No Man's Land

by Kevin Sullivan

  *

  The day before, I flew with Pete and Ross from Brisbane to Singapore. We’d never flown together before this trip; such is the nature of commercial flying. However, our company’s standardised approach to procedure ensures we work efficiently together regardless and we immediately got along. We shared some satays and a beer or two the night before our flight, and this helped to solidify our team. Is there anything beer can’t do?

  We were up at eight and met in the hotel lobby, relaxed and well rested. I nominated myself to fly the first sector down to Perth. It was going to be a long-duty day as we were scheduled to return to Singapore that evening. Ross followed my lead and we left our luggage at the hotel.

  In our staff minibus on the way to the airport, I walked down the aisle introducing myself as the captain and shaking hands with my cabin crew. There was a familiar face or two, but for the most part I hadn’t flown with them before.

  I do this before every flight: make contact with the crew so they can see who I am. I’m in a leadership position and I’m forming my team – after all, if the shit hits the fan, I want to see who’s going to open the doors in an evacuation. I also instruct them as a group that ‘no one gets hurt today’, as I brief them on any expected turbulence encounters. I’m responsible for their safety, and I reinforce that responsibility by stating I’ll do my part to ensure we all walk off at the end of the flight intact.

  On the minibus I introduced myself to my Sydney-based flight attendants Kimberly, Rory, Alia and Jill, and to Lisa, the customer service manager.

  I asked Rory who he’d bribed to be rostered with four lovely ladies. In his South Australian twang he said they were lucky to be flying with a good bloke like him. The ladies unleashed some playful abuse in response causing Rory to slide down in his seat with a smirk.

  Lisa and I had flown together a year or two before. Recently, she’d been promoted to her current supervisory position. She was very professional during our briefing and we refrained from slipping into any banter. We talked about the particulars of our sector to Perth, including the flight time and any special handling requirements she might have. She advised me that the passenger load was full – in fact, it was oversold in economy class – but there would probably be some Qantas staff waiting at the airport check-in area, trying to get home.

  ‘I’ve got a note from the airport staff. Lots of staff travellers trying to get back to Oz. Some have been here all week trying to get out,’ Lisa said.

  ‘Ah, the joys of staff travel. Can we help them?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course. Our crew rest seats are available and I will manage it once we get airborne.’

  We’d do our best to get a few of them on our flight, and the offer of the crew’s rest seats would allow us to do just that.

  Sitting in the rear of the bus were four crew members from the Auckland base. Although they wore the Qantas uniform, they were employed by Jetconnect, a wholly owned Qantas subsidiary company based in New Zealand.

  I met Fuzzy Maiava, a senior flight attendant from Auckland who was built like a rugby forward. He had an infectious smile and warmly greeted me with a crushing handshake. Softly spoken, he’s the type of person you like immediately. With him were Samantha, Tasha and Jen, three young Auckland-based flight attendants who meekly shook my offered hand. They were in their early twenties and looked so young to me.

  I finished my briefing and returned to my seat. My team was formed; nine cabin crew and three pilots, relaxed and ready to work.

  As expected, the airport check-in area was buzzing with passengers, and a large group of airline staff members had gathered near the standby desk, trying to get home. As we entered, they gave us anxious looks. Some had been trying to leave Singapore for several days, but the flights had been full without much room for them travelling on their low-priority standby tickets. These travel experiences took the glitter off the perceived benefits of cheap travel for airline employees; these people were all desperate to get home to Australia. As planned, I asked Lisa to coordinate with the airport staff to take some of them with us.

  Ross, Pete and I made our way to the briefing office to prepare for the flight. It would take four hours and forty-five minutes, the weather was forecast to be fine for our arrival, and I noted the aircraft’s rego letters: ‘VH-QPA’.

  The three of us decided, on my recommendation, to order some extra fuel to cover any unforeseen events once we reached Perth. Aviation is all about managing risk, and I always treat this airport as isolated because there are no others in close vicinity.

