APG 678 – Blithering Old Fokkers!

Interactive Transcript

Speaker A You're listening to the Airline Pilot Guy show the view from our side of the cockpit door.

Speaker B WAPG, it's the airline pilot guy. Airline pilot guy, episode 678.

Speaker C Yeah, he's up in the sky.

Speaker B It's the airline Pilot guy. Hello, you're listening to the Airline Pilot Guy show the view from our side of the cockpit door with your host Captain Jeff broadcasting live from the A.P. road vessel studio. Today's show is recorded the week of September 22, 2025.

Speaker C Yeah, he's up in the sky. He's the airline pilot guy.

Speaker B In today's episode, a 737's main gear collaps while landing in St. Martin and an Airbus heading to Nice lines up with the wrong Runway. Also ahead, your feedback. So get all settled in. Tray tables and seat backs in the upright and lock positions. Electronic devices powered on. I'm Radio Roger and Flight 678 is ready for pushback.

Speaker A Thank you Radio Roger. He's an award winning TV and radio reporter currently at the number one all news station in the nation, 1010 wins on 92.3 FM in New York City. Welcome to the Airline Pilot Guy show. It's an aviation podcast covering the latest in aviation news and answering your great feedback. I'm Captain Jeff, former U.S. air Force pilot and retired Delta Air Lines captain. And joining me from his studio in Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire, retired professional dodge shooter, former RAF RAAF fighter pilot, Reef Ride Scarebus, A330, A340 captain for Virgin over the Pond Airways. It's Captain Nick.

Speaker B Hello there, lovely to see you. Now APG678 reminds me of NACA TM678. Now that's the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics to technical memorandum by max Kramer in 1932 because he took measurements concerned with the increase in the maximum lift of an airplane wing due to a sudden increase in its effective angle of attack resulting from a gust which isn't very interesting. But this one perhaps more so if you were in Ghana. Ghana's Civil Aviation authority an act of law number 678 prevents seizure or detention of your aircraft on the grounds that part of the aircra after might be infringing a patent. So if you've infringing a patent on your airplane, you won't get it seized in Ghana. Hooray.

Speaker C Wow.

Speaker A Yeah. Wow.

Speaker B Such a relief.

Speaker A Very well, thank you. That, that was important information for everybody to know.

Speaker C Yeah.

Speaker B Particularly our listeners. Yes, Ghana. I thought so.

Speaker A We have a certain level of listener out there, not very high, but thank you. For that. That was quite interesting. And, you know, nobody died. It wasn't a terrible tragedy, so thank you.

Speaker B No, no, it's hard finding those, actually.

Speaker A Okay, well, should be easier now that you and I are no longer flying, so.

Speaker B Yeah, indeed. The world is safer.

Speaker A It is. All right. And also joining us from her home studio in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, retired financier and aviation enthusiast, spreadsheet master, and our producer, it's Liz Piper.

Speaker B I'm having a bad case of deja vu. Did we not try to do this show before or something?

Speaker A You'll never know.

Speaker B It could have been a nightmare. Yeah, well, maybe that's why I didn't sleep last night.

Speaker A It did turn out to be a nightmare, but here we are again.

Speaker C Here we are.

Speaker A We're giving it another go get it a few days later.

Speaker B Old school try. Yeah, let's give it a sh.

Speaker C Go.

Speaker A Oh, give it a sh. Go. Okay, well, let's. Let's go and do some news. Thank you. All right, here we go.

Speaker C Stand by for news.

Speaker A A WestJet Boeing 737 800. Can I say that? Registration Charlie Golf Whiskey Sierra romeo, performing Flight 2276 from Toronto to St. Martin with 164 people on board, landed on St. Martin's Runway 10, Runway 10 at 13:28 local time when the right main gear collapsed. The crew managed to keep the aircraft on the Runway and brought it to a standstill on the Runway on the nose gear, left main gear and right engine case. The aircraft was evacuated via slides. There are no injuries reported. The return flight was canceled. Wow. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. That's not a quick fix. Let's see. The airport reported an incident of all. Okay, we just talked about that, so. Hey, we do. By the way, the weather was beautiful. Yeah. So looks like a complete mechanical kind of thing going on, but we do have some video that I'm going to play right now. This is the 7th of September, by the way, a few weeks ago. Okay. We're seeing the aerial view of it touching down and now on different angle. And sure enough, it was kind of a. We can't hear you because of all the scraping noises.

Speaker B Yes.

Speaker A Yeah, I don't think they have a choice. Stopping straight. He did a good job of keeping it going straight down the Runway, that's for sure.

Speaker C Send Crossfire Rescue 12 6.

Speaker A I'm wondering if they have anybody in the tower to translate the Canadian.

Speaker B Yes.

Speaker C Delta 18904. Delta 18904. Maintain 2,600ft. Contact with an approach one three. That's 195 hold over 2,276 state stores and fuel on board. 163. 1. 11.7, 000 pounds of fuel. Control. 11,600 pounds of fuel. 11,600 pounds of fuel. Copy. Search and rescue is on the way to.

Speaker A Okay, they're showing that search arrived.

Speaker C Confirm any dangerous goods on board west ship 276? No dangerous.

Speaker B They've done a very good job of searching. I mean, they found them straight away, didn't they?

Speaker A Yeah, they did. They're. They're pretty quick there.

Speaker B They're just the rescue bit left now.

Speaker A They look like they're both on. Oh, you mean like not running? Okay.

Speaker B They haven't fallen off.

Speaker A Yeah, I know. I mean it's possible that that right one could be off.

Speaker C The fire department is on the Runway. Requesting an update. Shut down now.

Speaker A Okay. It's very, very critical information for everybody to know. And I'm not being sarcastic.

Speaker C 276, can you confirm if your engines are shut down?

Speaker A Yes, engines are shut down.

Speaker C Is it okay for fire department to proceed to the aircraft now? Yes.

Speaker A The video showing the fire, the search or crash. Fire rescue, people spraying water or foam. I think it's just water. Whatever it is they spray. They're spraying that jet.

Speaker B Are they spraying that? Have they seen a fire? Are they spraying that?

Speaker A I don't know.

Speaker B Or is it just a precaution?

Speaker A That's a good question. I don't know. Maybe they see a. I don't know.

Speaker B Well, yeah, it just seems if you're. If you're trying to evacuate, it's going to be a bit difficult with all that. Anyway. Yeah, carry on. Okay, carry on. Old chat. I'm just musing.

Speaker A Okay.

Speaker C 12276A from information from fire department. The aircraft needs to be evacuated. Okay, we copy 16276 and lady mate was 2276 will be evacuation on the.

Speaker A Okay, we're seeing the slides in this video that we're watching right now from the. From the aft portion of the aircraft. The rear entry and exit doors.

Speaker C 76 Fire department advised. Please do not evacuate the aircraft on the starboard side. Okay. Not on the starboard side. Roger. Was 2007:6 correct.

Speaker A Okay, so it looks like they heated that. Yeah, there are. Looks like they're all coming out of the left side and the forward. The L1 door and the. I guess that would be the L2. I don't think there are any other doors anyway. The back door. Yeah. As somebody in our chat room said. I'M sorry, I missed. Was that, uh, Blackhawk says bag count on the evacuees. Yeah. Let's see if. Doesn't look like too many have bags, which is a good thing, which is unusual, right? I mean, have you seen anybody yet with any luggage? Yeah. Awesome. All right. And another aerial view of the situation with the. The water, slash foam or whatever fire retardant sprayed all over the place. And I guess I was going to say that if the people did get out, especially the first ones, they could be slip and slide. Yeah. So I didn't see anybody slipping and sliding. So good job. Good evacuation.

Speaker B Well, you say that, but I've got a question. They. Why did the. I love this music. Why did they ask them to only evacuate from one side? Because that immediately halves the number of exits you can evacuate from. So if it is generally a time critical evacuation, I'm not sure they really should say that. It's not really up to them. It's up to the commander and his crew as to which side they're going to evacuate from. And they will generally evacuate from every exit so long as it's. There's no immediate danger of fire.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker B Or something really bad out there that would. They go, oh, that's too dangerous for anyone to come down. But other than having some foamy water on the ground, I couldn't. Which the fire people put them there themselves.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker B I don't know why they asked that. Perhaps someone in the audience with more knowledge than me can answer that.

Speaker A Yeah, I. That's a good question you have there. Because I didn't see any evidence of any kind of fire or smoke or anything coming from the right side. The only thing that was obvious is that the right main gear had collapsed. So maybe they were concerned about that. I don't know, you know, maybe collapsing even further. And maybe let's keep everybody on the other side. That is the good side. But, you know.

Speaker B Yeah. Sam asks if the captain can override the exit side request. And I would say absolutely he can. He needs to. When you're given a thing like only evacuate from one side, he really needs more information.

Speaker A Why?

Speaker B Because I need to make a judgment call. Because ultimately it's my decision as to which exits we use. So along with the don't evacuate on the right side, you need. Because it's slippery, because we sprayed foam on it, in which case you might go, all right, this is not really a time critical evacuation. I'm happy for you to go out of just one side. It might take another 90 seconds or so. To get everyone off, but that's fair enough. But if. If for any other reason, like you've got a fire inside the fuselage, I would say to hell with that. We're going out as quick as we can from every exit right now.

Speaker A We didn't, unfortunately, we didn't actually hear the communication with the crash fire rescue people to the tower. We were only given the translation or paraphrasing of what was being communicated to the tower controller from the crash fire rescue. So it would have been nice to hear really what they were saying. You know, maybe that could give us a little bit more information about why they didn't want them to be evacuating on the right side. But that's a good question.

Speaker B Exactly. I suspect. I don't know for sure, but I wonder what language the fire crew normally speak in, whether they're. There's no. Probably no requirement for them to have English as a second language so they can communicate with the crew. That may be one of the reasons why it went via the tower, because obviously the tower controller can speak English.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker B Interesting though, isn't it? What do you think of the approach, Jeff?

Speaker A Well, I mean, it was a. It was a nice approach.

Speaker B Yeah.

Speaker A A lot of. Just reminds me, I remember when I was a new first officer, and if you came on the 727, it was very, very difficult to make a really good landing on the 727. It happened every once in a while, and that was usually a surprise, but it was a very difficult aircraft to land. And I remember a few different times the captain saying something like, nice approach. So, you know, like after you've. You've landed, like, okay, I get it. Yeah, the landing, not so much. Yeah, I think the approach in this case was nice. The landing looked like. I don't know if they caught a gust of wind or they just over. Over flared the aircraft or whatever. I don't know. But they.

Speaker B Oh, most certainly they. They leveled off. I mean, I saw him coming over the threshold and looking back up the Runway, I thought, oh, that's about 50ft. That looks absolutely on the numbers. That looks perfect. But then he leveled off, and I went, oh. And he starts floating down the Runway at 40 or 50ft. And I'm thinking, well, he's eating up his Runway pretty fast, and he's not getting any closer to a touchdown. And sadly, they then cut to a different view from the other end of the Runway. So I didn't actually see what kind of attitude changes that occurred. But I suspect at some point there was a nudge of the yoke or a, a very sharp word and a reaction to get the airplane down that might have resulted in that. In a firm landing. A very firm landing.

Speaker A Very firm, yeah. I mean, I can kind of see. I mean the gear is a, is, is designed to be able to withstand that, but if it had some kind of weakness from some other event, slash events in the past, then, you know, you don't, you don't know. And you find out when you have a very firm landing, as in this case. I'm wondering, you know, you mentioned that they kind of cut away before we had an opportunity to see what happened as, as they've leveled off at 30, 40ft and the airspeed is, is, you know, bleeding off. And you know, you need airspeed flowing or air flowing over that wing to keep the lift going. And at some point you're gonna, you're gonna lose that lift. I'm wondering if the WestJet crew paid somebody to say, can a few frames out.

