We were also given a published route for ‘A576’ (the standard Qantas route Singapore–Sydney) showing the 23 waypoints and the location of the volcanic ash cloud. The waypoints on our routes were loaded into the flight computer but we still had to know them in case we lost the flight computers and had to revert to standard navigation. We also had a weather plot of all the winds coming from Africa to New Zealand, the wind speeds and temperatures at various altitudes and any weather warnings.
The pre-flight briefing always contains the safety heights on the route: so flying out of Changi our ‘safety height’ was 5000 feet and over Bali it was 15,800 feet. These are minimum altitudes we cannot fly below on the designated air route.
Last and most important was the weight and fuel calculation. Even with all the computers and fly-by-wire systems, the captain still has to sign off on the fuel order, the take-off weight, the fuel burn off and the landing weight.
Head office in Sydney had allocated me 103.7 tonnes of aviation fuel, which would leave us with 14.4 tonnes of fuel when we landed at Sydney. But, having heard about the volcanic ash cloud and the new route to get around it, I ordered an extra 2 tonnes of fuel. That would give us about 12 minutes’ extra flying time.
I asked Matt and Mark to call out points of interest and I took notes. Then, having assembled the full picture of our route, I asked for them to appraise the situation. It was through this process that I got the best picture of how much fuel I needed and which route I should take to get around the ash cloud.
Having committed to a fuel loading and faxed Qantas HQ in Sydney with the revised fuel amount and the new route, we left the offices and moved through the security gates and the departure lounge. At the gate I was handed the ‘load sheet’. The load sheet is a legal document that states the name of the plane, the route, the weights for the passengers and crew, the fuel loaded and the take-off weight. It also designates the pilot-in-command.
We moved into the cockpit and took our seats, and I checked the load sheet. It listed five technical crew (pilots) and 24 cabin crew, along with fourteen First Class, 62 Business Class, 32 Premium Economy and 332 Economy passengers. There wasn’t a spare seat in economy.
There were no dangerous goods on board and we had a take-off weight of 465,803 kilograms (aircraft, passengers, crew, catering, fuel, oil, water), which made us a very full plane. Weight is a major obsession with the aviation industry: weight doesn’t just translate to safety at take-off and during flying, but also to profits. Your fuel efficiency becomes greater with less weight to carry around and so you have some airlines getting rid of shutters on the windows and head protectors; and all airlines are very careful about loading too much food or fuel. On a plane the size of the Airbus A380, the paint job alone weighs 1000 kilograms. Of course, some airlines go the other way: on the Emirates version of the A380 there’s a bar and showers, which adds a lot of weight to their load equation.
I then opened and perused the ‘technical log’ – an engineering booklet in which faults and problems with the plane are documented. One of the comments on the technical log, from the London–Singapore leg, was a note about a possible bird strike to the nose or tail area. So I sent Mark out to make a careful examination for damage and tell me what he saw.
I don’t wear a watch – I don’t want to feel time pressures and I don’t want to push them onto my crews, and I don’t mind if I delay the plane for safety reasons. While Mark was walking around the plane, I read the ‘load sheet’ and Matt initialised the controls and started up the systems. I leaned towards Matt and told him there was no rush. I always say this to my crews. It sets the tone of our working environment, ensuring we all put the safety of the operation before the schedule. After the aircraft engineers, airport and catering staff have prepared the aircraft, the pilots are the last line of defence to protect the passengers and crew; we’re the final safety check.
I signed at the top of the load sheet. This load sheet stays with the first officer at all times – if I ever have to make an unscheduled landing in an unexpected country, or if there’s an accident, the first thing the police and airport authorities ask for is the load sheet.
Mark returned and said there was no evidence of a bird strike.
Next, the engineer responsible for the fuel loading delivered the refuelling log to me, and Matt, Mark and I read it and crosschecked the sheet with our own onboard systems.
The airport manager’s representative then delivered a passenger manifest to me that contained the final count of who actually boarded the plane and what their seat number was.
By now we had a load sheet, an engineer’s report, the re-fueller’s report and the passenger manifest.