  All of our flights are required to be planned with suitable contingency airports. Our flight plan used Learmonth, a shared military and general aviation airfield, for mandatory point-of-no-return planning. It provides a point between the two airports to permit a divert decision if Perth weather or airport operational issues prevent us from proceeding. The extra fuel provides extra time to deal with anything out of the ordinary.

  With the flight plan safely stowed in Ross’s bag, the three of us headed to our aircraft. The A330 was buzzing with activity as we entered the cabin. The crew were inspecting their safety equipment and stowing the heavy metal food carts in the galleys. Before heading to the cockpit, I got an update from Lisa about the extra staff passengers and gave her clearance to start boarding the aircraft once they were ready.

  In the cockpit, I took my place in the left seat. Pete, Ross and I performed our usual procedures to prepare the aircraft for flight.

  Our workplace is unique; it’s highly automated and deceptively simple in its design. The cockpit instrument and side panels are coloured a light blue. Directly in front of me are the two main electronic flight displays, which are repeated on the right for the first officer, and in the centre are two screens to display the engine instruments (upper) and the various aircraft systems (lower).

  The left display, known as the primary flight display, projects the basic performance instrumentation a pilot needs to fly and control the aircraft. In the centre is the artificial horizon that bisects the display. Superimposed are the horizontal hash marks depicting nose attitude above and below the horizon in five degree increments. The sky is coloured blue and brown represents the ground. As the aircraft climbs and descends, the amount of blue and brown changes accordingly, and the pilot can reference the angle of the nose in relation to the horizon using the attitude markings. Superimposed across the centre of the display are the artificial yellow wings of the aircraft. The vertical tapes on either side are the speed (left) and altitude (right).

  Inboard from the primary display is the navigation display. It’s a little like your car’s map and GPS system, and it projects a god’s-eye view of the aircraft’s path along the flight plan from departure point to destination. It also displays weather radar information and ground-based navigation aids. (These integrated displays have replaced the round instrument dials used in earlier-generation aircraft.)

  Across the top of this array is a slim instrument panel housing a set of control buttons and selector knobs. These are used by the pilot to set speed, heading and altitude targets on the primary display when flying manually, and also to engage either of the aircraft’s two autopilots. With an autopilot engaged, these selector knobs allow the pilot to control the aircraft’s performance in speed, heading and altitude.

  This panel also contains the master caution and master warning lights. These may look like small unassuming recessed pushbuttons, but they are critically important. The master caution light and switch will glow amber to alert us to a system fault. The master warning will illuminate red for more significant failures of equipment and critical systems. We hope we don’t see their coloured lights at any time today.

  The centre instrument panels contain the engine thrust (or power) levers, the engine fuel controls, the flaps and the speed-brake handle. On either side, close to the pilot’s inboard knee, are the computer keyboards used to key in navigation and performance figures, as well as independent radio control p
anels.

  Between the thrust levers and the keyboards are the two large trim wheels. Conventionally, as an aircraft increases speed, the pitch (or nose) of the plane wants to move up. The pilot uses a small switch on the control yoke to trim the tail down to counteract this force. The opposite is true for a speed reduction. It’s like sailors on a boat, trimming the sails to relieve rudder pressure for the skipper.

  Airbus has automated this function and the tail is automatically trimmed as the aircraft changes speed. The trim wheels are silently working to keep the aircraft in trim. These wheels can also be moved manually if the auto function is not available.

  Above the pilot’s head are the aircraft’s systems control panels. All the support systems live here, such as fuel, air-conditioning, pressurisation and hydraulics. Their control switches are very simple – on, off or auto – and these push-button switches disguise the high level of automation and computer control that governs their operation.

