As we flew south towards the French Riviera, along the Spanish border, then up the Atlantic coast towards Norway and back down over the Ruhr Valley, I didn’t once have a feeling of flying a huge machine: it felt tidy, responsive and predictable. It did things with little drama. For instance, anyone who’s flown in a Boeing 747 will know about the roar of the engines and slight shake of the airframe as the aircraft lifts off the tarmac and heads for the sky. The A380 used so little effort to take off and climb that all I could hear was a small whine from the engines at my first take-off: no shake, no roar and no drama. It banked and turned like a small plane, it landed superbly and, thanks to the three ailerons on each wing and the fly-by-wire stability systems, its cruise performance was the most stable and predictable I had ever flown.
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Toulouse was quite seductive, and the town changed character at night when the streets turned into plazas with sidewalk bars and restaurants. We stayed in the old section of Toulouse and Coral came over for a week. We went driving with her sister Neralie through the south and then up to Normandy to see the de Crespigny ancestral home just up from Omaha Beach at Vierville-sur-Mer.
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We returned to Sydney in June 2008, but the first Qantas A380 hadn’t arrived. Qantas didn’t want us going backwards by flying A330s again, so we cooled our heels and waited for the new plane and our new rosters.
I used this time to go through the A380 manuals – which were all electronic – and reverse-engineer the plane so I knew how everything worked and what the checklists would really mean if they ever came up on the ECAM.
On 19 September 2008, Qantas took delivery of the fourteenth A380 produced by Airbus and the sixth commercially available A380 (Singapore Airlines had taken the first five). Our aircraft was registered ‘VH-OQA’, and I remember seeing it fly into Sydney because I was running the half-marathon that day. It was huge and graceful, fast and quiet as it swept over Sydney Harbour.
Qantas named MSN 14 Nancy-Bird Walton in honour of the first woman to earn a commercial aviation licence in Australia. As it happened, she died on 13 January 2009, aged 93, but not before she attended the naming ceremony for that plane.
I was the second Qantas line pilot trained on A380s, but because the first pilot was assigned directly to training other pilots, I became the first A380 line pilot to fly a Qantas A380 when I flew Sydney–Los Angeles with Dave Evans in October 2008.
It was a most delightful and uneventful flight.
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The arrival of the A380 on the international aviation scene was not a foregone conclusion. Its size and dimensions were such that even today – five years after Singapore Airlines put its first A380 into service – there are many airports that cannot comfortably accommodate the giant Airbus.
The A380 is called a ‘Code F’ aircraft in the international airport definitions. There are no aircraft bigger than Code F, and the only other Code F aircraft is the new Boeing 747–8. Other large planes, such as the earlier Boeing 747, 777, 787 and Airbus A330, 340 and 350, are all ‘Code E’, and even today there are many international airports that cannot accept Code E planes.
The coding is assigned to planes based on the wingspan and track of the landing gear. The coding is also assigned to airports: in order to accept Code E planes, an airport must have a certain width of runway, a certain width of taxiways and a minimum runway–taxiway separation so planes can pass one another without infringing each other’s obstacle-free space.
Code E runways, for instance, must be at least 45 metres wide, but Code F runways must be 60 metres wide. The problem is that only the newer airports (i.e. Bangkok) fully support Code F standards, so the older Code E airports, such as Sydney, Changi, Los Angeles, London-Heathrow and Paris, have to restrict operations for A380 and 747–8 aircraft.
One of the anomalies is that the A380 can physically land at a Code E airport, but it can’t always take off. This is because its landing gear track is so wide and the fuselage so long that it requires a 55 metre–wide turning area at the end of a runway in which to complete a U-turn so it can power-up and take off. This is not an issue when the runway ends are accessed by a taxiway, but when the taxiway connects midway along the runway and the turning circle at the end is smaller than 55 metres, the A380 can’t make the 180-degree turn.
