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  The stress for today’s crews flying from Asia into Europe has changed. The INS has been replaced by multiple flight management computers that upload or understand the world’s routes. Pilot stress is reduced because clear VHF communications are now available in most countries. The Traffic Collision and Avoidance System (TCAS) was introduced in the mid-1990s and provided an extraordinarily successful last line of defence against mid-air collisions.

  The Classic Jumbos were tough, reliable old planes. Bits would fall off and they’d still fly. One time I was flying from Sydney to Auckland and we were hit by a very strong bolt of lightning. As the aircraft became electrostatically charged, every particle of dust in that aircraft lifted up and hung in the air as if suspended. We lost one HF radio because the lightning vaporised the 4 millimetre–thick steel tube that was our HF antenna, but the plane barely reacted. It had been developed to be a military transport and it was tough.

  Today, the stresses the Classic pilots had to endure have been reduced, but there are new problems to contend with – congestion, aircraft complexity, aircraft performance, aircraft automation, fatigue, complex airspace and complex air traffic control instructions. All of these factors steadily increase with time while the number of pilots in the cockpit decreases.

  Pilots worked up to twenty-hour tours of duty and slept in bunks beside the cockpit, but it was more luxurious than the Air Force: all the accommodation, transportation, flight plans, fuel calculations and paperwork were organised for us by Qantas. When you shut down the engines you didn’t have to secure the aircraft; you just walked away and climbed into a dedicated bus bound for the crew hotel.

  It took some time to get used to flying with such a large flight crew on the Classics. The normal crew complement consisted of the captain, one first officer (FO), one second officer (SO) and one engineer. The SO relieved the pilots and the engineer in the cruise. On flights longer than twelve hours, we’d have an additional SO for inflight relief. With five technical crew members, the Classic’s cockpit was congested on long-haul sectors, and sometimes the overcrowding produced interesting human dynamics.

  Sometimes the additional pilots actioned activities outside their responsibility. In their minds they were trying to help, but instead they were interfering with the pilot and co-pilot’s standard operating procedures (SOPs). In the worst cases, ego battles could erupt in the flight deck which, if not countered, could lead to anarchy. For example, during one approach into Los Angeles, when I was sitting behind the captain, I felt the shoulder of the other second officer crush between the engineer’s and my shoulder as he pushed in front to change the active frequency on the captain’s radio control panel. He was trying to fly from the back of the flight deck – an aggressive action that could be dangerous. I was surprised the captain did not rebuke the SO’s actions as it should never have been ­tolerated.

  This incident was the catalyst for my second career epiphany. I had to leave the Classic Jumbos and fly in a cockpit with fewer crew; the fewer the better as far as I was concerned. I wanted to move to an aircraft where the pilots’ roles were clearly defined and where the pilots prioritised team performance over personal ego. I also promised myself that when I became a captain I would create a friendly environment where all pilots are encouraged to contribute in an efficient team that followed the SOPs.

  I got wind of a new Boeing that Qantas was looking at buying: the 747–400. It was my ideal aircraft: new high technology, the best of the best, new challenges, an exciting introduction and fewer crew!

  I started the first officer promotion course for the 747 Classic in early 1988, only eighteen months after joining Qantas. I had to fly circuits for a week at the very windy Avalon Airport in Melbourne. It must have cost Qantas $80,000 for each of us given that, for every ‘touch and go’, the landing fee is $2000, tyre wear would cost $500, and that’s before the fuel bill for 8000 kilograms of kerosene per hour!

  I also learned something about my eyesight. One windy night at Avalon, when we were practising landing in crosswinds, Malcolm Hatton-Ward, my instructor, told me to use the approach lights (TVASI) to help me get on the correct approach path. I couldn’t see what he was talking about as RAAF airports didn’t use these approach lights and so I had never given them high priority while at Qantas. Malcolm asked me if I could see them. I shook my head, and the other second officer I was with – Joel Gregory – took off his spectacles and offered them to me. It was like emerging in another world – everything was clear. I’d had no idea I had low-light myopia (night short-sightedness) and that I needed glasses.

  I completed my first officer conversion course in early 1988 and sat in a holding pattern waiting for my position as an FO on our brand new 747–400s.

  CHAPTER 9

  747–400

  Flying in civil aviation is all about seniority and pecking order. All Qantas pilots have a seniority number, which they are allotted the day they join the company. The most senior pilot has a seniority number of 1, the next senior, 2. So a pilot will start his employment with a seniority number that will get closer to 1 with every retirement or resignation. The seniority number determines who gets on the next promotional course for higher rank, who converts to a new aircraft type, and who flies a particular flight. The pilot with the seniority number closest to 1 gets preference if too many pilots are bidding for a course, flight or day off. The pilot who joined recently will be assigned an activity no one wants.

  I was fortunate. I bid for the 747 first officer (FO) pro­motion course as soon as I joined Qantas and completed it two years later. I was now trained to take the first officer’s right-hand seat, but a temporary oversupply of FOs meant I would take the intermediate position of senior second officer until an FO’s seat became free. The first officer has a fantastic job in aviation; you take almost all the benefits that come with command without the onerous legal responsibilities, you share the flying and you’re in command while the captain is resting. So I spent six months as a senior second officer, keen to take a right-hand seat but blocked because of staffing levels.