  On either side of the pilot’s seat is a control sidestick. This has replaced the traditional control ‘yoke’, and is used by the pilot for manual control of the aircraft through the aircraft’s fly-by-wire control system. This is the next generation of flight control. The pilot’s control stick or column is no longer mechanically connected to the control surfaces on the wings or tail; rather, it’s electrically connected to dedicated flight-control computers that move the controls in response to the pilot’s requested input. The pilot, when flying the aircraft with or without the autopilot engaged, is interacting directly with a computer programmed to keep the plane operating safely.

  There are three primary flight control computers (PRIMs) and two secondary computers (SECs) that make up the electronic flight control system. The overhead panel houses the control switches for the PRIMs and the SECs, while the actual computers are stored under the floor of the cockpit.

  A significant safety enhancement to the Airbus is the use of flight envelope protection. In simple terms, the flight control computers are programmed to prevent the pilot from flying too fast or too slow, with too much angle of attack or with too much angle of bank when turning. With all computers operational, the aircraft is fully protected and this state is termed Normal Law. No matter how hard the pilot pushes or pulls, Normal Law will keep the aircraft safe. Also, pre-programmed manoeuvres will activate autonomously for excessive speed or angle of attack. These are the flight envelope protection modes.

  If there is degradation to the PRIM’s operation, the flight control system reverts to an Alternate Law of operation and some or all of the protections are lost. Alternate Law is not an emergency condition, but the pilot is alerted to this state change through the aircraft’s warning system.

  The aircraft’s computer systems need to know where the aircraft is in space: its altitude and speed, the temperature of the air mass it is operating through and its position relative to the ground below and the aircraft’s body angle relative to the air it is moving through (angle of attack). This spatial position is provided through the three Air Data and Inertial Reference Units; the ADIRUs.

  Raw data sent into the ADIRU comes from the external sensors and probes protruding from the forward area of the aircraft’s nose, and from GPS- and gyro-supplied latitude and longitude. What comes out are digitised values of these parameters that the PRIMs and SECs use to maintain the aircraft in safe flight. The computer-controlled support systems such as pressurisation, air conditioning, engine thrust, also rely on these digital ADIRU values for their normal operation.

  Any corruption to this data, usually through an internal blockage or damage to the probes, can force the flight control system to revert from Normal Law to Alternate Law. The logic is that the computers cannot protect the aircraft if they don’t know where it sits in the air mass, so the protections are removed. The plane still flies normally and there is always one flight control computer available to service the pilot’s commands.

  All of these computers are housed underneath the cockpit in an equipment area, and their operation is transparent to the pilots. We don’t normally access this area while the aircraft is in the air but our ground engineers often do between flights.

  This all sounds a lot like science fiction. It might be hard to get your head around, but these days, aeroplanes, are controlled by a version of ‘HAL’, the sentient computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. This automation is advertised by Airbus as an enhancement to safety, and they assure pilots and the public that there are enough back-up systems in place to cater for a wide range of failure situations. There is never any suggestion that the automation can fail and pilots do not train to address this abnormality.

  On QF72, our preflight preparation ensured that all the automated systems were activated and operational, and we interacted with the computer keyboards to insert the navigation and performance figures from our flight plan. How easy could it be?

  2.

  The time is 0925. We’re a bit late after taking time to seat our full load of passengers, but we’ll easily manage that. There’s no spare seats on our A330.

  ‘Love your work, Kev,’ Pete quips, and I call for the preflight checklist.

  We start the engines as we begin our push back from the gate. All is going smoothly, and we’re relaxed as we receive our taxi clearance from Singapore Ground Control and then our take-off clearance from the air traffic control tower. This has to be my fastest start-to-take-off sequence in history. The airport seems deserted and, after eight minutes we’re on the roll for take-off.

  Our climb out of Singapore and over the Straits of Malacca is serene. I have flown this route many times in the past. It is a rare treat to fly it in daylight and the topography of the Indonesian archipelago and its numerous islands are on display. The waters of the Malacca Straight are churned up by the propellers of every variety of ship imaginable, from freighters and cruise ships to military vessels and leisure craft. It is the busiest waterway on the planet and I must stop myself from looking down for too long as we set our course south.