Speaker B Could you just lose that?

Speaker A Yeah, for some reason you don't need to show that. Okay.

Speaker B Yeah, exactly. Sadly, they'll have the data recorder churning out all the numbers so they, the inquiry will find out. But yeah, it is possible that they just lost airspeed. You could usually tell them because as airplane starts to drop, you see a massive pitch to try and cushion the, the accelerating, the vertical acceleration you've just built up. But nothing of course happens because the link, the wing isn't really producing any lift anymore. So the airplane pitches up and then you bang in and, and you go, ouch. That would have hurt. But no, we may be being a bit rude about the crew. It. They may have actually made a reasonable landing and it might be entirely a technical issue of a failure of the undercarriage, although that is fairly rare. Although having said that, we've had a number of these on 737-8-1800s lately, haven't we? Is it just a rash of unfortunate incidents?

Speaker A I don't know.

Speaker B Are we getting a trend here? Is it a coincidence some Funyuns lining up maybe?

Speaker A Yeah. And included in our show notes that you can read for yourself. We were reminded by our producer that there is a final report on that incident very similar to this one of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737800 in Santa Ana, Orange County, John Wayne, back in August of 2023, so about two years ago, and they said that the aft trunnion pin failed. That's part of the landing gear assembly, not Funyun trunnion. Oh, how about.

Speaker B That possible show title?

Speaker A Funyun. Trunnion. Trunnion. Funy. Okay, yeah, let's think about that a little bit more. So. Yeah, so you're right, Captain Nick. This is something that has been occurring, it seems like more. More frequently on this particular model. And I'm wondering what's going on. I think it's a good question to ask.

Speaker B Yeah. Particularly since it was something to do with the chromium layer on that pin that was altered. And I can't without really stopping the show and rereading it all, but there was cracks that hadn't been spotted or the. The pin was ground down to make it fit during an overhaul and that induced fatigue crack growth.

Speaker A But yeah, it won't fit. Okay, grind it down and just hit it as hard as you can. It'll work.

Speaker B Well, we know it's tough for those engineers because they've. All they've got in their toolbox is a selection of hammers.

Speaker C So.

Speaker A Right. You know, just use the biggest one you have.

Speaker B Yeah. If you just got hammers, everything looks like a nail.

Speaker A Yeah, that's true. I guess they say in this report briefly that. Well, not briefly. It's a long report, but they do say that it looks like there was a fatigue crap. Crap, crap. A fatigue crap. We've all had those.

Speaker B Oh, yes.

Speaker A Had been present for several landing cycles. And I think that they. Yeah, they said the crack developed as a result of the grinding performed as you mentioned. So anyway, all that information's there could definitely have something to do with this particular incident as well.

Speaker B Indeed.

Speaker A All right. Oh, looks like Tim Van Ram. Hello by the way. Are live audiences here in full force and you too listening to the audio only podcast should somehow or not somehow sometime you should check out joining us in our live recording on YouTube and then you can be part of this grade of wonderful people. Most of them are wonderful people. Tim says best guess is that the problem side. Okay, so we're talking about the evacuate evacuation and why the crash rescue people said or suggested that they not evacuate on the right side. Tim's guessing that the problem side had steel to ground friction causing high heat under the fuel tanks. So as a precaution, ask the evacuation. Not on that side maybe.

Speaker B Yeah. Not their decision. Right, Tim? So they can. They can let you know that they can see smoke or possible fire from the engine casing. That's fine. And then you can make a decision. But it's not their decision to deny you aside to evacuate from just because something might have Got hot. So, yeah, I agree.

Speaker A All right, as I said, all this information in the note, in the show, notes for this particular news item, and with that I think we'll move on to the second item, also from the Aviation Herald. This involves a Nouvelle Air, Airbus A320, 200. This happened on the 21st of September. So a little over a week ago they approached the wrong Runway and overflew aircraft that were lined up on that other Runway that they were not supposed to land on. And I think, I'm not sure, but I think I remember hearing something to the effect of the clearance was like three meters. That's close.

Speaker B Yeah, that. Terrifyingly close. But then again, we've had another, you know, similar one with the Air Canada aircraft at San Francisco, if you remember that they reckoned was 50ft, but this is even tighter than that. So I'm going, wow, that was close.

Speaker A So, Captain Nick, why don't you go ahead and tell us about this incident?

Speaker B Sure, yeah. The details are that this new Vern, I've heard of Nouvelle Cuisine, I haven't heard of Nouvelle Air, but Nouvelle Air, Airbus A3 2200 and the registration was Tango Sierra India November Papa, and It was flight BJ. No references to that, thank you. BJ 586, that's a lot of BJ's. From Tunis to Nice and was on approach.

Speaker A I'd like to, I'd like to interrupt, I'd like to interrupt you. This is the reason why we normally don't have Captain Nick reading this. Okay, continue.

Speaker B Fair enough, sir. Now, I, I am, I'm privileged to have landed once at Nice in a Hawk of all airplanes, so I didn't fly an airliner in there, but I do know a tiny bit about the airplane, the airport, sorry, not as much as, uh, Blackhawk and I have been chatting to him about this, but it's quite interesting. Now the. There was an EasyJet, EasyJet Europe, Airbus 32 200, so the same type of aircraft. And he was Oscar Echo India Juliet Zoo Zulu performing flight A uniform 24706 from Nice to Nance, and he was lining up on four right when the Nova Nouvelle Air overflew him before initiating a go around. Now, the Easy Easy boy subsequently vacated the Runway and returned to the apron and his flight was canceled. Probably because I suspect their cabin crew all went, we're not going to do that again. We just nearly died. Or perhaps the pilot said that anyway. Yeah, I don't blame them, quite honestly. And the incident aircraft, the aircraft that caused the incident climbed 4,000ft and positioned for another approach on Runway four left. Landed on that Runway without further incident. Took him about 15 minutes to get around the pattern. Now, according to the ADS B data, and just bear in mind that ADS B is sort of plus or minus 25ft, so we can't really be too accurate about this, but According to the ADS B, the Nouvelle aircraft crossed the threshold at 50ft, which is absolutely perfect, and initiated a go around six seconds later. Now I'm just going to go 50, 40, 30, 20. And that's about the height you would have been six seconds later. I reckon between around 20ft when he initiated a go run. Now initiating a go run doesn't mean that's when he put the power up. Since we're looking at ADS B data, that's probably when he started climbing. You've got an indication that he was climbing, which is you make a decision a bit before that because it takes time for the engines to spool up. So by the time he starts climbing, a little bit of a few seconds will have passed anyway. The French Bea, what does that sound like again?

Speaker A Oh, you didn't tell me to get ready for that. So it's going to take a minute or two for me to search for that.

Speaker B We know who they are.

Speaker A Okay, well just, I'm just warning you that at some point while you continue to analyze this, you might actually hear the sound effect.

Speaker B Fair enough.

Speaker A Play. Which means that I found it anyway.

Speaker B They sent four investigators and Odin quite rightly opened up an investigation. This was nearly a very, very serious accident. So what happened? According to the information that we've got available, the Novolair aircraft was cleared for a visual approach to land on four left. The EasyJet aircraft was given a clearance quite correctly to line up on four right. So they're going to land on separate runways. Four left have been used that day for takeoff. Sorry for landings and for right had been used for takeoffs. Okay, so we're all going. Why did the Nova Layer aircraft line up on the wrong Runway? Why didn't the controller, pardon me, stop him earlier? Well, why? He lined up. Ah, thank you.

Speaker A You're welcome.

Speaker B Say that again.

Speaker A Oh.

Speaker B That'S great. I love the way you modulate your voice.

Speaker A Oh yeah, well, I've been practicing.

Speaker B So in the defense of the pilot, they have installed new lighting on four right. That's the takeoff Runway. He's supposed to be landing on four left, don't forget. And they put in nice bright new LED style Runway lights. So that Runway stands out like A dog's shiny teeth. And the other Runway has the old lighting, but the airport is so poor because we no one goes to Nice. It's not a huge tourist spot, it doesn't have an enormous income from all the visitors. It's not on the Cote d' Azur, which is the most beautiful part of the French coast, etc, it's a really poor area. So they said they couldn't afford to put the lighting on 4 left until next year 2026, so they're still waiting for that. So in the meantime when you're making an approach, the lighting on fore right looks lovely and bright and attractive. The lighting on the Runway you're supposed to be landing on, which is also set a little bit back, it's set further away than four, right. So the first Runway you get to see is going to be this nicely bright lit Runway that's closer to you than the gloomy left hand Runway which is further away. So I'm going to say that is obviously a factor if you're doing, you know, confirming your lineup and looking out at the comments by our lovely listener, uh, Blackhawk, who's made multiple approaches there. He said they don't even usually have the glide. Sleep's often us. And they don't usually turn the localizer on, it's normally turned off. So whereas I always had the ILS on for the Runway I was going to land on even if I was doing a visual approach because most airports will have it radiating even if you're not doing an instrument arrival. It's a fantastic aid to make. Confirm, just confirm that you're at the right airport, you're pointing at the right Runway. All those kind of facts that you want to be absolutely certain because we know despite that no one ever lands at the wrong airport or on the Runway. It's nice just to have that confirmed. Okay. Yeah, well it happens so often. It's an ideal thing to do. It's you know, belt and braces. So why didn't the controller send him around? Well, of course you're not allowed to have a long straight in approach on this Runway because you would be flying over the beach and the edge of the town. And you know, this is the most beaut, the most fantastic hotels, expensive, most beautiful restaurants overlooking the bay. It really is gorgeous there and they don't really want airplanes getting in the way of them and the view of the sunset, etc. Etc. And lots of noise. So you end up doing a final approach fix that's five miles away. But on A base leg and then you do a turn on to final. So the controller doesn't get a chance to see which Runway you've actually physically lined up on until quite late. Only a few miles and it wouldn't take much for the controller to put his eyes down and do something else and then look up and go, oh, I'm not sure about that bloke. And then of course he's still gotta look at his radar, which will give him an indication. I don't know whether it's automated or not, but it's certainly. Most controllers have got a radar that will show him what the approaching aircraft is doing and just confirm that he is lined up on the correct Runway. When he realized it was probably too late. At that point he did order a go around, but the Nova Layer aircraft had passed over. Now how close did they end up coming? Well, like we say, we ads B is only reported in 25 foot increments, so in theory he got down to 20ft. Sorry to 50ft. And that's lowest we saw and that's over the top. Don't forget he continued to descend until he was past the Easyjet before he actually got his go around going. The 320s. Tail is 38ft 7 inches. So let's call it, you know, 48, 40ft for, for, you know, ease of passive calculation. Yeah. So he's 10ft, 3 meters somewhere around there away from him from hitting the tail. And, and don't forget, he hasn't actually stopped descending at this point as he passed over that fin. He carries on descending a little further before he starts his go around. Yeah, they came horrendously close to colliding. Now how did he not see this bloke on the Runway? Even though I've made a bit of a big thing about the gloomy Runway lights, they're still bright enough to, to be legal and used. And there's a lot of lights on a Runway, particularly at the threshold. You've got the edge lights, you've got the multiple rows of lights on the center line, you've got the barrettes that are indicated there to give you a feeling of perspective down the Runway. They're all illuminated and in amongst all those lights, you've got a red light, a white light on the fuselage of this aircraft, a white light on the tail which is not very bright at all. And you've got strobe lights at the wing tips, but they have wingtips on the 320. Oh no, I'm guessing now I don't know for sure that they've got lights on the wingtips. They'll have navigation lights. So green and red. Do they have strobes? Doesn't? I'm not sure. Their wingspan's about 38 meters. The Runway width is around 45 meters, but it can be 30 meters. So it's somewhere between 30 and 40. 45 meters at Nice. I'm not certain which. But there's no doubt about it that those wingtip lights will sort of be merging with the edge lights and the lights on the fuselage will sort of be merging with the lights in the center of the Runway, which are the majority of which are massed up at the threshold just where the EasyJet aircraft is parked. So spotting all those lights amongst other lights is not as easy as you'd think. And we know that from the number of accidents that have occurred with aircraft landing on other aircraft. One on the end of the Runway and one not seeing him and making an approach. There's a very famous one at Los Angeles. There was quite recently a triple seven that landed on a Coast Guard aircraft in Japan. Both dreadful accidents. We know that the Canadian aircraft nearly landed on a number of aircraft parked on a taxiway because he thought the taxiway was the wrong way. But he didn't twig that all the additional lights were actually airplanes. So, you know, you think, oh, it's got to be easy. No, it's not. It's not as easy as you think. So there is that to bear in.