  My luck was about to change. As 1988 drew to a close, I learned more about the impending 747–400. Again, here was a revolutionary new design from Boeing – this was the biggest aircraft, the most advanced and the best – and just as I wanted to fly the F-111 in the Air Force, now I wanted to be part of the 747–400 operation at Qantas. The problem was that, as a new first officer, all the other first officers would surely beat me to the first 747–400 conversion courses. I might have to wait years to get to the 400.

  Soon after, I was amazed to discover that none of the FOs were bidding for the 747–400, which meant the pecking order for the conversion course could drop all the way down to someone as junior as me. The pilots were reluctant to bid for new aircraft. I hadn’t seen this in the Air Force. In the military, the pilots and the seagulls (pilots who didn’t want to fly) sort themselves out pretty quickly – those keen to fly get lots of it. There was never a shortage of pilots vying to fly the latest and greatest aircraft. But in all the major international airlines, Qantas included, many captains and first officers avoid flying a new aircraft straight out of certification trials that has not been ‘case hardened’ or proven in extensive airline operations. There was always the worry that a problem that had not been detected during certification might pop up and cause an accident that would put the pilots at fault. The pilots also didn’t want to fly an aircraft where the pay and conditions were unresolved.

  I was never worried about the remuneration on the 747–400. Most of the pay scales in the airlines are constructed around the weight of the planes you fly and the number of passengers you carry. A380 pilots are paid more than 747 pilots, who are paid more than those flying 737s.

  The 747–400 was the leading edge in technology; a revolutionary departure from the Classic. It had been talked about and was the subject of so many unfounded rumours that when positions opened for technical crew on the new 400s that would be delivered in 1989,
I was one of only two first officers out of 300 who applied for the conversion. I was also the most junior. It was such a poor response that Qantas assigned pilots to the aircraft. The Pilots’ Union got angry on the basis that you shouldn’t force a pilot to fly a plane they don’t want to, and won a reprieve that the new pilots could convert back to their previous aircraft after twelve months if they didn’t like the 400.

  Me? I just wanted to be on a 747–400. I had read about their new onboard computer systems and their revamped engines, and I assumed they would be the new industry standard for long-range flying, while the Classic – as nice as she was – would be phased out. I had bid before the security of pay and conditions for the 747–400 were agreed by Qantas, but I didn’t care – you make your own luck. I knew Qantas ultimately had to provide competitive salaries for the new 747–400 or they would lose pilots to other airlines offering better conditions.

  I also knew you could spend years preparing for an opportunity only to see it vaporise at the last minute – as I had learned with F-111s in the RAAF. There is no such thing as security. You have to be aware of your options and not be afraid of change or failure. In fact, change is vital – a company that is not changing and improving is going out of business. So, while some pilots are creatures of habit and don’t like converting to new aircraft, I take the opposite approach and go for it – it’s better than being made redundant.

  I commenced the first officer’s conversion course for the 747–400 in mid-1989. The older pilots thought only a lunatic would accept the 400 slot before pay and conditions were agreed, so I just pretended I had been assigned to the 400 and kept my mouth shut.

  The 747–400 conversion took almost four months, which meant lots of time in simulators, studying manuals and sitting in front of Kodak carousel slide projectors.

  I needed two licences to operate the 747–400, the first being a ‘Command Instrument Rating’ from the Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), which proves I know the aircraft and the instruments well enough to operate it privately, and the second a Qantas licence, which cleared me to operate as a first officer to fly a Boeing 747–400 on Qantas routes.

  The other first officers who were converting to the 400 had already flown sectors as FOs in the right-hand seat on Classic Jumbos, but I hadn’t. I’d been trapped in the limbo of senior second officer. I needed to fly a sector in the 400 before I would be granted my Qantas licence. One sector, anywhere. To my delight, I was tasked to fly an empty 747–400 for one sector. The captain asked me where I’d like to fly. ‘Hobart sounds nice,’ I replied. So the Melbourne–Hobart–Melbourne flight plan was submitted and off we went – just two of us and a brand new 747–400. There were a few engine problems climbing out that required us to return to Melbourne, but it was great fun. And I was then a first officer, rated for the 400-series Jumbo.

  I was the inaugural first officer to ‘check out’ and fly the 747–400. My first operational sector in the 747–400 was from Sydney across the Pacific to Los Angeles with Geoff Westwood, an infamous senior captain who had been instrumental in forming the Pilots’ Union in the late 1970s. The four-person flight crew met at Sydney’s airport for a pre-flight briefing before we took off, and Geoff asked each of us what our experience was. Only one of us, Geoff included, had ever flown an operational sector in the 400 and that person was a second officer. We had a laugh; we were not exactly overconfident, but we were excited.