A few years ago, a Qantas A380 was diverted to Noumea, and when it tried to turn at the end of the runway to make its take-off it got halfway around the turning circle and couldn’t make it. The airport sent out a tug to push the A380 back, but it didn’t have enough power to move it. So they brought over another bigger tug and spent four hours pushing and pulling the A380 around the turning circle before it could straighten up for the runway. That scenario was made worse by the fact that the French airport markings (the traffic signals painted on the tarmac) are different to most other nation’s airport markings and the Qantas pilot had tried to turn the wrong way, which would have been the right way at 99 per cent of all other airports.
Even the big airports have problems with the dimensions of the A380. At Los Angeles, the four runways are designated ‘24’ and ‘25’, of which there are ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ designations for both. The two 24 runways are to the north of the airfield, the two 25 runways to the south. Los Angeles controllers love us if we use 24L or 24R. The A380 is the only heavy aircraft with the performance to take off from the north runways so we can keep our operations to the north of the airport, have short taxi times and keep out of everyone else’s way. It’s not so pretty for the 25 runways. If we use runway 25R, the A380’s wingspan infringes on the main southern taxiway and complicates movements in that area. The 747–8 will probably experience similar problems.
The A380 is here to stay and will become a mainstay of international long-haul hub-to-hub aviation. It’s worth remembering that more than 80 per cent of all 747 movements occurred out of just 37 airports and a large percentage of these were in Asia. The A380 is perfect for this region, where most airports are ‘slot-limited’; that is, they have take-off and landing times to limit congestion. Airlines can only make money flying through slot-limited airports if they carry the largest number of passengers per flight.
With the advent of the A380, the equation becomes more compelling for airlines wanting to fly through the increasingly popular and capacity-constrained Asia-Pacific hubs of Sydney, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Los Angeles, Bangkok, Shanghai and Hong Kong.
Qantas began their A380s with a four-class configuration that carried 450 passengers, but some of these aircraft are being changed to carry 484 passengers.
The absolute maximum number of passengers you can carry on an Airbus A380 is 853. This isn’t the number you can physically accommodate within the fuselage – it’s the number of passengers that Airbus demonstrated could be evacuated through half of the doors and down the emergency slides within 90 seconds. This is the certification test applied to all commercial aircraft.
More important to the people who run airlines is the length of sectors and the fuel usage: the longest Qantas sector is 16 hours 10 minutes (Dallas–Brisbane, 7900 nautical miles (14,630 kilometres)), and the Kangaroo Route to London is two sectors totalling 20 hours 12 minutes (Sydney–Singapore–London, 9633 nautical miles). Because of the long flight times, fuel efficiency and the cost per passenger-mile is crucial to making profits. The efficiency of the A380’s wing, control surfaces and engines means this aircraft has an assured place in aviation’s future.
While we’re considering fuel efficiency, here are a few points to remember. Every drop of fuel and every knot of groundspeed counts on the long flights. So when we fly out of Sydney or Melbourne for Los Angeles, we bias our route to stay south so we catch the westerly winds, then dart across the equator in a northerly direction (where there’s no wind), before turning right and picking up the Northern Hemisphere’s prevailing westerly winds again into Los Angeles. On the way back to Australia from Los Angeles, we bias our route to spend more time flying west at the win
dless equatorial latitudes.
You might think this unbelievable, but some of the basic navigation techniques we used in the Caribous in the 1980s still come in handy on the A380. Although there are many radar systems that can predict whether the aircraft will travel over and clear the tops of a thunderstorm, pilots don’t fully trust any of them, and the Earth’s curvature and cloud distorts your view, making it hard to know if you will overfly the cloud that lies ahead. In the Caribou, we held a glass of water in front of our eyes and skimmed our eyesight over the top of the water’s surface. This was a simple technique to find a level but it worked, and this trick is still used in the A380 – although a large 2-litre plastic water bottle delivers a much more reliable horizon!