Speaker A Yeah. And that is assuming that the weather is like perfectly crystal clear. But looking at the metars at the time of this incident, there were heavy light to heavy thunderstorms in the area. Looks like the ceiling. Well, the ceiling was around 5,003 to 5,000ft. They had some scatter clouds and broken clouds. And so, you know, and they're performing a visual maneuver there toward the end. So it's very challenging. Obviously they were below the cloud ceiling, but, you know, if you have thunderstorms in the area, you know, the visibility it says here was not bad, but it's not a beautiful clear in a million kind of night that we're dealing with here. And then, as you say, you know, the light, the lighting on the 320 on the Runway kind of blends in with all the other lights. And the LED lighting is really bright. I can kind of see this whole setup here, by the way. Oh, uh, Blackhawk in our live audience says, I've seen when wingtip strobes on an airplane and thought they were the Runway end identifier lights, the R E I L S, the Runway end identifier light system. And just quickly, uh, Blackhawk always said, also says for Some reason the EasyJet pilots returned to the gate. I think that they were going for a crew change, but I think they left out one word. A crew underwear change.

Speaker B Yeah, I would have thought they would have seen this guy Cream over the top of their flight deck.

Speaker A Cream is probably not the best word to use.

Speaker B Okay. And you know, they, they would have undoubtedly heard him. You know, I've been beside a Runway when Concord took off and had some of our cabin crew almost in tears. The amount of noise. So yes, you can engine noise through the aircraft skin. And they, they might have been very shaken by this.

Speaker A One of our co hosts that wasn't able to join us today, Captain Stefan, he is a former Lufthansa. Oh, can I say that? Former German airline, A380 captain. Yeah, well, yeah, let's see. He says he found some information.

Speaker C That.

Speaker A He sent to us because he knew we were going to cover this. This is supposedly a comment of the tower controller at Nice, translated by a colleague of his. Hello. Luckily it wasn't me on the frequency. That's from the controller. The information I have is that the Nouvelle Air pilot lined up on final for 4 right instead of 4 left. We've covered that. Impossible to detect visually from the tower, with parallax, etc. Plus it's night plus bad weather. Fortunately we have ground radar equipped with an alarm that detected the anomaly by extrapolating the trajectories. The controller then asked the pilot three times to confirm that he was indeed on final for four left, which he confirmed each time, I guess. What is that called? The. What kind of bias is that?

Speaker B Confirmation bias?

Speaker A Confirmation bias or expectation bias or something? Some kind of a bias. So he said. Yeah, he confirmed it every time. And the controller finally decided to command the go around and by the time he did, I think he passed just over the EasyJet. It's incredible that the Nouvelle Air pilot never saw the Easy aligned or the Easyjet aligned. The anti collision lights as we mentioned. I can kind of see that that might be difficult to see. For the record, the aircraft operator decided to save energy by completely changing the Runway edge lights to LED only on far right and will only do four left at the end of 2026. Hmm. I'm wondering if they're going to move up that on the calendar.

Speaker B Yes, after this.

Speaker A As a result, the Runway four right is much brighter than the four left. Because you also mentioned that Captain Nick and I think it attracts the pilot's attention much more when they're on final, especially in bad weather. We reported it many times, but we never got any answers. Okay. So they're concerned about this and they have been concerned about this. And this is just. This incident basically just cements that concern that, you know, something bad is going to happen unless we fix this. So he said the controllers, finally, this controller said the controllers on duty are upset. I think they are really scared.

Speaker B Yeah, yeah, quite right, too.

Speaker A Thank you, Captain Stefan for. For sending that in.

Speaker B Indeed.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker B Always nice to have someone with a little bit of background information.

Speaker A It is. All right, so again, you know, it worked out this time, but man, man, another really, really close call and we just gotta, I don't know, just be a little bit more vigilant out there. I don't know what else to say.

Speaker B Yes, we do. And perhaps it's time for TCAs to be updated.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker B So that it can tell how close you're gonna get to an aircraft on the ground. I mean, the moment you can get to see the aircraft on the ground on tcas. But the system won't alarm for them to prevent false indications. But as technology improves and accuracy of all our electronic equipment improves, hopefully they will be working on one that will go know you're about to hit that one and it's on the ground and that's where you're going to be very shortly and give us some kind of a warning.

Speaker A Yep, agreed.

Speaker B I'm actually quite in favor, I've mentioned it before, of a searchlight or a bright light. You know, you, the, the amazing brightness of LED torches always amazes me. You see someone on a bicycle coming towards you and he's got one tiny little torch, but you see him about a mile and a half away. It's incredibly bright, but one angled on the fuselage, 3 degrees up, pointing straight back, which would be right in the eyes of an aircraft making an approach on top of you would be a really neat light to have, as long.

Speaker A As it's not too bright and like blind you and then you can't see anything.

Speaker B Well, you shouldn't be lining up on the Runway with someone on.

Speaker A Oh, yeah, good point, good point. All right, I retract my, my concern. All right, very good. You know what? I think that's going to be it for our news segment for today.

Speaker B Yeah, that was talk myself out.

Speaker A Yeah. Okay. We'll take a break, take a swig of beer or whatever and, you know, refresh yourself.

Speaker B Yes, it's five o'. Clock. Good job.

Speaker A Perfect. All right. And so the getting to know us segment is that time of the show where we get to find out what everybody has been up to between shows. And I'd like to start off right off the bat by saying that we do apologize that we didn't get that. Well, we kind of planned on or thought that we weren't going to be doing a show a week before last. And because I went on a road trip eventually all the way out to the west coast and I have some meetup audio to play shortly regarding that. But we did attempt a show recording on. Was it Friday of last week? Yep. And getting the thumbs up from the producer and we, we, that, meaning me, encountered some technical difficulties. That's crazy. That never happens with the gear in the road vessel studio. And we just finally decided to scrub the attempt and try again some other times. So the best time for us, we determined, was today, which is Monday 29th September. Again, all to say, I appreciate your patience and understanding and we did make an attempt to record a show, but it just didn't work out. What are you trying to tell me now, Liz? You're banging your head.

Speaker B I'm just pulling my hair out there.

Speaker A Oh, pulling your hair out. Ah, okay. I'm sorry. I should have picked up on that. So anyway, we're here, we're doing it. So the one per week kind of schedule we've set up for ourself or goal that we've set up for, for ourselves, we didn't. We hit the 50% mark, I guess, which is what our goal is on the APG. So speaking. Thank you. The 50% guarantee ribbon is being flashed right over my face. Thank you. It's actually better looking than my face. Let me go ahead and just tell you about the road trip that I just returned from late afternoon yesterday. Set off a couple of weeks ago on a road trip and on the way out, I was able to. On the way out, I kind of broke it into easy segments for me. You know, five hours per day travel time. Ended up actually getting to meet up with James Graves Brown and his lovely wife Sarah in Albuquerque on. I guess that would have been day three or day four of my trip. And got. We went to. Yeah, we went to a wonderful restaurant, the same one that we went to last time I was making my way through Albuquerque on a road trip, El Pinto. It's a really wonderful Mexican restaurant. And yeah, so I really enjoyed that. Thank you for treating James and Sarah and they Were just lovely, hospitable hosts at their beautiful, beautiful home, kind of up on a hill. In fact, you walk out their front door and you look to your left and then you're looking at the area where they have the balloon festival every year. That's a kind of a wide open area, like a park setting in the distance. And they say it is just absolutely a perfect vantage point for watching the big balloon festival, which I think is just in like a week or two, sometime in early October, I believe. And they invited me to come out. I wasn't able to do it this year, but maybe next year or the year after I can head out there for the balloon festival and not have to mess with trying to.

Speaker B Don't you think captain Nick should go to the balloon festival?

Speaker A I think that Captain Nick should fly over. Not in a balloon, on an airliner because it's a lot faster. And then we could set off in the road vessel studio and you can watch that. Wonderful, wonderful. Because I know how much you love balloons.

Speaker B Anyway, not gonna happen. Sorry.

Speaker A Okay. Anyway, so it was a lovely time. Very comfortable guest room and guest room, guest bed. And slept like. I didn't sleep like a baby because all the babies that I've ever had, they don't sleep very well. They're up every hour or so. So I slept all the way through the night. So it was wonderful. After that wonderful meal at El Pinto. Yeah. So it was nice to see James and Sarah and I continued on and eventually made it out to Los Angeles. And we had a meetup at the Proud Bird at Los Angeles international Airport. And I'm going to try to keep myself from saying anything else because I'll probably say something about it in the audio. So we're going to go ahead and try to find that audio and then we're going to hit the little button here and we're going to hear about our meetup at the proud bird. Hello, everyone. We are at the Proud Bird restaurant, or Proud Bird facility. Used to be a restaurant.

Speaker B It still is, yeah.

Speaker A They have restaurants. Several. It's like a food court and bar all in one. And lots of old airplanes on static display. And like a playground for kids that have aviation themed equipment. It's great. And I'm here in Los Angeles. Well, as I said, Los Angeles international airport. And on a very short notice, meetup at the proud bird. And I have one of my co hosts with me, rj who lives in southern California. And he took the time. Thank you. Claire probably doesn't listen to the show. His Wife, but thank her for allowing you to come here and visit us. And I know RJ's got to leave because he has a trip tomorrow morning very, very early. So we're gonna get, we're gonna, he's gonna say some just amazing things. It's just gonna. Yes. Wax poetic. So, rj, talk to our tour. Talk to our audience.

Speaker B Hello, everyone. I'm very happy to be here. I'm glad that I got a chance to come out here and see the large attendance of APG fans who have come to join us here and watch Airplane. You know, we've been talking about airplanes. We've been talking about the planes that land. We've been identifying airplanes as they come by.

Speaker A Some of the airplanes didn't land.

Speaker B Some of the plane. Yes, that is right. One of the airplanes did not land.

Speaker C They did.

Speaker B They eventually did land. They did. Yeah. Let's not, let's not start any rumors. Yeah, yeah, the, the plane did eventually land. It took a while, but.

Speaker A Yes, but can always go around.

Speaker B That's right. That's right.

Speaker C It was a great, it was a great night.

Speaker B Great afternoon, rather, you know, great time here had by all and good to.

Speaker A Be here once again. I'm glad you were able to come and join us, rj.

Speaker C Thank you.

Speaker A This is somebody who sends us a lot of feedback. He's a resident of the Los Angeles area. His name is Sam. You hear us talking about Sam Bolog a lot. I'm saying that right, Correct. Bolog. Okay, well, here, talk to the people. Oh, I just was not gonna miss.

Speaker B This opportunity to meet Jeff and RJ and.

Speaker A Pardon me, Mike. I'm sorry. Anyway, it's just really great opportunity to.

Speaker B Meet everybody for see everybody face to face.

