Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

Re:Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident af... by diebeforei485 on Saturday January 01, 2022 @04:42PM (#29763143)

> suggesting [...]the previous flight crew had left the altitude setting at [...] 00000 feet

Does the system really display as "00000"? That seems like an odd design choice, I'd have thought just a single "0" would be far more legible in this scenario, especially if it's on a 7-segment display.

I don't think passengers would have noticed this as anything other than a regular takeoff, because ATC does request slow climbs (ie. slower rate of ascent) every now and then.

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Re:Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident af... by pilot7378535 on Saturday January 01, 2022 @05:22PM (#29763480)

Speaking of bad UX choices, the FAA is constantly dropping one or two or more digits from numbers like altitudes, runway lengths, heading, timestamps, etc. For example, "the runway from 180° is 5200 feet long" becomes "RWY18 52" which I suppose you get used to, but it's just begging for mixups.

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Re:Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident af... by wjossey on Saturday January 01, 2022 @05:37PM (#29763589)

As a student pilot, this drives me nuts. The volume of abbreviations, especially in NOTAMS, METARs, etc, is a bit obscene.

What’s wonderful too is that the abbreviations are often based on non English words as well, so they aren’t intuitive. As an example, instead of typing “mist” in a METAR it is “BR” based on the French word brume.

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Re:Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident af... by jdavis703 on Saturday January 01, 2022 @05:46PM (#29763667)

And yet, on a general interest site you write in acronyms only pilots and aviation buffs will understand.

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Re:Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident af... by ahefner on Saturday January 01, 2022 @08:28PM (#29764795)

Exactly.

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Re:Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident af... by oceanplexian on Saturday January 01, 2022 @06:39PM (#29764063)

It still matters since most communication is over the radio, and in many areas it’s highly congested.

When there are 50 pilots on the radio and things are moving fast there isn’t time to slow down and spell things out, and doing so can actually be more dangerous when extraneous stuff ends up on the radio and is misinterpreted.

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Re:Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident af... by throwawayboise on Saturday January 01, 2022 @05:52PM (#29763737)

AIUI it is a holdover from the days when such reports were sent by telegraph/teletype, and saving characters mattered. The abbreviations became standard convention and changing them now would be more disruptive than teaching new pilots how to decipher them.

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Re:Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident af... by pdonis on Saturday January 01, 2022 @05:00PM (#29763295)

> I don't think passengers would have noticed this as anything other than a regular takeoff

It looks like the aircraft didn't leave the runway until the runway safety area at the end. That is something any passenger looking out the window could notice. A normal takeoff has the aircraft leaving the runway well before the end.

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Re:Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident af... by diebeforei485 on Saturday January 01, 2022 @05:11PM (#29763383)

> That is something any passenger looking out the window could notice.

I don't think so, because the departure was at 3:10AM local time (23:10Z). It would have been too dark to perceive.

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Re:Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident af... by pdonis on Saturday January 01, 2022 @08:03PM (#29764637)

The runway lights and taxiway lights would be on. Sure, you wouldn't be able to see the ground itself outside the range of the lights, but you would be able to see enough to tell that the plane had not taken off at the end of the runway.

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Re:Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident af... by ipython on Saturday January 01, 2022 @08:38PM (#29764864)

You can see the lighted markers along the side of the runway indicating the number of thousand feet of runway remaining. I’d definitely be concerned as we pass by 2…1…and still not rotated.

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