As much as I loved the A380, and as incredible as it was to be the first line pilot on the new super-jumbo, my roster on the plane quickly dried up. Seven crews are required to keep one aircraft operating around the clock, and so we needed to train 84 crews for our twelve aircraft. The Toulouse gangs set up to fly the new aircraft found themselves edged out of the rosters with the flying going to the training department and the trainee A380 pilots.
Qantas is undergoing a shift in its fleet, from an ageing Boeing-intensive fleet to one where most of the long-haul flying will be done by Airbus A380s. So they’re retiring old 747–400s and converting the senior pilots to A380s, which means there are too many A380 pilots as they wait for the new deliveries.
Someone has to miss out, and it is hard doing your regular simulator time and route checks when you are not spending time on the flight deck. When you fly a lot, you develop ‘muscle memory’ for the cockpit and the controls; your hands ‘know’ when and where to move at the right time. When you’ve flown an aircraft a lot and become used to it, the pilots say ‘the aircraft fits like a glove’. It’s a wonderful feeling when it happens, and uncomfortable when it doesn’t. So you have to work twice as hard to stay current when you’re not getting rosters. In order to stay current, we do time in the simulators and study manuals and updates. I normally spend about two hours studying every day just to keep current. While I stay active when not flying, I have only been flying 235 hours per year since converting to A380s and I think pilots should be doing at least 500 hours per year to perform at their peak.
This is not really a criticism. All airlines find it hard to match personnel exactly with their fleets. For instance, Qantas is currently phasing out its older 747s, 767s and 737s, not only because it’s too expensive to keep these old airframes flying, but also because their systems are too old: the 767s and older 737s – believe it or not – have no GPS on board. The old fleets are also being retired in preparation for the arrival of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, of which Qantas and Jetstar have ordered 50 between them. So the airline is starting to think about converting a whole lot of pilots to that new aircraft and, when it does, it will have the same frustration training pilots in time for those new aircraft as we had training pilots for the A380.
Anyway, I found myself in one of those periods where there were too many pilots and not enough planes. I focused on other plans including assembling data for my Big Jets book – a technical book for commercial pilots in large aircraft. I was fortunate to visit Airbus for a four-day period in July 2009, interviewing the test pilots, test engineers, design engineers and marketing staff. In 2010 I spent three days with Frank Ogilvie, who headed up the A380 aerodynamics team, and I visited the Rolls-Royce assembly plant in Derby, United Kingdom, where I was shown around the production line for the Trent 900 and met specialist Rolls-Royce engineers.
The knowledge I gained from these visits helped me understand the Airbus systems and gave me confidence when flying – something I was about to need on QF32.
CHAPTER 13
Pre-flight
The training and checking regime for Qantas international pilots is that they must pass four simulator tests per year as well as an annual safety procedures and route check. By November 2010, I’d done more checks in the A380 simulator at Sydney than landings in the aircraft. But there is little point in Qantas having an A380 captain just to let him become redundant, so the airline ensures they keep people like me ‘current’.
And so it was that I passengered up to Singapore on the afternoon of 2 November 2010 with the task of bringing QF32 back to Sydney from Singapore. Harry Wubben would be the pilot checking me. However, in an unusual twist, Harry was training to become a check captain, so David Evans would be the check captain training and checking Harry to check me. As David Evans would later recount: ‘It would be hard to find a more A380 experienced crew on the planet.’
On arrival in Singapore I checked into the hotel Qantas pilots always use – the Fairmont Hotel – read through my notes, called Coral and had an early night.
On the morning of the flight I ate breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant and read Qantas’s routine fax. It gave me a breakdown of the passenger numbers, the crew names, the meal numbers and requests, and the medical notifications. The passenger load was 319 and the meals booked were 310 (some people fall asleep and do not eat). The initial passengers were also broken into classes: FCL (first), JCL (business), PE (premium economy) and YCL (economy). I worked my way down the fax, noting the person flying for the first time, the elderly passengers (aged over 85) and those who spoke no English. Three passengers would arrive in wheelchairs. Last, I noted that Andrew Eccles, a Qantas A380 Second Officer, was passengering home in first class.