Speaker A And after texting, you know, it's just wonderful to meet everybody. So, so nice to meet you. It's so nice to, to put a face with the name and a voice and like a real person. That's, and, and same here. I, I, I say this all the time, but I really mean it. It's like this is like the best part of doing this podcast is like meeting people in the community, like, in real life. I mean, I would have totally regretted if I didn't come today. You know, I had to. Definitely going to do it either way. Awesome. I'm glad that you, I know it wasn't an easy drive for you. You don't live like 10 minutes away or anything, but. Yeah, thank you for taking the time out of your day and, oh, we should mention that it's his birthday today. So. Oh, you know what? Okay. This is the first time I've ever done this on a, on a meetup report. Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you Happy birthday, dear Sam Happy birthday to you. Oh, everybody started singing harmony with me and many more. Thank you very much. Well, I'm glad that you took time on your birthday to come and that's really, that's, that's special. I don't think anybody, not too many people would do that.

Speaker B No.

Speaker A No. Thank you, Sam. And then Mike, Mike Cochran. Now, you probably hear us talk a lot about Mike and the fact that he gives us these wonderful, the hosts wonderful gifts and we, we can't stop talking about the best gift that we've ever received from you, Mike. That is the, the yeti, these fancy yeti insulated mugs that have the ACME Airlines logo on it. I mean, that was just right now though, whoever's on the show with us right now that we're playing this, they're probably holding their, their YETI thing up to the camera and showing you. Yes, we love this and we love Mike. And anyway, so that's just one of the many things that he's gifted us with over the years. But the thing that he's gifted us most with is his presence and his audio feedback. So I'm going to shut up now and yeah, believe it or not, and we're going to talk and Mike is going to talk to you. Oh, it's good to see you again. Haven't seen you since 2012 back in Orlando, Florida or just times and locations. Haven't met since that time but saw on Facebook you were going to be in town here lax. I was like, oh, I'm going to be in LA at the same time. So couldn't miss the opportunity to come say hello. Tell us why you're here. Well, I fly on the corporate end.

Speaker B Of aviation and I'm the aviation safety.

Speaker A Administrator for our department. And so they're sending me over here to University of Southern California and take some safety administration classes. Awesome. I actually went to the USC Safety Institute as well back in 1980. Something. 80, 86, 87, something like that. Yeah. And when it was at Norton Air Force Base, when there was a Norton Air Force Base. And yeah, great, great quality instruction and that's awesome that you get to go through the same kind of course. No, but it was good seeing again.

Speaker B And it was great catching up.

Speaker A Yeah, we shared so much, so much. We can't really even share with you our lovely audience. But hey, that gives you Some incentive. Anytime that we say we're somewhere and we have a meetup, you can, you can hear some background information, some inside baseball that you don't get from watching and listening to the show. So hopefully that's some incentive for you. So great to have Sam and Mike and RJ Come and meet. Come together, and we had a great time, and it's made for a wonderful birthday. I am so happy to hear that. And so, because it's your birthday, Sam, I'm going to ask you to send this back to the studio, back to the Jeff. Thank you. So you get a little. I don't hear you, Captain Nick. For some reason, you're muted, I think.

Speaker B Oh, sorry. I was just saying, look at the video. I've got the mug.

Speaker A No, that's.

Speaker B No. Oh, hang on a minute. Then it must be this one.

Speaker A No, it's not that one. No, no.

Speaker B All right, how about this one?

Speaker A Yeah, that's it. No, that's not it either. That's a koozie. It's a very nice koozie wrapped around.

Speaker B In the other room. I do apologize.

Speaker A I know. I, I, I, I failed. We both failed. I didn't. I completely forgot that I was going to be referring to those yeti cups and. Or vessels or whatever you call those. Thermal cups. What do you call those?

Speaker B I don't know. I just love listening to you flounder.

Speaker A I know. Thank you. I do a very nice job of it.

Speaker B A bit of blithering.

Speaker A Oh, good. Touche. Blithering. I'm the blithering idiot. At apg, we had a discussion about the word blithering before we started the recording today. And we were educated. I think my yeti mug, thermal mug is in a box in my closet. I failed. Sorry. I should have gotten that ready to go while I played the audio, but. Oh, well, maybe. Maybe next show we'll be able to dig it out and show you. But I think we've showed. I know that Steph seems to always have hers available and uses it all the time, and I think we all do.

Speaker B I use mine quite often, but it is very big, so I need to have a really big drink to go in there.

Speaker A Yeah. And also Mike. Mike's given us gifts over the years. He also was the guy that gave us those very nice customized Acme air luggage tags for all the.

Speaker B I definitely have that. I've had that on my bull carrier, actually. So when I go to play Patonk, I keep my balls in a nice leather bull carrier, and that's on it. So. So everyone knows it's mine?

Speaker A Yep. Mine is on my rollerboard, which is in the other room. But anyway, so I thanked him profusely for all the wonderful gifts that he has given us over the years. And it was so nice to see Mike and. And just so coincidental that he happened to be out in Los Angeles when we were there doing this meetup. And so it was great getting all caught up. And then again, Sam being with us on his birthday was awesome. Sam is such a really nice guy and it was a very nice opportunity for us to meet in person.

Speaker B Absolutely. Is he any relation to Samwise Gamgee? I don't know.

Speaker A Is Sam with us right now? Yeah, he's with us in the live audience, so he can answer your question in due time. All right, I think. Yeah. So I'm back in town after a couple of weeks on the road trip and, oh, tomorrow I'm making a quick trip down to Fort Lauderdale to go to An Thu, the Vietnamese lady who founded the Asian Women in Aerospace and Aviation. And she was the lady that ended up dying in that crash that we've discussed. And so the celebration of life because she and her husband had founded a flight school down in Miami. And so they found this space in Fort Lauderdale, which is going to be tomorrow night. So I plan on heading down, flying down and attending that and then flying back on Wednesday. So I'm sure we'll talk about that when I. Or on the next show. I'll fill you in on how that went. Anything else? Oh, Sam finally said no. Who is that, Nick?

Speaker B Oh, he's the actor who. You look. You look very much like the actor who played the part of Sam in the Lord of the Rings.

Speaker A Ah, so you were kind of making a joke then.

Speaker B Oh, well, not really.

Speaker A I wasn't really.

Speaker B I wasn't comparing Sam with a hobbit. I was just saying he looks like this.

Speaker A Ah, I see. Okay. And they're both named Sam. Lord of the Rings. Yeah, there we go. Thank you, Tanya. Yeah, sorry, there's a little bit of a built in delay between what we were saying on the video and what people are hearing in the live chat. So it's kind of frustrating at times. Wish it was more real time, but. Yeah, we're just very happy that YouTube gives us the opportunity to use this amazing technology and get together and, you know, see our friends and all that kind of stuff. All right, Liz is trying to tell me something. Oh, she's telling me to move it along. Move it along. Okay. So I. Yeah, I'm back in town. Wasn't able to sing at all for the last few weeks and. But I'll start singing again on Friday for a funeral, and then I'll be in full force next weekend, all the masses I. I sing at, so. All right, that's enough for me. So let's go with Captain Nick.

Speaker B Yeah. Hi. I had a birthday as well, and I just thought I'd show you this and you can have a bit of a laugh. This was one of my birthday presents. So now I am riding an electric bike, which bicycle. Which actually folds up very small, and you can sort of carry it around on a. What? On a. Whatever, you know, in a bag. And so that was very useful. Pretty like you for that, my darling wife. Plus, you know, nice couple of gifts from the boys, like, lots of beer and a nice waistcoat that is, you know, like wax cotton. So good for the. The autumn, I guess.

Speaker A Oh, yeah.

Speaker B So that was. And I'm now progressing into the. The seventies without any further issues. So that's. That's no worries there.

Speaker A It's the 2000s right now, Nick, not the 70s.

Speaker B Oh, okay.

Speaker A Oh, oh, you mean your. Your 70s. Ah, okay, I gotcha.

Speaker B Well, actually, I'm. I'm reverting to the seven. I quite like the seventies.

Speaker A I love the seventies.

Speaker B My heyday.

Speaker A Yeah, that's when I was a, you know, preteen and teenager. Those are in first. First couple of years of college as well. Yeah, yeah. And great music. Love the 70s music. Okay.

Speaker B Gorgeous. Absolutely fabulous. Yeah. Pink Floyd way. What a guy. Way to go. Right. What else did I do? I. Oh, I'm sorry, Jeff. I really am, but I helped out another podcast.

Speaker A That's okay.

Speaker B Are you sure? Yeah. Right, well, there's. There's a. A book written by Alan Monroe called Fast jets on the Front Line. And our good friend Neville Bounds said, oh, would you mind doing an interview of this fine chap?

Speaker A And what. What podcast was that? Uh, that he's part of.

Speaker B Oh, PT uk. Plain talking rubbish. No, I mean plain talking uk. So. So, yes, indeed. So they've. They've already put out the first couple of episodes of the chat I had with Alan, a fine chap who preceded me, I guess, by eight or ten years into the Air Force. But funny enough, we actually have so much in common because, you know, we both were cadets flying gliders. We both got flying scholarships from the Royal Air Force, so both learned to fly, albeit he was on a. An old Tiger Moth and I was in a Cessna 150 aerobat. But he then flew Javelins. But he did go on to Phantoms at one point and he ended up on tornadoes. And I flew both the Phantom and the Tornado. I didn't fly the Javelin, but as a kid I used to have a little Javelin model which was a dinky toy. And as soon as I said that, he said, I've got one of those upstairs. And I went, oh wow, that's amazing. So anyways, a really nice chatting away with Alan. He lives way up in Rutland, which is a lovely part of the countryside, but a good four and a bit hours drive. So I actually spent a couple of nights with our good friend Captain Nige. He put me up so I could break the journey, which was very kind of him. And had a few beers. We went out for a nice Thai meal on the last night I was there. So that was absolutely great. And that really is about it. Ready for me. Not much else has gone on, but I did mention I did do the artwork last.

Speaker A Oh yeah.

Speaker B Show now. There it is. That's 24ft, buddy. If you remember, there was a pilot who pleaded guilty to inconveniencing the operation of an airplane or something when he did something very naughty. And he. One of his restrictions, apart from having a bit of a flight fine and having his license removed, was that he wasn't allowed to go within 25ft of an airplane. And I thought that's such an odd thing on distance for me.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker B To have, you know. So what happens? How do you measure it? Is. Does he have to walk around with a tape measure and then he sort of lays it out and goes, okay, this is close like. And what happens to him if he goes within 25ft? And this is my imagination.

Speaker A This is what happens.

Speaker B Mad. This is what a policeman leaps out of the ground.

Speaker A That's 24ft, buddy. You're in violation.

Speaker B Exactly, exactly. So that I thought. That was a lovely thought. Anyway, we had the number. The show title number was. Or the show number was there on his orange jumpsuit. Twice.

Speaker A Twice for. What's it not? Effort.

Speaker B Emphasis.

Speaker A Emphasis. That's the word that starts with it. Yeah.

Speaker B So you shouldn't have missed that. And I. Where do I put the show logo? I have a feeling I stuck it inside the left hand. The number one engine in the intake of the number one.

Speaker A Yeah, kind of.

Speaker B It's not easy to see, but you can just see the acme on the spinner. There you go. Of. Oh, I've got a visitor. And he's rung the bell. This will be Amazon. I'm gonna pull the plug on that piece of kit. Make any more noise. And that. So that we've the show number, the show logo. And then finally, our jackass is in the. Well, he's like a gopher, isn't he?

Speaker A Or an ostrich.

Speaker B A little jackass penguin. He's diving into a hole in the ground because he's seen the policeman coming and obviously.

Speaker A So it's like a. Stop alien.