  *

  The 400 series was a wonderful plane, but in those early days its computers were not reliable and 50 per cent of our flights departed late. None of us were used to these new systems and booting up the aircraft from a cold state proved very challenging. The problem was determining in which order to start the 100 computer systems; the Boeing engineers had not produced a reliable sequence. If the engineers booted up the plane in a slightly different sequence, or missed one of the 100 steps, one computer would hang, which would, in turn, hang the rest of the process. In a notable case in Los Angeles, our problems began when we were in the flight deck trying to reboot an aircraft that had been shut down the previous night. It should have taken fifteen minutes to start the computers the next morning, but in our case it took four hours. The expensive fix for the next few months was to never de-power the aircraft. The auxiliary power unit (APU) would run continuously whenever the engines were shut down.

  The computers were very glitchy on that first flight across the Pacific with Geoff Westwood. Just before we were cleared for take-off, after a 90-minute delay, I was going through the systems as we taxied and saw the computers had altered the cabin temperature of the plane to 2 degrees hotter than the Qantas settings. I was about to attempt a fix on it when Geoff said, ‘Don’t touch it! For God’s sake, don’t touch it!’ So we flew all the way to Los Angeles with the passengers complaining about the heat.

  Another time early in the 747–400’s life, Captain Graeme Cant and I were climbing out from Los Angeles for San Francisco when the flight management computers (FMCs) decided to switch from metric to imperial without prompting. The FMCs display the weight of the plane, which allows us to set the engine thrust, and calculate fuel usage and landing speeds, and so on. All we could see were astronomically large numbers displayed on the FMCs. Then the auto-thrust failed. A few bells and warning lights activated that added to the distractions. The FMCs weren’t making any sense but the aircraft was flying beautifully, and that first commandment, ‘Aviate’, flashed to the front of our thoughts. Graeme and I looked at the thrust that had advanced uncommanded to the ‘maximum continuous’ setting. There were plenty of opportunities to be confused and to become distracted, but I’ll never forget Graeme’s response once we’d worked out the problem: ‘Let’s see what she’ll do,’ Graeme smirked as he rode the very light 747–400, climbing like a Saturn V rocket up into the heavens.

  The 747–400 required no flight engineer as the job was taken by central maintenance, flight warning and reporting computers. Hundreds of other system computers communicated with each other to provide a level of automation that had never been experienced before.

  Despite the challenging introduction to service, the airline, pilots and passengers loved the 747–400. It offered enhanced safety, efficiency and comfort. Once the glitches were ironed out, the computers worked superbly and seldom failed. The flight controls were also improved. A ‘turn coordinator’ was installed that automatically put in rudder deflection in a turn, the first step towards reducing the pilot inputs required during flight and the first hint of what fly-by-wire flight controls had to offer.

  With the engineer gone, it was the job of EICAS (Engine Indication and Crew Alerting System) to notify the pilots of failures and the checklists needed to resolve the failures. EICAS displayed system failure and checklist messages on the pilots’ central display. We’d go to the 747–400 QRH (quick reference handbook), which was a bible of 240 checklists for every conceivable failure on the plane.

  The 400 marked the dawn of the period of ‘automated’ aircraft that people are so worried about today. You could fly all the way to LA without really touching too many controls: it had an excellent mechanical autopilot, and the flight management computer presented performance indices to warn the pilots of an impending stall and also to prevent flight into ‘Coffin Corner’ (a situation when flying above the aircraft’s maximum altitude where engine and airframe limitations reduce the safety margins). The computers and automation were a great flying aid but they were not fool-proof. The pilots still needed to carefully read and interpret the computers and flight instrument displays.

  I remember once on the way to London, we were in the 747–400 at 35,000 feet, very close to our maximum altitude. Meanwhile, a 747–400 from another airline came from behind and 4000 feet above us. Our instruments showed we were cruising with a speed margin of plus/minus 5 knots. We would get supersonic buffet if we sped up 5 knots, and we might stall in a turn if we slowed down 5 knots. We didn’t know the performance of the 747–400 behind
us, but we figured (since it was also flying from Asia to Europe) they were also heavy and so shouldn’t be that high. They must have had no speed margin to play with. We then passed a waypoint where the route turned through a 40-degree angle, an unusually large change in direction. The G force came on as our aircraft banked into the turn, and our speed tapes showed the previous 5-knot margin was now pinched down to almost zero. The thrust increased to the maximum cruise limits and, bit by bit, we nudged our way through that turn. We were fine but the same was not true for the trailing 747–400 – they hit and then penetrated Coffin Corner. The speed tapes must have already shown little margin when they were flying straight. But now, in the turn, their speed margin reduced to zero and the engine thrust at the higher altitude was insufficient to counter the increased drag. With stalled wings and insufficient thrust they only had one place to go – down!

  ‘PAN PAN PAN – [callsign] in an emergency descent to 35,000 feet.’ They plummeted down through those 4000 feet in about 30 seconds.

  It was a terrible example of airmanship. The engineer in a 747 Classic would have warned the pilots not to climb so high, but the engineer had been replaced by computers and the pilots didn’t understand their jet’s performance. They probably understood the yellow no-go speed zones on the speed tape, but they didn’t know the autopilot would mindlessly bank the aircraft into a 20-degree banked turn at high altitude. They could have negotiated the turn more safely if they knew they could limit the bank angle, but they were clueless.