In the process of receiving these pieces of paperwork I had worked out the take-off performance: the runway condition, the wind, air pressure, temperature and weight that we put together to find the optimum thrust and flaps configuration for take-off.
I spent about five minutes briefing Matt and Mark of threats, aircraft status, route, special notices, take-off performance and weather, and then addressed important contingencies. An engine failure is the primary threat we always face for a take-off, so I outlined what I would do in that scenario.
I finished my brief and asked if anyone had any questions or comments.
Matt immediately replied, ‘Nah, just don’t crash!’
Then the cabin services manager, Michael von Reth, asked if he could instruct his crew to close all the aircraft doors.
Up until this point the airport manager had authority over the plane and passengers. If he had wanted to board a passenger that others thought was drunk, for instance, technically he had the authority to do so. But now the doors were closed and Australian law passed the responsibility for the safety of the 468 passengers and crew to me. I would be responsible for everything that happened until the end of the flight and the doors opened in Sydney. (If the airport manager had loaded the drunken passenger on my flight, now I would have the authority to re-open a door and eject the drunk.)
We were ready . . . almost.
I had something else to take care of. There was a potentially strange situation on the flight deck of QF32. I was the captain and the pilot-in-command of the aircraft, yet there were two senior pilots checking me. Even so, I was the pilot-in-command and I didn’t like where Harry was sitting. The A380 cockpit is designed so the captain sits at the front left and the first officer (Matt) sits at the front right. Normally the second officer (Mark) sits in an ‘observer seat’ that is between Matt and me, but behind and elevated. This is a good configuration because the second officer plays a meaningful backup role to the captain and the first officer – they see all of the controls and are in a position to assist the other pilots. More important, the middle seat has its own radio panel with frequency selectors, transmit buttons and volume controls.
Harry had taken this middle chair, pushing Mark to the left rear observer’s seat, one without a radio panel. I was very concerned. I had gone to great effort to ‘form’ my team as we’d travelled to the airport, but Harry was now interfering.
I released the lock to my seat, slid it backwards and turned sideways to Harry with my arms folded and asked where he was intending to sit.
Harry said, ‘In this seat between you and Matt.’
‘I’ve got a problem with that, Harry – you’re inhibiting my crew.’
Harry didn’t seem too fazed, and asked what I wanted him to do.
‘I want Mark in that seat, thanks Harry,’ I said.
Harry was now shocked and said incredulously: ‘But Rich, I can’t see you if I sit in Mark’s seat. How can I check you?’
‘That’s your problem,’ I said. ‘I want my crew together and I want Mark in your seat!’
The air chilled as Dave Evans said, ‘Richard, you’re being unreasonable. Harry has to check you, he has to sit there.’
‘He’s right,’ Harry said. ‘I have to check you, Richard.’
‘That’s your pr
oblem, Harry. I have a flight to command and I want my crew operating properly.’
I think Harry could see my point. He had overseen the pre-flight checks and finals; he’d checked for what he had to check for and he should have vacated that seat.
There are five stages of team-building: forming, norming, storming, performing and adjourning. I had formed the team in the bus, normed at the airport and in the flight deck (with SOPs, briefings and checks), and now I was storming (dealing with fractures and disagreements).
Harry could see the stalemate. He came to the rescue: ‘Look, Richard, if it helps, I promise I’ll be the second officer if I have to be.’
‘Fantastic, thank you, Harry,’ I said, trying to defuse the situation.
I now had two second officers supporting me; I had my team back together, and so I was happy. Win-win!
‘Let’s go,’ I told Matt.
I asked Matt for a pushback clearance. He pressed the transmit switch on his sidestick: ‘Singapore Clearance, Good Morning. Qantas 32 Super for Sydney, Bay Charlie 23, 469 Persons on Board – ready for start and push.’
The controller replied ten seconds later with our clearance: ‘Good Morning. Qantas 32 cleared for pushback and start, face north for Runway Two-Zero Centre.’