Speaker B Because, like. Yeah, because he's a South African penguin. He's not allowed in the deserts of America.

Speaker A I gotcha.

Speaker B So he's hiding from thinking it might be ice come to get him.

Speaker A I.

Speaker B Okay, so he's.

Speaker A Oh, he misunderstood. Ice, you know.

Speaker B Okay.

Speaker A It has nothing to do with cold or water.

Speaker B No, no. In fact, he's a hot penguin, that one. Yeah.

Speaker A I was thinking that when I saw that. I'm thinking, is it the ostrich that buries its head in the sand? So it looks like maybe that's what the penguin is doing as well.

Speaker B All right, exactly. Oh, by the way, Alan Monroe, I. I'm doing a plaintail on his. That in the interview. I'm turning it into a. I might get two plaintails out of it, but I'm turning it into just the highlights of that chat. But he did mention that he wasn't allowed to fly the lightning. He was posted onto the lightning twice, but in both cases his legs were too long. I don't know why they poked. Posted one there a second time, thinking his legs might have shortened.

Speaker A Well, you know, gravity does have an effect like that, but it usually takes decades before you see it.

Speaker B Absolutely. It's classic air force, though. So twice he couldn't. He told him he couldn't fly it because his legs were too long. And I asked him if. If he'd ever been given the nickname Flamingo, but no, he had. Which is a bit sad, but. Yeah, a bit like an ostrich, I thought a fling. Flamingo. Anyway, by the way, enough bird jokes.

Speaker A Big bird jokes. Yeah, bird, bird.

Speaker B There you go.

Speaker A All right, very good. All right. I guess now we could switch over to a quick word about how you can support the APG financially if you have the resources to do so. It's called the Coffee Fund or the Coffee Bar Club. Johnny, how much more coffee? No, thanks, I'll take some. I love coffee. I love tea. I love the APG community coffee and tea and the java and me. A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup. Oh, you know what? Sad. We. I still haven't worked out the issue with our back channel communications system, unity comms. And usually you'll hear Liz accompanying me the singing of the Coffee the Coffee Fund song. But yeah, now you won't hear because we don't have that being recorded. So sorry. All right. She's giving me a thumbs down now. But I did see her singing away. She was making sure that we could see her lips moving as she sung this wonderful little ditty. All right, so the reason why I'm taking my time is that we don't have any Coffee Fund contributions since the last episode, so. But we did want to still tell you about how you can become part of the Coffee Bar Club. You can do it either by making a one off contribution via the Coffee Fund classic method which is essentially a PayPal donation page. Some people use it as recurring method of contribution as well. And the other way that you can become a supporter of the show financially is to become a patron of the show on patreon.com so if you're interested, head over to airlinepilotguy.com our website coffee. You'll be glad you did. We will too. Let's do some feedback. What do you think.

Speaker B Captain?

Speaker A Incoming message. Alrighty. We're going to try to knock out as much feedback. How many times have you heard us say that? But this time we're actually going to do a pretty good job. I'm hoping. This first one is from Kevin St. John. Power bank causes smoke on Virgin Atlantic. A330 from John F. Kennedy International to Heathrow in London. Kevin tells us, hello, APG crew and audience. That's nice. He's addressing our audience as well. Longtime listener here, even back to the Catholic pilot days, even before Airline Pilot Guy. But I haven't contributed recently, but this occurred in my area, so here goes. This might be of particular interest to Captain Nick as he may not have only commanded this JFK to Heathrow flight in the past, but also commanded the evolved aircraft. I fear that one of these days a lithium power pack is going to take down an airliner. Yeah, we hope you're wrong. Listening to the audio, you could tell that the flight crew was using oxygen masks. Best wishes to all for flight phase appropriate wins. Kevin St. John. Thank you very much, Kevin, for sending that in. And we're going to now play the video to which he referred. I'm just trying to find the window. Where's my window for keynote? Got to be here somewhere. Oh, here it is. Way down here. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and put this up on the stage and we can the two talking heads over here. We can stay over here on the left. And here we go. Let's see what happens when I hit this button right here.

Speaker C Thompson. Virgin138 Mike is maintaining flight level two eight. And we have.

Speaker A Okay on four. July 2019. Oh, way back in 2019. Virgin Atlantic flight 138 from New York Kennedy to London Heathrow was forced to divert to Boston after passengers and crew detected smoke in the cabin suspected to be caused by a power bank. The Airbus A330, 300 Golf Victor, Kilo Sierra Sierra safely landed at Boston Logan around 90 minutes after takeoff. All 217 passengers were unharmed. Virgin Atlantic praised the crew's quick response and arranged accommodation and onward travel for passengers.

Speaker C Boston mayday, Mayday, Boston. Virgin 138Mike. It's maintaining flight level 280 and we have smokey in the cabin as standby for further instructions. Version 138 Mike Rogers and CFI. Mayday, mayday, mayday. Version 138 Mike refers in descent to Boston. Please version 138 Mike system maintain flight level two four zero. And I'm going to hand that to you in just a minute. Mayday. Virgin138 Mike seems to have been related.

Speaker A To a portable battery charger or power which became trapped between the seats.

Speaker C Virgin 138 Mike, flight present heading. Maintain heading Virgin 138 Mike. Virgin 138 Mike just want to maintain 1 1000. 11,000. Maintain 1 1000. Virgin 138 Mike. I'm sorry. Virgin 138 Mike. Boston altimeter 3000. 103010. Virgin 138 Mike conversion 130. I just want to confirm you got 11,000 on the altitude. 1 1000. Hey, firm. We have 1 1000. Virgin 138 Mike. Version 138 Mike, contact Boston at first 133.0. They're going to have vectors into Boston for you. 33 nothing. 33 nothing. Got it, thanks. Boston approach. Mayday, mayday, mayday. Virgin 138 Mike, you're sending one 1,000 for bus. Virgin 138 Mike heavy Boston approach current of Boston. Expect an ILS Runway 22 left. Just going to maintain 8,000. Okay. Maintain. Sorry, Runway two two left. Maintain 6,000ft. 31 38. Virgin 130 Mike heavy to center. Maintain 8,000. Maintain 8,000 on 3,000. 11. Virgin 138 Boston. Virgin 138 Mike. Virgin 138 Mike heavy. Boss, we've had a ceasefire in the back of the aircraft. We will require five services. Reminder, please. Yes, sir. We've had a seat fire. We've had a peak fire on the rear of the aircraft. Required fire services when we land. Please. Virgin 130 Mike heavy. Roger. Virgin 130 Mike heavy, destroy 5000. Virgin 130 Mike heavy. We have 217 souls on board and we have 40 tonnes of fuel. Our nature of our problem is a sea fire which has now extinguished. We intend to land at Boston as soon as possible, please. Briggs 1:39 kepi. Roger. I'll have the turn towards the airport and yield a bit lower. Thank you, Sergeant.139 Kempey contact approach on 126.5. 265. Virgin 138 Mike. JetBlue 918 for emergency amount to Boston fly hitting 060. Maintain 5,000. Maintain 5,000 on heading 060. JetBlue 918. JetBlue 9 18, reduce speed to 210210 knots. JetBlue 918, JetBlue 590 delay vector for emergency amount of Boston fly hitting 080. Maintain 6,000. Heading events 080, 6,000 on altitude. JetBlue 590 J 590 when able. Ready to speed to 210. Slowing to 210. Jet 590. Mayday, mayday, mayday. 128 Mike. Setting 5,000 on 3,011 heading 0, 60 degrees. Version 138 Mike Heavy, Boston, turn lefting 030 second heading, please. Version 138 Mike Heavy, turn left in 03 0. Heading 03 0. Virgin 1 for the Mi2 3 left, please. How do you read? Virgin 13 Mike Heavy with 10,006ft. Let me know when you're ready for the base turn. Okay, that's copy. JetBlue 484, reduce speed to 170 knobs. Contact tower 132.223222. Slow in JetBlue 138 Mike Heavy, the available landing distance is 8,806. Is it the longest Runway you have? 15 right is going to be the longest Runway. Okay, 138 Mike. Kev. Roger. Maintain 5,000 and turn right. Setting with 250 and set it for 15 right. Okay. Heading 25 0. Maintain 5,000. Maintain 5,000ft and 15 right. Virgin 130. 130 Mike Heavy. The available landing distance for 15 right is niner 20 1. And what's the wind? The current wind is 180 at 4. Okay, 15 right. That'd be great. Thanks. Version 1 through Mike Heavy. Do you want the localizer frequency? Yes, it's 110.7. Maintain 4100. Mike heavy descent and maintain 3000.

Speaker B In that Runway length. Jeff, what's that? 400ft.

Speaker C I'll take a heading of 280 to start, sir. I'll take a long approach heading of two eight zero. Virgin one thirty eight Night Fire is out, but all right. I'm sorry. You want the latest winds? It's 170 at 4. Thank you. I'm going to set you up for about a 1617 mile final. Is that what you're looking for? I'll take 15. That's fine. Roger. 26 0. 138 Mike heavy. Turn left heading of 25 0. Heading 25 0. 13138 Mike M2 8 Mike heavy. Turn left heading 22 0. Heading 22 0. 13138 Mike heavy, we will be stopping on the Runway. Roger Mike heavy descendant. Maintain 2000. Maintain 2000. 31 Kev. Mike Mike Kevy, you're seven miles from Marty. Turn left. The emergency is landing. 150 right and they're about 11 miles straight in contact. 13 4.05. 13405 final. We will be stopping on the Runway and require five mike heavy main A. Roger Runway. Boston tower, Runway one five right. Cleared to land 1140 at three and fire vehicles are on standby. Clear to land 13. 138 mike 25, we did have a seat fire in the rear of the aircraft. Fire is out and standby. Suburban tensions on the ground. 138Mike Heavy, tower copies. Copy that. Fire vehicles want to know if it was on the right or left side of the aircraft. Right side of the aircraft. Command, you copy that? Fire is out. He lands to advise his intentions. But he knows that he wants you guys to join him when the time comes. Virgin 138 Mike heavy. The fire vehicles are on this frequency. You can talk to them right now. Standby. If you could also have a look at the brakes, they may get hot. We did land overweight. Okay, standby. The fire has just been confirmed out. It's actually in one of the forward cabins. I really don't want you to commit to our corps. The seat is at the second door on the right hand side. The second door on the right hand side. Can you come in through this. Okay, stand by, please. Stand by. We need to disarm the door as well, so please don't open the door yet.

Speaker B Good, thank you.

Speaker C Shut down the number two engine and we'll disarm the door and we'll advise you when you're in Boston Tower, Virgin 138. Virgin 138 heavy, Boston Tower. We're going to shut down both engines as well. So it may be towing up here the Runway later, but we should be able to restart. Virgin 138Mike heavy, roger. And MAS port there with you as well. So he's modded the frequency, too. Okay, thank you. Standby fire service are coming on board. Copy? Yes, of course we will. We're on standby for that. We'd appreciate if you came on board first.

Speaker A Lots of static. All right. Oh, get the scary music. Power banks, also known as portable recharging devices, are permitted on both domestic and international flights under specific rules. According to FAA guidelines, each passenger can carry up to two power banks with a capacity of no more than 100 watt hours. Okay. I obviously can't read fast enough anyway. We'll have a link to this video in the show notes. Sorry for that really poor audio quality toward the end there. But of course, you know, we're using. Or they are using liveatc.net and this is a volunteer network of people out there with scanners that monitor and record the various frequencies. And apparently once they were on the ground, the quality of that scanner that was being recorded is not the best in the world. But we kind of got an idea of what happened, what transpired once they were on the ground and coordinating with the crash of fire rescue folks to ensure that the engines were shut down and that they did disarm that particular door that they were requesting them to come onto the aircraft without injuring anybody. Yeah. So Kevin asked you, Captain Nick, if you had flown this particular flight segment from Kennedy to Heathrow and then this particular airplane, and I. I've already forgotten the.

