Incident: Qatar B788 at Doha on Jan 10th 2023, steep descent after takeoff

Re:Incident: Qatar B788 at Doha on Jan 10th 2023, steep desc... by mmaunder on Wednesday February 08, 2023 @03:26AM (#34705575)

> At about 1600 feet the aircraft was cleared direct to the next waypoint and the first officer attempted to turn towards that waypoint flying manually and without flight director indications (the captain was slow to put the Direct into the FMS) but lost situational awareness sending the aircraft into a descent that reached 3000 fpm sink rate and exceeded the flap speed limits until the captain took control of the aircraft and recovered about 800 feet above water.

Kinda hard to believe that he simply “lost SA”. For an instrument/commercial pilot to lose SA at night on an instrument plan is hard to believe. I’d love to hear the cockpit voice recorder and see the detailed telemetry. Was there a distraction in the cockpit? Interpersonal conflict? A stall?

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Re:Incident: Qatar B788 at Doha on Jan 10th 2023, steep desc... by rob74 on Wednesday February 08, 2023 @03:49AM (#34705738)

Well, it has happened before (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447), and it was hard to believe then too. Ok, in that case the situation was compounded by pitot tube icing, but that alone shouldn't bring down an aircraft in the 21st century...

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Re:Incident: Qatar B788 at Doha on Jan 10th 2023, steep desc... by potrebitel on Wednesday February 08, 2023 @03:56AM (#34705787)

> For an instrument/commercial pilot to lose SA at night on an instrument plan is hard to believe

If one relies on comments from AVH, Qatar might not have the best practices out there. Inappropriate culture could turn to bad results. Plus there is no information for First Officer's flight experience. He could be a less experienced one.

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Re:Incident: Qatar B788 at Doha on Jan 10th 2023, steep desc... by rlpb on Wednesday February 08, 2023 @04:53AM (#34706165)

> Kinda hard to believe that he simply “lost SA”.

It's just a euphemism for incompetent instrument flying.

> For an instrument/commercial pilot to lose SA at night on an instrument plan is hard to believe.

Accident reports do show that this level of incompetence from instrument rated commercial pilots do exist. See for example Atlas Air Flight 3591.

Perhaps it's not that common, but of course there's sampling bias here: we're filtering for the pilots that screwed up, so of course there's a lower level of incompetence there.

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