoid this problem"
This is the picture I was looking for. You can click on each knob for a description of what it does. I'm not sure if it is a 2 part knob or not. Seems pretty easy to squawk the wrong code. http://www.meriweather.com/777/ped/atc.html# (broken link)
Last edited by South Range Family; 01-06-2011 at 06:49 AM..
Ever seen the movie, "Fate Is the Hunter" (1964) starring Glenn Ford, Nancy Kwan and Rod Taylor?
Suspense builds around the investigation of a plane crash that caused 53 deaths in this dramatic adaption of Ernest K. Gann's novel. Authorities systematically eliminate probable causes, finally placing blame on the pilot, who was seen drinking before the flight. The airline's director of flight operations, Sam McBane (Glenn Ford), knowing the pilot's excellent WW II record, refuses to accept the authorities' conclusions and begins his own investigation. With the help of the only survivor, a stewardess (Suzanne Pleshette), McBane re-creates the events leading to the crash in an attempt to discover the true cause....
This is the picture I was looking for. You can click on each knob for a description of what it does. I'm not sure if it is a 2 part knob or not. Seems pretty easy to squawk the wrong code. Boeing 777: Air Traffic Control Transponder (ATC) & Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) (http://www.meriweather.com/777/ped/atc.html# - broken link)
Most transponders have one nob for each digit. There are only 3 squak codes that one has to be careful to avoid: 7500, 7600, and 7700. Every pilot knows to turn the 'ones' digit to something other than zero before going to one of the 7x00 numbers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stillkit
Ever seen the movie, "Fate Is the Hunter" (1964) starring Glenn Ford, Nancy Kwan and Rod Taylor?
Suspense builds around the investigation of a plane crash that caused 53 deaths in this dramatic adaption of Ernest K. Gann's novel. Authorities systematically eliminate probable causes, finally placing blame on the pilot, who was seen drinking before the flight. The airline's director of flight operations, Sam McBane (Glenn Ford), knowing the pilot's excellent WW II record, refuses to accept the authorities' conclusions and begins his own investigation. With the help of the only survivor, a stewardess (Suzanne Pleshette), McBane re-creates the events leading to the crash in an attempt to discover the true cause....
In the end, it turns out that coffee spilled on the console caused the crash.
Investigations always like to blame the pilot because it wraps everything up neatly (if he's dead) and no airplane parts need to be redesigned, nobody gets sued. It's expedient, clean, and usually a terrible miscarriage of justice.
I'll have to see the movie. Nancy Kwan (Ka Shen Kwan) was very pretty back when she was young. She's still alive but now she is a producer, not an actress anymore.
Ever seen the movie, "Fate Is the Hunter" (1964) starring Glenn Ford, Nancy Kwan and Rod Taylor?
Suspense builds around the investigation of a plane crash that caused 53 deaths in this dramatic adaption of Ernest K. Gann's novel. Authorities systematically eliminate probable causes, finally placing blame on the pilot, who was seen drinking before the flight. The airline's director of flight operations, Sam McBane (Glenn Ford), knowing the pilot's excellent WW II record, refuses to accept the authorities' conclusions and begins his own investigation. With the help of the only survivor, a stewardess (Suzanne Pleshette), McBane re-creates the events leading to the crash in an attempt to discover the true cause....
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Seriously, they should team this guy (or girl) up with the Indian co-pilot who almost crashed the plane while adjusting his seat.