Speaker B The identification K double S. Yeah, I'm almost certain I've flown the aircraft. I did have a quick look at my logbook, but I stopped filling it out by that point.

Speaker A Yeah. Getting close. Well, So I now. July 4, 2019. I know that you actually at the time didn't know it was your last trip, your last flight, your last landing. But that was in earlier in the spring, I think, of 2019. Correct. Like March or something like that. Because I remember several of us on the crew met up with you. You had like a Two night layover in Miami. And then I remember also you coming out for Oshkosh. That was our first year, a big, in fact, our last big annual meetup, which was Oshkosh in 2019, third week of July. So this happened between your, what turned out to be your retirement flight and showing up with us and attending Oshkosh later in July. So I'm thinking you probably weren't actually flying at the time, right?

Speaker B No, no, I, I damaged my back. So I was on painkillers and drugs so powerful they took my medical from me. And since I was only a few months from retirement, I decided to call it quits at that point and not try and persist. So. Yeah, but in, so I almost, I can almost guarantee I flew that airplane aircraft a number of times, but I always left it in pristine condition. You didn't burn the seats up to the damn thing? No, I didn't, I didn't start burning the furniture. So I'm a bit upset with the crew. But having said that, I listened to him and I, my, my heart swelled a little with pride. I thought they are certainly on the radio handled that.

Speaker A Oh, very nice.

Speaker B Almost textbook. I was, you know, if that had been a sim session, I think the trainer would have said, yeah, that's great, that's just how we want it. Yeah, you guys carry on. And you know, we all know the dangers of a fire in the cabin. It is an incredibly dangerous place to have a, have a fire, particularly from something as volatile as a, a power pack because of the way that those, the batteries in those power packs ignite and then burn so fiercely. The temperatures get very high. It's almost like a small bomb going off. But the lithium batteries, really, once they get going, they, you know, they're going to go big time. So I feel pride for the cabin crew who obviously handled the fire in the cabin well and extinguish it. And there was no injuries from my knowledge. So that is great job. Flight deck did a great job. And of course they're learning. They're trying to deal with all sorts of checklists because they've got smoke and fumes in the aircraft, which is giving the added problems of having to wear masks even when they got down to altitude. They're now dealing with overweight landing checklists and trying to coordinate with the ground and their own cabin crew to make sure that everything that needs to have been done has been done. Calm the passengers. So PAs will have been made. You know, it just, that relatively small event generates a huge amount of work. And this is another reason why I just want to never want to see a single pilot operations on an aircraft. I don't care how safe people think it is. The workload involved in an incident like this is. Is horrendous. So hats off to everyone. I thought everyone coped extremely well. I thought Boston were brilliant because even though the Runway that they asked for was only like 400ft feet longer than the one they'd been given, the wind was kind of a little bit more down that Runway but it was only three or four knots.

Speaker A Negligible wind.

Speaker B Yeah, yeah. But once they made a decision and been given it they didn't try and change back, they just stuck with it. Which I thought was fine and beaut. That was good. But obviously they, they felt they were going to take full length because you know a 40 ton airplane, you can't dump fuel on those 330s so you've got to land overweight and that's not an ideal situation to be in. They seem to make a nice long straight and approach not huge because you know there's a certain level of urgency in case that fire reignites. And everyone seemed to have been briefed properly. They had all the numbers to hand, you know, passenger loads and fuel, all that stuff that they knew, both of them, I think both the crew members knew that they were going to need and they didn't have to ahm and ah about their decisions. They, they had a clear plan in mind and they'd obviously just briefed the cabin crew using the standard nights briefing, nature, intentions, time and emergency exits. Which is the kind of standard mnemonic for briefing the senior cabin crew on what the intentions are. Gets all the vital information to them in one neat little package. And you can obviously add on extra stuff if you want. But I noticed they started giving the same brief to their trafficker which I thought was great because they'd obviously just got it in their heads that right that our nights brief. I'll give a night's brief to air traffic at the same time.

Speaker A Why not?

Speaker B So that was anybody will listen exactly like it and all was fine and beaut. And I commend them for their skill and you know, ability and thanks for getting the airplane safely down. It was good.

Speaker A Awesome job, awesome job. And I'll kind of counter your point regarding you know, single pilot operations. Come on captain, just get your iPhone and you know, with your AI technology of today, like that's all you need. AI will take care of it.

Speaker B Yeah. Hey AI make a PA to the passengers.

Speaker A Yeah. And run the appropriate checklist at the appropriate time and land as soon as conditions permit. And I'll just be sitting back and watching.

Speaker B Yeah. I think this is the sort of time when we all cringe at the thought that, you know, on your own, trying to deal with all that needs to be done. It's, you know, without a huge change to the infrastructure around you. Yeah. To make it really easy to cope with these things. And they're never easy to cope with. Single pilot is going to be. Oh, God, no. I hate to think.

Speaker A No. And also, thank you for noting the. Absolutely. Well, everybody did a great job. The pilots, the pilot crew, the cabin crew, obviously, and the air traffic controllers. I echo your commentary regarding how well they handled the whole situation and the fact that. And this is a point that a lot of people would miss, we've heard so many of these audio recordings where people have had emergencies and the controller is trying to. In an effort to help them. I think usually they're saying, well, wouldn't you rather have this Runway instead? But, you know, sometimes you have to. If you're not used to all the things that are happening inside the aircraft and approaches, you've already entered into the flight management system. It's just nice, as you mentioned, that they didn't try to talk them out of using one five. Right. Even though they were originally lined up for two, two left. And that would have worked out just fine as well. But they didn't argue with them. They didn't try to talk them out of it because that would have just caused more confusion and potentially more risk.

Speaker B Yeah, absolutely. And I just make a point to people who aren't familiar with using mayday. Or pan. Or pan. Pan, I should say. Notice, I love the way the crew gave the full mayday with each frequency changed thereafter, just in case that controller hadn't picked up. It's rare, I know, but hadn't picked up the fact they're on a mayday.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker B And thereafter, they just prefixed each transmission with a single mayday. That's the way we're taught.

Speaker A Yeah. And they did a textbook.

Speaker B I mean, very nice.

Speaker A Nothing to fault. All right, let's continue on with some more feedback. This one, number four, from Larry Zola. Speaking of Larry, I mean, speaking of Boston, Larry is a resident of Boston, very close to the Boston Logan International Airport. Did you realize how well you sequenced that, Liz, or was that just a happy accident? Now she goes, yeah, I knew. I knew. This is, you know, related to Boston. Anyway, this actually is a Person from Boston, but not related to Boston at all. This involves and relates to the. I don't know if he was. I think he was the original CEO, founder of Federal Express or what we all know as FedEx. And his name, Fred Smith. He passed away recently and there was a FedEx sponsored golfing tournament somewhere. I'm not sure where, but FedEx did. Must have been maybe close to the headquarters in Memphis. That's what I'm going to guess it was in Memphis. Okay, it was in Memphis. Thank you. And they had a specially painted aircraft, FedEx airplane that flew over the top. And we just happened to have that video because Larry sent it to us. So let's see, Liz, if you'll pop that in. Thank you. And here we go. Show some golfers here on the golf course. They're all looking up at this very large aircraft. I think it's a triple seven. On the bottle. On the bottle on the bottom of the aircraft are the initials FWS Fox Whiskey Sierra. So that's Fred W. I'm not sure what the W stands for, but Fred Smith. That was a nice tribute, I think to.

Speaker B I didn't get a chance to read the side of the fuselage. Had they replaced FedEx with, with Fredex?

Speaker A Oh, let me look at again here, let me play that again. See if I can stop it at the appropriate point. Says FedEx.

Speaker B Oh, no, it's just the F and the E. Now they got it. They got the initials on the bottom. But I thought that would have been an extra touch. I would have really enjoyed if they, they painted it on the side of the fuselage. His second name was Wallace. Frederick Wallace Smith.

Speaker A Frederick Wallace Smith. Thank you, Liz. Very nice. Looks like the crowd really enjoyed that. Oh yeah. St. Jude Golf Championship. St. Jude Hospitals, Children's Hospitals, Research Hospital and Practical Hospital there in Memphis obviously sponsors this tournament. Anyway, so that was nice.

Speaker B Very good. Nice flypast, actually.

Speaker A Yeah. Thank you very much, Larry, for sending that in. We have plenty of feedback with videos or videos in our feedback. This one from Dave, Aviation Etymology. And Liz put a note in here. She said, I think that two people sent this in, but I'm not sure who the first one was. I guess she inadvertently erased the sender information on that email. But whoever it was, thank you. But we do know that Dave sent it.

Speaker B I didn't know that Liz could just erase people.

Speaker A Oh, she's.

Speaker B Lord, you better not get on the wrong side of Liz, have you? She's erased.

Speaker A She has a lot of power, that's for sure. So I'M trying to always mind my p's and q's because I want to live longer. So Dave says, love your show. This YouTube episode might give you some interesting material for an episode. It has to do with the etymology. Not entomology, which is the study of insects, but etymology, the study of word origins. And this is an etymology of aviation terminology or aviation terms. And again, he said, love your show. And then, let's see. Did you all ever wonder where all your airplane words come from? Check this out. And if you need an excuse to waste some time, that's what we do every week here, Dave. Waste your time.

Speaker B It's part of the reason we keep doing the show.

Speaker A You have a note here, Nick. I think you must have responded to Dave. Something about one of your favorite break a word, aviation terminology.

Speaker B I listened to. I listen with avid interest to this because it's right up my street. I love the origin of words and, and how they came about, etc, because the English language is full of these really weird words and people get frustrated by them. But I love the fact that they, you know, you can trace a word back to its origin by the way it's pronounced or spelled or, or, or whatever. And I just find it fascinating. And I, I was just, I just thought, well, I'll make a note of one of my favorites. And that was the word hanger. And I thought, wow. Of all the things I wonder what a hanger originally, like when you have.

Speaker A A poop and not all of it come comes off.

Speaker B You're talking about my dog now eats a lot of grass.

Speaker A Yes, definitely some hangers.

Speaker B No, that. That's called a Klingon.

Speaker A Oh, it's a Klingon. Sorry, my bad.

Speaker B Oh, dear. So it was originally a place to put a ship. I pronounce that very carefully.

Speaker A Okay, good.

Speaker B Ship.

Speaker A Thank you.

Speaker B Or large equipment. And comes from the middle of French with the same Germanic elements for home and yard. Then through the middle Dutch for a hat. Hamgyard to become hangar. So that, you know, I went, wow, that's really nice to know. I love that. No use to anybody.

Speaker A No, I mean, the fact that neither is our show.

Speaker B No, it's very true. Yeah, we love it.

Speaker A We do. I mean, we enjoy doing it. You may not enjoy listening to us doing it, but, you know, frankly, we don't care. All right. No, that's not true. We. We actually do care. Let's just play. Should I play just a little tease or a little.

Speaker B Oh, yeah, absolutely. They're really good. Pair this too.

Speaker A Okay, gotcha. Liz. She's giving me some non verbal signals and just a smidge, I think is what she was telling me. So here we go. I'm gonna hit this button here and hope for the best.

Speaker D Is it an airplane or an airplane?

Speaker C How many aviation terms are inspired by the sea?

Speaker D And why do all pilots have to speak English?

Speaker C Fasten your ethicses. Stow your dictionaries. We are clear for takeoff on this high flying episode of Words Unraveled.

Speaker A Oh, that looks like a good podcast. Check that out.

Speaker B Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker A Oh, did you notice the. Oh, darn it. I hit the wrong button. Did you notice the. One of the host's name was Words?