On most Qantas international flights there is a three-minute wait between when the last door is closed and the pushback really begins. This period allows for Qantas Load Control to finalise our A380’s weight, fuel distribution and balance, and confirm the aircraft is within the centre–of-gravity limits to take off. When Load Control is happy, they send us a coded message with vital performance statistics that we send to our flight management and flight control computers.
To get this final loading, operations in Sydney runs the weights through sophisticated software and calculates where the plane is carrying most of its weight, and how, therefore, to trim the plane for take-off. Mostly this involves operations telling us how to trim, or ‘set’, the horizontal stabiliser, which is the wing that sits at the base of the A380’s massive tail. The entire wing pivots on a horizontal axle and it has elevators on its rear edge. This crucial configuration is designed to ensure the aircraft is trimmed to maintain the initial climb-out speed. Pre-trimming the aircraft this way provides the pilots with a consistent ‘feel’ and response for every take-off regardless of the weight and position of the centre of gravity, and makes it easier to maintain a consistent take-off at any weight and thrust, and on any runway.
It’s a truly remarkable experience being in control of an A380 that is taking off. There is no other experience like it. While you accelerate along the runway, hundreds of computers measure and monitor the 250,000 sensors in the engines, hydraulics, flight controls and the rest of the four million parts. The take-off is critical; most of the warnings are filtered out so that the pilots are not distracted by trivia. For every second we spend charging down the runway, we have two seconds less time to reject the landing and stop if something goes wrong. It’s a tug of war: we have to accelerate to take off, but we have to be able to stop if something goes critically wrong and the aircraft cannot fly. We end up catering for the likely failures like an engine failure, but hoping that the catastrophic failures like two engine failures don’t happen until we are safely flying away. This might sound frightening but it’s not. For a take-off to be dangerous in a commercial jet, we’d have to lose two engines on one side before reaching a safe height. One jet aircraft takes off every second around the world, and on average an engine fails only once in every 300,000 engine hours. I’m not aware of two engines ever failing at the same critical time on take-off. So it’s safe – very safe! Take-off is an absolutely remarkable achievement for propulsion, engineering and safety.
We pushed back and taxied out, and had a slight delay in the taxi: Changi Airport has a runway which can impinge on military airspace, so there are two altitude constraints on commercial traffic: SUDPO 2000, which is a requirement to get to 2000 feet by a certain waypoint; followed by SUSIN 4000, which means you have to be at 4000 feet by the second waypoint.
The A380 and most 747s can’t make SUDPO 2000, and so they have to warn Air Traffic Control and request to have the SUDPO restriction removed. Before I could ask Matt to make the call to Air Traffic Control, Harry leaned over and reminded Matt to call ATC for a waiver on SUDPO 2000.
This meant Harry was indeed being an active second officer.
We had programmed the engine to provide 72 per cent of full thrust, and selected ‘Flaps 2’ for take-off, which gives a good trade-off between gaining speed quickly and maximum lift. If I’d selected ‘Flaps 1’ it would have given us the highest performance after take-off, but it requires more thrust to gain the higher take-off speed. Airlines are particular about thrust: using the top thrust settings burns a lot of fuel and shortens the maintenance cycle of the jet engines.
Singapore tower: ‘Qantas 32 – Clear for take-off, Runway Two-Zero Centre.’
Every A380 take-off is a technological marvel, and the beginning of a process where every bit of knowledge, training, experience and teamwork might be put to the ultimate test. So like all pilots, we had prepared for the worst and since it was my annual route check, I was hoping for the best, a smooth ride and a faultless sector.
‘Take-off!’
With a firm wide grip I pushed the four large thrust levers from their idle position, forward through about a 50-degree angle to the take-off setting. The engines, flight instruments and aircraft systems responded. As the aircraft’s fuel flow increased to 14 litres of fuel per second, each engine’s bleed valves closed to engage the 113,000 horsepower turbochargers. It took about twenty seconds for the engines’ giant 2.95 metre-diameter fans to slowly rev up to the take-off setting where the fan tips are travelling well in excess of the speed of sound. At full thrust, each engine provided 72,000 pounds of thrust with each of its 24 fan blades sucking in 1.2 tonnes of air per second. To put this into perspective, for every eight seconds at full thrust, all four engines suck in all the air a person would breathe in a 100-year life.
