Is an airline captain the boss
Discussion
Lily the Pink said:
I seem to remember hearing a while back about conflict between the management of a certain low-cost airline and their pilots about how much fuel should be loaded. Is there any truth in that or was it just a malicious rumour ?
It’s always a tricky one. Most airlines want their pilots to carry what’s needed. That opinion might vary from pilot to pilot though. The airline produces a legal fuel plan for the flight that the pilots need to trust and think it’s reasonable and then if there’s other circumstances they might add more themselves but there’s usually some kind of accountability here where a brief explanation may be required (often an entry into some kind of log rather than a phonecall or meeting etc) which makes sense and seems reasonable to me.
Problems have started in the past where airlines have done things like publish tables of who carries the most extra fuel etc to try and shame people into carrying less or have come down heavily on people who take extra fuel or published fuel plans which are inaccurate or unrealistic and pilots know this by constantly arriving at the destination with less than expected or worse diverting to an alternate and then having less than expected.
Fuel is a major cost for an airline and buying it and hedging fuel is an art, I know that attitudes towards carrying extra fuel have changed massively over the years.
Obviously any airline knows that mandating pilots don’t carry extra fuel could see them in trouble if there was an accident and their fuel policy turned out to be a contributing factor.
So most airlines will have a fuel policy that says something like - here’s what you need as a minimum, take extra if you need to but don’t take the piss and tell us why (in some cases) so we can understand the issues and why you don’t think the fuel plan was adequate.
Maximus_Meridius101 said:
MarkwG said:
Do you mean the person holding the flight controls? In which case, not necessarily: the First Officer may well be controlling the aircraft, but the Captain is still responsible & accountable for the flight.
Traditionally, the captain gets the tiller ( nose wheel steering on a heavy). So “whoever has the tiller calls the shots”.
Edited by MarkwG on Sunday 23 May 15:47
A couple of people have alluded to ships and shipping so I'll add this:
At sea there is the principle of 'Master's absolute overriding authority'.
This is a double edged sword. Your job is to:
1) Protect Life
2) Protect Property
3) Protect damage to Marine environment
A bit like the laws of robotics you can infringe 2 or 3 if it protects 1 but you can never endanger 1 to protect 2 or 3.
In short, I can run roughshod over every company regulation, national or international law, and industry best practice if it is necessary to save lives, stop damage to property or prevent pollution. If I get it right then great. If not my liability is unlimited.
Think about that. My personal liability is unlimited.
Extreme example:
So if I were to intentionally come alongside a disabled passenger ferry to secure to it and push it into safe water and away from a reef, causing small fuel spill but saving lives and protecting the bigger destruction of the reef then I am a hero & every one is happy. Insurance will pay out and life moves on.
If I am wrong, and it all goes wrong, ferry capsizes because of the damage my ship did and everyone dies anyway my life as I know it ends.
Normal example:
My ship has a minor defect, the speed log is not reliable and needs fixing. Technically my ship is 'unseaworthy' as it no longer complies with SOLAS chapter V. But I have been promised the technician will be there at the next port (and in any case I have GPS speed indication).
If I sail, company is happy, I have compromised my principles but life moves on.
If I stay, company cannot sack me, but it will be remembered as it costs them tens of thousands.
I would imagine that the airline industry is just as capable as mine as putting on the commercial pressure, but airline pilots have a more risk averse attitude than us mariners on the basis that I can swim but they can't fly!
At sea there is the principle of 'Master's absolute overriding authority'.
This is a double edged sword. Your job is to:
1) Protect Life
2) Protect Property
3) Protect damage to Marine environment
A bit like the laws of robotics you can infringe 2 or 3 if it protects 1 but you can never endanger 1 to protect 2 or 3.
In short, I can run roughshod over every company regulation, national or international law, and industry best practice if it is necessary to save lives, stop damage to property or prevent pollution. If I get it right then great. If not my liability is unlimited.
Think about that. My personal liability is unlimited.