The night before, I’d phoned my flight crew – Matt Hicks (first officer) and Mark Johnson (second officer) – and said I looked forward to meeting them in the lobby of the hotel at 8.30 am. I’m not a stickler for hierarchy, but since captains fly with so many different crews it’s important to the team dynamics that the captain be proactive. I like to set a happy and relaxed tone when we meet for the first time before we travel to the airport or take our places in the cockpit. This is not about ego; it’s about organising people who hold great responsibility on their shoulders to quickly get focused into their roles within the team. I was forming the QF32 team and the crew needed clear instructions on what to expect. I also believe it is crucial for the flight crew to be as tight as a drum when they have other crew on the flight deck – in this case Harry and Dave. The two inspecting pilots would only observe the flight, playing no part in the operation of the aircraft, but there would still be five pilots on the flight deck where there would usually be three. I wanted to ensure we were a tight and effective crew.
Under Australia’s Civil Aviation Regulations the person designated ‘pilot-in-command’ takes full responsibility for the aircraft and the people in it, and therefore has the ultimate authority. Once the pilot-in-command has signed for the aircraft, which they do before the doors are armed and the pushback starts, the aircraft is ‘theirs’. The flight deck is not like a committee. Everything that happens between signing for the aircraft and handing over the aircraft after landing is the responsibility of the ‘pilot-in-command’. Hundreds of lives are at stake and so, just like in the military, the position requires a disciplined person with knowledge, training, experience and credibility who can pay attention to detail, make and commit to decisions and lead effective teams. It’s an awesome responsibility, and with it comes absolute authority.
I knew Matt because I’d flown on A330s with him in the past, but I had never met Mark before. We introduced ourselves, then Dave and Harry arrived. I’d flown once with Dave Evans in the past and I knew Harry well. The conversation was relaxed despite the fact that either Dave or Harry could end my career that day with a ‘fail’ on the route check.
During the twenty-minute drive to the airport I told Matt and Mark I was undergoing a route check and to tell me if I stuffed up, though they might like to prioritise when to tell me. I emphasised the fact we were a team and there was no room for ego, and told them not to worry about Dave and Harry. I always mention prioritising comments and checking your ego at the airport door because I like my crew to be focused,
helpful and timely for the team, not trying to prove something.
When we arrived at Changi, I sat down with Matt and Mark in the airline serviced offices. At Changi these have computer work stations, faxes and telexes, and cubicles where aviation professionals can meet and receive and send their correspondences, usually to a head office on the other side of the world.
The dispatch officer passed me a satchel containing 100 A4-sized pages. The captain has to know everything in that briefing document, and we give ourselves ten to fifteen minutes to read it, decide what we will do and order the fuel to be loaded onto the aircraft. I doled out the nine pages of critical (operational one) and 41 pages of non-critical (operational two) notices to Matt and Mark respectively. I studied the weather forecasts, flight plan and engineering notices. The three of us speed-read the 100 pages in five minutes, calling out any issues that would affect the operation. Our documents included a warning about a volcano eruption on Java that had created an ash cloud up to 60,000 feet – it was a code red, meaning it was dangerous. Along with the turbulence warnings, we had pages of weather briefs for airports we might have to divert to: Adelaide, Darwin, Perth, Brisbane, Cairns, Jakarta and Denpasar.
Mark looked through operational two, which had the updates on runway conditions, radio frequencies and the state of the instrument landing systems (ILS) at relevant airports, which included all the airports an aircraft might have to land at if something were to go wrong en route.
I called the Qantas meteorologist in Sydney who told me the ash cloud was at 35,000 feet and heading west, so we planned a route that took us north of the ash cloud. I saw that Harry had taken a seat near our briefing table but was not involving himself. This was normal for a route check.
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