Nancy-Bird Walton responded. She surged forward down the runway, 465 tonnes of the most advanced machinery accelerating faster than almost every road car. Yet it’s so smooth and quiet inside that the passengers barely lower their newspapers to notice that they are in a ‘rocket sled’, beginning what will become the ride of their life.
During the take-off, only operational topics may be discussed. This state is called a ‘sterile cockpit’. My job was to make sure we were on the runway and Matt’s job as the first officer was to peruse the engine gauges and confirm the engines were working normally. He called, ‘Thrust set,’ and then, ‘100 knots.’
A few seconds after accelerating through 100 knots the flight warning computers call ‘V1’. V1 is the speed that provides enough control to continue the take-off if an engine fails, but normally too much speed to be able to reject the take-off and stop on the remaining runway. So when I hear ‘V1’ I know the option to reject the take-off has passed. This important change in take-off strategy is displayed physically by the captain moving his hands away from the throttles. And that’s what I did. My left hand was now holding the sidestick, and my right hand was on my knee. Whatever happened, we were getting airborne!
Next Matt called, ‘Rotate,’ and I pulled back on the sidestick, lifting the nose into the air. When the aircraft pitch reached 12.5 degrees nose up, I released my pull on the stick. The sidestick returned to the neutral position. With the sidestick ‘stick-free’, the fly-by-wire software now commanded a constant ‘G’, which in effect keeps the attitude constant. The aircraft locks on to the pitch and airspeed, and everything is stable – magic!
It was 9.57 am.
Now, the aircraft that everyone thinks ‘is too heavy to fly’ launches into the sky. It’s an orchestra with 250,000 musicians – put together at a cost of €12 billion (US$16 billion), proving 110 years of aviation research and development. And the best part is I’m the co
nductor.
CHAPTER 14
Boom! . . . BOOM!
We took off that day into the southwest and lifted off with plenty of spare runway remaining. I raised the nose, aiming for the next waypoint, SUSIN at 4000 feet, engaged the auto-thrust, then called, ‘Flap 1.’ Matt retracted the flaps one step, which reduced the drag and increased the climb angle. For the pilots, this change in performance is dramatic as the thrust increases 15 per cent to 87 per cent full thrust; for the passengers, it’s barely noticeable other than a slight increase in sound and a more pronounced push in the back as we climbed and accelerated away.
From a performance perspective, the take-off and climb from Singapore is very comfortable. The four Rolls-Royce RB211 Trent 900 engines are so powerful and the A380 wing is so well designed that not much thrust is required to make the plane meet its performance requirements.
I couldn’t miss crossing the next waypoint or I’d fail my route check, so I made sure we crossed SUSIN at precisely 4000 feet. I was pleased; most of the difficult work was behind us. At this point we continued to climb, banked left following our route towards the southeast, then selected ‘Flaps 0’ to retract the flaps and leading edge slats, and accelerated to 250 knots, our intermediate climb speed. For a normal aircraft, the changing thrust, flap settings and speed would all cause the aircraft to pitch up and down – changes that have to be countered by the pilot – but on the A380 it’s seamless. The flight control computers automatically trim the horizontal stabiliser to minimise drag and optimise performance.
We were tracking the few remaining legs from Singapore that would align us with our route to Sydney, which would take us through 23 waypoints that include locations such as Bali, Curtin, Alice Springs and Parkes.
After the flaps were retracted, I called, ‘After take-off checklist.’ This is a command to Matt to call up the ECAM (Electronic Centralised Aircraft Monitoring) checklist that checks the aircraft has been ‘cleaned up’ after the take-off phase and is now in the right configuration to accelerate and climb towards our cruising altitude. If something is not right with the plane, or if we’d forgotten to action something, we would usually get our first hint of it in this post take-off check. The ECAM ‘After take-off’ checklist senses that the landing gear, flaps and slats are already retracted, the APU is shut down and other items are satisfied, so the checklist displays all these items in a greyed font – which means that there are no additional items to action. It’s that simple.
QF32 Page 12