Speaker B Oh, really?

Speaker A I think maybe, maybe that.

Speaker B Okay, there's a special term for talking of words for someone who.

Speaker A Go ahead.

Speaker B How many aviation whose inspired job reflects their surname have to speak Englishes? They were drawn to doing a particular job because they. Because of the name reminds you of it.

Speaker A Rob Words. Rob Words and Jess Zafaris. Interesting. I just saw that. Rob Words. Oh, how come? Yeah. Okay, well, anyway, should I play a little bit more maybe? Okay. Nice music. Nice intro.

Speaker D Welcome to another Words Unraveled. I'm Rob Watts from the YouTube channel RobWords.

Speaker C And I'm Jess Zaferes, author of the upcoming etymology book Useless Etymology. And now that we've reached our cruising altitude on today's flight, what term shall we start with?

Speaker D Well, let's do what we so often do and begin with our theme, which is aviation.

Speaker C Birdiness.

Speaker D That is what the word means. Birdiness.

Speaker C Yeah, Birdiness.

Speaker D Avis, Latin for bird.

Speaker A There you go.

Speaker D Aviation.

Speaker C It is a cool riff on the word navigation too, right? Which means oceaniness.

Speaker B Yeah. So.

Speaker D Well, a lot of these words is something that's going to come off. A lot is a lot of these words we take from French, and a lot of them we actually take from Jules Verne. Specifically, for example, the word aviator. That's a creation from Jules Verne. It's a translation from 1887 of Jules Verne's Clipper of the Clouds. Mr. Aviator, you who talk so much of the benefits of aviation, have you ever aviated there? He's coining at least two terms. Aviating, which is not a word that we've taken on, but aviator. Yeah, that's the first time we have it. And it comes from Jules Verne.

Speaker C And aviation itself was coined after the notion of navigation by Guillaume Joseph Gabrielle de la Landel.

Speaker A Oh, it's easy for her to say.

Speaker C In 1863 in the book aviation or aerial navigation.

Speaker D Right, Aerial navigation. So it's Bird.

Speaker C It's birdie navigation, then birdie navigation, birdie sailing.

Speaker D We have a major transatlantic difference that we have to address up top here, and that is with the words airplane and airplane, because we don't call them airplanes in Britain at all.

Speaker C You've kept that more etymologically accurate, I guess. I don't know. It depends on the time.

Speaker D So airplane is a deliberate altering of the French word aeroplane or arroplane. Depends on how you want to pronounce it. But you know, they kind of mean the same thing, so it doesn't really matter. And there was a lot of sense seen in calling it an airplane instead of an aeroplane. For example, during the First World War, the British RAF were encouraging their pilots to call them airplanes.

Speaker C Not.

Speaker D And at one point the BBC said.

Speaker B Yeah, we should be for you.

Speaker A This is fascinating. I, I'm not going to spend the rest of the show playing this video, but I will watch it after the show.

Speaker B Oh, it's good fun. Yeah. And they're really, they're really smart people. I'm impressed with them.

Speaker A Yeah, I love it. This looks like a really good YouTube Quote podcast to check out if you're interested in this kind of thing, which I am for sure. So thank you very much, Dave and the anonymous person who also sent us a link to that. And as you know, we'll always have these links in our show notes for you to check out as well.

Speaker B Did the anonymous person not put enough cash in with the request?

Speaker A Well, I don't know. We'll have to talk to yet. Liz is giving us a thumbs up. She's going, yeah. Which means, I think, yes, I agree with you, Nick, and yes, you need to up your contributions so that your. So we'll include your name.

Speaker B Up yours.

Speaker A Yeah, up your. You know, here we are upping our standards. Up yours. Okay, let's continue on with. Oh, this is a video in Facebook. Did I. Oh, yeah, I did. Okay. This is from Ahmad Danhamedu. What is FM cross loading in an Airbus cockpit? Huh? Well, hi. We just happen to have the perfect person to answer this question or one of the crew members here that is has experience and has flown and is flying the Airbus aircraft fleet. And RJ is not here. He was in our feedback or not feedback, our meetup video. But he is out there plying the airways. Is that something? Plying the airways? He's out there flying and couldn't join us today, but we have Captain Nick. So let's see. This is Ahmad Dhan Ahmadu from Abuja Abuja. I always get that wrong.

Speaker B Abuja.

Speaker A Abuja. Okay, Nigeria, how you all are doing great this time My feedback is for Airbus veteran Captain Nick. I'd like to know what the purpose of is of cross loading. For example, from FM2 to FM1 on an Airbus. Okay, there's this question, I'm blindly assuming here that FM refers to the FMC FMS probably has something to do with flight management, I'm guessing. Anyway, so he said, I saw this being done in the video at. And then he gives us the link, a Facebook link of this video and he said, I thought all McDus, three of them. Right. Whether in synchronous or asynchronous mode, we're practically Windows doors portals for accessing the central fms, which I believe Airbus calls fmgs, while FMC and Airbus ISH is called fmgc. It's so confusing, all these letters. Or are there more than one FMGC FMG s per Airbus? Cheers. I don't even understand the question. So glad that Captain Nick is here.

Speaker B And while you know it's not, wouldn't have been an easy one to answer even if I've been current. But yeah, now looking back on it, I'm going, oh God. Right. Cross loading, it is more appropriate, refers to software updates to one flight management computer. To save the engineers having to load each individual flight management guidance system. They, they put it into one and then cross loaded. In other words, the software was driven across the aircraft from one flight management computer to the one next door. So that was I, I think cross loading is more of a, an engineering function when they do an update of the fmgs. Okay, so they're now doing the cross loading process. This is an engineering procedure we're seeing here. So that's why they're, they're pressing all these buttons and getting confused and following it off a checklist. That's not very interesting.

Speaker A Is this something that pilots do or. You said the engineers do this?

Speaker B No. So there is a difference between cross loading. Otherwise you've loaded new software in or an update on the database. The database has all the airways and airports and runways and all that kind of stuff. And you, you don't load it individually into each computer, of which there are two FMGC1 and FMGC2. And the captain's one is called number one because he's the most important person. The first officer gets the second most important one called FMGC2. And having downloaded that data, the engineer then just goes to the FM and using the internal electronics transfers it from one machine to the one next door. So that's quite easy. What normally occurs when the pilots get hold of it is that one of the pilots will type in all the information to fly a route into their MCDO and into their flight management computer. And because all the McDoos are linked and list watching what each of us is doing, that will automate sometimes takes a few seconds, but that all that data will automatically go across to the other flight management computer. So it will appear on the other mcdo. So if the first officer is typing all the information in a second or two later, not even that, usually it'll be appearing almost as he does it on the captain's one as well as his own. So both machines are kept up to date. And if the captain at some point goes, you didn't do that, right, I'm going to change that. And changes on his side again, that will go back to the first tester. So the two flight management computers have the same data. If there is a fault with one, that link can be separated and the aircraft can do that itself or you can, can do it, I think. I can't remember quite how you do it, but I can't. Yeah, I think it can. And they'll go onto an independent mode. And now both machines will operate independent of each other, so that if you've got some corrupt information on one side, it won't corrupt the information on the other side as well. Just, you know, by the by, whoever is flying the airplane usually has their flight management computer as the master and they which is achieved, if I'm not mistaken, by which of which of the autopilots you have selected. So if you are flying with autopilot 1, FMGC 1 is in charge and if you select autopilot 2 then FMGC 2 is. You might need to confirm that if you really don't take me my word on that because like I say, it's been a while and that is really it. So Ahmed, thanks very much for the question. Cross loading is not a pilot thing, that's an engineering thing when you're updating software. The rest of it is pilot stuff. And yes, they all talk to each other, but There are only two from memory flight management guidance computers. The third McDo doesn't normally take part in any of this. Third McDo is used for transmitting ACARS messages and it sits there between the two pilots on the back of the console and they can just type stuff into that and send it off or they can also access, you know, the aircraft records and things like that. However, if you get a failure of one of the McDoo's, the captains or the first officers, they can turn theirs off and automatically the third McDo will become available to replace that. And, and the. So all the data is also available to be uploaded onto the number three McDo. And that can substitute for a failed one or a broken one that one of the pilots has. And you can just select it, turn it on, and away it goes.

Speaker A Just to be clear, to bring some clarity, to hold this, this whole thing, McDo is something to do with McDonald's. And what happens if you have too much.

Speaker B No, it's whiskey. It's a whiskey, you fool.

Speaker A Oh, so I was thinking it was what happens in the bathroom after you've had a McDonald's Happy Meal or something. Okay, gotcha. So, no, what it really is. Yeah, what is it?

Speaker B It's a multi. MC. Multi. Something computer unit.

Speaker A Multi. Multi.

Speaker B Multi. McDu. Multi.

Speaker A Control.

Speaker B Crap. Accessible. No, C. No C. McD.

Speaker A It's McDu.

Speaker B Control in the chat room is going to tell me because we never called it anything other than a control.

Speaker A Okay.

Speaker B As you can imagine, McDu. All right, there you go.

Speaker A What do you think?

Speaker B And sorry if I'm not 100 certain of all that stuff that I just spouted.

Speaker A Hey, as long as you're 50, I'm good with it.

Speaker B Oh, 50 will be right, I promise you.

Speaker A All right. Okay, perfect. All right, Dan, I mean, I'm sorry, Ahmed, Dan Hamadu, thank you very much for the question. Hopefully that answered it. Well, it did answer it. I don't know if it was to your satisfaction or not, but yes, I.

Speaker B Just said it used to.

Speaker A Liz is holding up fingers to me.

Speaker B I can do that too.

Speaker A All right. Oh, we have a certain amount of time. Only like 4 minutes to go or something like that.

Speaker B If. No, we were almost there, we're pretty much there. But if you could do seven and eight before we wrap up, that would be fabulous.

Speaker A I would love to do that. Thank you very much.

Speaker C Thank you.

Speaker A All right, let's see this from Bob Judson. Feedback regarding cabin baggage during emergency evacuations. Hi, Captain Jeff, Captain Nick, producer, Liz and all the fabulous APG crew. Hard on the heels of my first feedback last week, which was quite some time ago, because we've had this for a while, I thought I'd send you another one. This link will take you to an interesting Royal Aeronautical Society review of an accident report catchily entitled A Bag for Life, which talks about the perils of people taking cabin baggage with them during emergency Evacuations. It focuses on the accident report from Aeroflot Flight 1492, in which 41 of the 78 occupants died back in 2019. And it makes for pretty sobering reading. And we made it pretty sobering podcasting as well. And I'm thinking that Bob was probably watching the show and then listening to me go on and on, blithering on and on about something. And he clearly went unconscious and didn't hear us covering this. And I forgot which episode it was, but it was some. A few episodes back when somebody else sent us some feedback regarding this. Or maybe Liz, actually, maybe she's the one that spotted it and included it in our news segment. So, yeah, so, Bob, we did cover this, but I do thank you for pointing it out to us. So thank you very much. And speaking of Bob, you know, the Leading for Life stories, Leading for Life podcast has interviewed the great Captain Nick Anderson. And I guess he was running out of things, people to interview. And so he asked me, scraping the barrel, was he the bottom of it? Yeah. And so I was. And I think I mentioned this last.

Speaker B Episode wanted some blithering on his podcast.

Speaker A Some blithering idiot like Captain Jeff. And I think I already talked about, in getting to know us, that Bob kindly interviewed me. And I told him basically, well, I don't really have anything to say. I don't have a kind of amazing career that Captain Nick had. And I'm not really sure I know anything about leadership. Turns out that he's an awesome interviewer and he pulled it out of me. And then we only got about half of the questions that he wanted to ask me. So we're hopefully going to do a part two where he's going to focus more on the starting of the Airline Pilot Guy show. Anyway, so again, thank you, Bob, for sending in the feedback. We always appreciate Bob's contributions to our show. And you should check out his Leading for Life. A leading numeral for L, I, F, E. Leading for life. All right. And then finally, we knocked out a few here, Liz. Right. You know, maybe not as many as we would hope, but, you know, you forgot, even though we don't have a whole, you know, group of co hosts on today's show, if you have Captain Nick and I, we can talk forever about anything.