  I’m still manually flying our preloaded departure, using my instrumentation on my main display to follow steering commands. It looks like a yellow cross superimposed on the blue and brown background, which depict the sky and the ground with an artificial horizon in between. My adjacent navigation display provides a magenta-coloured line as another form of guidance as we fly the departure procedure loaded into our navigation computer.

  Minutes after our take-off, the serenity of our departure is suddenly broken by a loud ding from our flight-deck speakers. Our eyes fix on the amber-coloured master caution light illuminated on the instrument panel above our flight displays. I reach up and push a button as I say to Ross and Pete, ‘Engaging autopilot 1.’

  Pete has already cancelled the master caution alert by pushing on the square button connected to this indicator light. He confirms my autopilot connection and begins the procedural reconfiguration sequence that was drilled into us during our Airbus training course.

  The A330 entered service in 1994 and is the twin-engined version of the four-engined A340 that first flew in 1991. They share systems commonality with only minor differences in their operation.

  I started my Airbus A330 conversion course in December 2004. The course took about four months to complete. It is written and structured by Airbus and supplied to airlines as part of their purchase package. The flight simulator, essentially a box mounted on hydraulic jacks, is used to familiarise the pilots with the cockpit and aircraft systems. It contains a full flight deck with interactive functionality so we can explore the flying characteristics and systems operation without leaving the ground.

  A new method of reconfiguring systems faults and failures was introduced and practised extensively. The automated systems identify a fault through the master caution or warning lights and associated aural chimes. A message is displayed on the top screen of the centre instrument panel and the reconfiguration procedure is also displayed for the pilots to follow. This replaces the paper
checklist procedure on previous generation aircraft and helps to reduce pilot workload. As designated switches are cycled and reset, the fault sequence is updated until the procedure is completed.

  A fault message must ‘latch’ or remain displayed for this procedure to be initiated and completed. It is unusual for a fault to not latch but flash momentarily, indicating a transient condition that clears itself.

  Each support system on the Airbus is controlled by a computer that monitors the routine operation of that system and alerts the pilots to any errors or faults. It’s then up to us to rectify the fault by following the sequence of actions displayed on the two screens in the centre of our instrument panel. This sequence can generate a breakdown of flight-path monitoring, and it’s up to the pilots to exercise a special discipline to maintain a safe operation.

  This is the discipline of ‘Aviate, Navigate, Communicate’ taught to every fledging aviator, and I learned my trade in the US Navy.

  Within weeks of graduating from university, I received my orders to commence flight training in Pensacola, Florida. The first phase involved classroom academics, survival and physical training. At the end of the two-month ground syllabus, we received orders to report to a basic training squadron located nearby. I was to fly the T-28 Trojan: a fully aerobatic carrier-capable trainer with a single radial-engine that produced 1000 horsepower of thrust. This type of performance could easily match most early World War II fighter aircraft – quite a handful for a neophyte aviator.

  I was ordered to Naval Air Station Whiting Field, just north of Pensacola. This was the home of VT-4, Training Squadron 4, and I was assigned a primary flight instructor, Lieutenant Junior Grade Martin ‘Ace’ Powers.

  I met Ace in August 1977, and his mission was to prepare me for my future in naval aviation. Ace, whom I addressed as ‘sir’, was a few years older than me but had been flying out in the fleet for the past three years. His brown leather flight jacket was crinkled and worn, unlike my new, shiny one that was hard for me to remove because I felt so good wearing it. He had flown helicopters from the decks of small destroyers, and he’d seen an abundance of black nights, foul weather and pitching seas while flying in the North Atlantic. He was a fleet veteran, an excellent instructor, and was on his way out of the navy to join the airlines. This was a big loss for the navy.