Speaker B Got the Big Blitherers on the Big Blither.

Speaker A Obviously that's going to have to have something to do with our show title, right? Okay. This is from Mark Anderson. A question from Mark Anderson, not Nick's brother, Mark Anderson, but this one is Our good friend and APG community member extraordinaire, Mark Anderson, working as. He's a medical doctor and he is affiliated with the caa, right.

Speaker B Or the CCA specialist.

Speaker A Heart specialist, yeah. Anyway, great. A great guy. And he in the picture here we're showing, which we'll have in the show notes. It's also here on the screen in the video. He's wearing a very smart looking cap. Even though it says Acme Airlines on it, it's still smart looking.

Speaker B I love it.

Speaker A Yeah. Love our logo on the, on the cap. And he's, he's wearing it proudly. So thank you, Mark. He says hi. AVG crew. Some audio feedback attached live from Schopol Airport. Some photos from the Aviadrome Museum included. Avio. Did you know that has something to do with birds? I just learned that. No, I knew that. Yes. That is an Acme Airlines APG hat I'm wearing. Yes. Best wishes to all. Keep up the good work. And now we're going to play his audio feedback. Here we go. Take it away, mark.

Speaker E Captain Jeff, Captain Nick, Dr. Steph, Liz and the rest of the APG crew. Hello again from Mark Anderson, not Nick's brother. It's a long time since I sent you any feedback, so time to catch up. I'm at Schiphol Airport. You can probably hear the background noise. Waiting for my flight back to the uk. I've been in the small Dutch town of Lelystad today, sadly for the funeral of an old friend. But whilst I was there, I had a few hours free to explore the amazing Aviodrome Museum. Well worth a visit if you ever get the chance. It's got a fantastic collection of prop liners, including a Constellation and a DC4, as well as a number of Fokkers family show everybody and also a Boeing 747. So I'm traveling back to the UK now, armed only with a rather overfull laptop bag. And in the unlikely event of an emergency on the way home, I'm afraid that laptop bag is coming down the slide with me because it's got everything in it need for the rest of my journey. You've talked a lot over the years about people evacuating aircraft with inappropriate luggage. And whilst I'm sure you're right that people shouldn't do that, it's only human nature to want to take your belongings with you. So we probably need more education if we're going to get people to change their behavior. But there's one question I really don't know the answer. To. And I thought one of the crew might be able to fill me in and other APG listeners on this. And that is what happens to the stuff you leave on a plane when you go down the slide. Of course, if the plane burns to a cinder, then you don't have to worry about it. But supposing you go down the slide of your 737 Max, because it has to be, doesn't it? And when you get to the bottom, the fire crew managed to put out the burning engine on the right wing and there's the aeroplane and your precious luggage is stuck in the overhead bins. How does it get back to you? How long does it take? I look forward to hearing your answers to this question. And be warned, there's more feedback coming soon. All the best to all the crew and all the APG listeners. Bye bye from Schiphol.

Speaker A All right, thanks, Mark, for sending in that feedback. Would you like to make a stab at it, Captain Nick?

Speaker B Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well, the, the, all the baggage that's taken out of the lockers, generally speaking, it's laid out and the crew get first dibs, Captain gets to pick what he wants and then it goes down in rank throughout the whole crew and usually after a bit of a bun fight to keep all the cleaners and security people away from it till everyone's chosen what they want, then the firemen, they get their go etc and that goes. It goes on until it's all been picked over and if there's anything left, then it all goes. Put in a bin and thing, it gets thrown away, it goes in the landfill. That to be absolutely correct. No, everything on board the aircraft, the aircraft's well looked after following an evacuation, so it's quite formal and no one gets in there except the right personnel. So in theory nothing should disappear. It's all taken. Now, it depends on the airport because the, each airport has its kind of own procedure, but it's taken en masse to the terminal usually or to a building nearby and it's all identified, if it's feasible to identify it. So it's not bad idea to have a baggage label on your cabin baggage with your name and address on, but make sure it's not visible because, you know, thieves will walk around airports looking for people with baggage tags and they, they take a note of the address, knowing that they're going on holiday, they go and burgle a house. So have one of those tags where it's covered up until someone actually physically opens it and takes a look. So that's the kind of tag you want on your bag. And if they can't get it to you within a short space of time and you've been moved off to a hotel to spend the night because you're waiting for your next flight or whatever, then they will send it to you. But this, it's, it's quite a well organized procedure at most airports. I can't speak for every airport, but that's the idea. You can be assured it will get to you. Now, a little bit of advice here. If you've got medication you need urgently every day or, you know, even, even a week's worth or whatever, you have got onward tickets that you desperately you need to have with you if you evacuate, your passport, your wallet, that's probably about all you really need. I can't think of anything else. Have a fanny pack or a bum bag and keep that on you. It shouldn't affect your evacuation. It's not like it's going to block an aisle if you've just got a, a very small pack strapped to you. And quite honestly, during the take off landing phase, I'll never take my shoes off, so I don't wear stupid footwear. When you go on an airplane, wear something reasonable. So if you end up paddling through aviation fuel in an evacuation, you're not going to damage your skin or even worse, have a, a personal body pack that you can put these vital bits of kit in and then if you leave your laptop behind, who cares, you know, back it up with Apple. But you, you'll get an insurance or the, the airline will pay for it. I can't guarantee that, but that's what should happen and you know, leave it on board. For heaven's sake. Don't be, don't be someone who says I've got to take this huge piece of luggage with me because it's got my life on board. It's nothing more important than a life and it could be somebody else's. Oh, someone said Jeff, or is that you, Jeff? There's thought of that. But they've got a, a lovely coat here which you can wear and has got all these pockets in to keep your vital stuff just in case. And they, I love the fact that it's called, it's not rocket science, it's pocket science. So anything like that, a coat with which would have sufficient pockets to take all your vital, you know, stuff, you absolutely need your mobile phone. We know we need our mobile phone after you buy stuff and it's got copy of. If you're sensible. You've got a photograph of your passport in it so that even if your passport does get lost, you know, you can show it to immigration, you can show it to your embassy and get a duplicate, etc. So be sensible. Do those sensible things always have your coat on for takeoff and landing, just in case? Always wear good footwear for those periods of the flight. During the flight, you can relax, but if you, you know, once the descent starts, get yourself organized with the back of your mind primed just in case. I'll have everything I need for the next few days, your medication, all that kind of stuff on me.

Speaker A Yeah. And so when you were talking about, you know, various ways or solutions to carrying or having available all these important items that you want to take with you if you have to do an emergency evacuation, I was thinking, oh, I remember I listened to a lot of these tech shows and I've heard about Scott E. Vests for many, many years. The company is called Scott E. The letter E Vest. And it's a pretty ingenious clothing vests and coats and that kind of thing. We're watching this trailer on screen right now in the video where the guy is actually putting a laptop computer in his vest. Takes some doing, but look at that. I mean, yeah, that's a little bulky.

Speaker B If it's not your laptop, it'd be a great way of stealing one.

Speaker A There you go. There you go. But anyway, that's an idea, you know, to a lot of people. You know, I know we do not endorse what Captain Nick just said. Tim says load those pockets with Biscoff cookies. Well, okay.

Speaker B Yeah. And a few fun yuns.

Speaker A Yes, of course. Anyway, so, yeah, I thought I'd throw that up there for an idea for people. Yeah, perfect.

Speaker B Thank you. Great idea. Actually, he's much better than a. A fanny pack or as we call them, bum bags because you looks like you can get more stuff in there, but you don't make it so thick that you look like the Michelin Man. Right. What's your that. What you have a sort of a marshmallow person that was in Ghostbusters creation.

Speaker A I don't know what the creature's name.

Speaker B Is, but the Stay Puff, don't be like the Stay Puft Man.

Speaker A Thank you.

Speaker B Because, you know, you're still going to get down the slide and you do end up going roly poly down it.

Speaker A Yeah, that is true. That is true. Well, thanks again, Mark, for sending in that great question, that great feedback from Schopol, and thanks for the warning Also that you're going to send us more feedback. We do appreciate that especially. All right, now it's time for us to wrap up the show. We always point you over to our website, airlinepilotguy.com lots of good stuff there to check out. And we're also on social media and Captain Nick, if you'll do the honors, sir.

Speaker B Yeah, we're gonna put a bow on the show now. We're wrapping up.

Speaker A Yeah, we are. In fact, if you're, if you're, if you're watch or listening to, to the podcast in a chapter images enabled kind of player. You're seeing a nice gift box, gold gift with a, with a nice ribbon that's all tied up and wrapped up.

Speaker B Right. You can find us on Facebook@AirlinePilotKyle. One word on X, we're PGCrew. Instagram is very similar. We're APGCrew and YouTube where you can find this disgusting sausage being churned out every week. We're on YouTube.com forward/airlinepilotguy.

Speaker A Thank you very much for that. And also we have. Of course.

Speaker C Course.

Speaker A Yep, I hear the water. Hello, Hello. Hello. Can you tell us about Slack?

Speaker B Okay, but I'm dripping wet.

Speaker A Perfect. Come on over here and tell us all about it, sir.

Speaker B APG listeners, please join us on our Slack team.

Speaker A Slack is a communication, coordination and sharing platform that works on your mobile laptop or browser.

Speaker B On Slack, we share news and ideas.

Speaker A We suggest that we episode in Plain Tales topics we plan events and meetups. To get into the Slack team, please email me@slackirlinepilotguy.com that's S, L, A, C.

Speaker B K, Sierra, Lima, Alpha, Charlie, kilo@airlinepilotguy.com or send me a tweet with your preferred email address Tollel and I'll send you an invitation.

Speaker A That's Hillel spelled Hotel India 11 echo 1 and see you in Slack. Thanks a lot, Hillel.

Speaker B Oh, don't say P again. I haven't say I'm desperately need to go. I know.

Speaker A I do too. I feel like I'm dancing here. So we're also wanting to thank our wonderful producer Liz, even though they didn't get a chance to hear much of your. I know, I know. They'll be on the top of my list for sure after we finish today's show.

Speaker C Anyway, great show.

Speaker A We got through all.

Speaker B Well, no, there's a whole bunch more still waiting but we got some feedback.

Speaker A Yeah. And we still appreciate everybody's submissions and don't keep sending them in.

Speaker B We haven't forgotten the stuff at all.

Speaker A Right. And we'd also like to thank our live audience. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen joining us.

Speaker B Yeah. We do appreciate you.

Speaker A And yeah. So thank you for listening. And we hope to see you again, I guess, on the next episode, whenever. That's going to be probably next week. And with that, we're going to wish you all clear skies, unlimited visibility and tailwinds. Take care and God bless.

Speaker B Bye, everybody.

Speaker A See you next time.

Speaker C Yeah. He's up in the sky.

Speaker B Good day.

Speaker C I used to be such a good, good pilot? Till I started apg? I open doors for little old ladies? I helped them to their seats? Airline pilot guy I fly a meta? Airline pilot guy Ecamm landing heavy for all I got no friends cause I'm always flying? I just don't have the time? But I can land this old plane? I can land it just fine? Airline not a guy? I fly a meta and I fly a guy? He can land in heavy fall? I'm holly guy he committed him before early sa.

APG 678 &#8211; Blithering Old Fokkers!

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APG 678 – Blithering Old Fokkers!