Extreme example:
So if I were to intentionally come alongside a disabled passenger ferry to secure to it and push it into safe water and away from a reef, causing small fuel spill but saving lives and protecting the bigger destruction of the reef then I am a hero & every one is happy. Insurance will pay out and life moves on.
If I am wrong, and it all goes wrong, ferry capsizes because of the damage my ship did and everyone dies anyway my life as I know it ends.
Normal example:
My ship has a minor defect, the speed log is not reliable and needs fixing. Technically my ship is 'unseaworthy' as it no longer complies with SOLAS chapter V. But I have been promised the technician will be there at the next port (and in any case I have GPS speed indication).
If I sail, company is happy, I have compromised my principles but life moves on.
If I stay, company cannot sack me, but it will be remembered as it costs them tens of thousands.
I would imagine that the airline industry is just as capable as mine as putting on the commercial pressure, but airline pilots have a more risk averse attitude than us mariners on the basis that I can swim but they can't fly!
Lily the Pink said:
I seem to remember hearing a while back about conflict between the management of a certain low-cost airline and their pilots about how much fuel should be loaded. Is there any truth in that or was it just a malicious rumour ?
Fuel policy is an interesting one. Sometimes when a newspaper headline gets hold of a fuel story, the term “MINIMUM FUEL” gets brandished across some front page. It looks a bit alarmist but as with all things, there’s more to it than that. Minimum or “standard” fuel varies from flight to flight, it depends on the route, the aircraft, the payload, the forecast and observed weather conditions. Airlines use sophisticated flight planning software that works it all out, using all of the above parameters, to come up with a “trip fuel” figure for each departing flight. Trip fuel is in essence, the actual fuel that flight is expected to burn, flying from A to B. This figure is multiplied by a percentage to allow for slight variations in the flight, such as ATC requesting you deviate from your planned route for example due to busy airspace requiring separation from other aircraft. This percentage is known as Contingency and is usually an extra 5% or so.
However it doesn’t stop there. On top of the trip fuel, taxi fuel must be included, as airliners burn several hundred kilos of Jet A1 moving themselves from the departure gate to departure runway.
Then there’s Alternate fuel - the fuel required to basically fly from your destination airport to the designated diversion airport, should you have to divert due to weather or blocked runway for example.
Next there’s Final Reserve fuel - a legal requirement, the “get out of jail” card if you like, mandating a legal minimum you should land with. This figure comes from 30 minutes holding, if you deem in flight that you’ll land with less than this figure, you declare a fuel emergency.
In addition, if your aircraft has a technical related issue, for example a non-essential aerodynamic fairing missing, but is acceptable to fly, then there may be a fuel penalty for that, again added in with all the above figures.
All of these individual fuel figures are added together, giving the “minimum” or “standard” fuel, with contingencies and all legal requirements built in. As you can see, it’s actually a fair amount more than the actual fuel physically needed to go from A to B, so there’s very little chance of an airliner running the tanks dry in flight. You cannot legally depart with less than this figure.
Where the disagreements came with regard to the carrier you mention, was “extra fuel”, fuel that the captain may load on top of the standard fuel - fuel that the crew deem may be necessary due to external factors not built in to the standard fuel planning. For example, you’re flying to Tenerife. Tenerife can often be a particularly challenging airport to land at, due to strong gusty winds that can destabilise the approach. The forecast for Tenerife suggests it’s going to be gusty, but your standard fuel planning is based on you flying the approach and landing successfully first time round. You know there’s a good chance that you’ll possibly end up going around, so need some extra fuel to reposition and fly a second approach into Tenerife, without eating into your alternate or final reserve fuel. This extra fuel not only costs money, but the weight of the fuel also increases the overall weight of the aircraft, thus increasing the fuel burn during the cruise while you lug it down to the Canaries, again costing money. Airlines don’t like spending money, some more so than others and so coming down hard on pilots was considered the easiest way to resolve it, ultimately at the detriment of crew morale and ultimately airline reputation. At the end of the day, if an airline captain deems they ought to be loading extra fuel onboard, provided they can justify why, the airline management can squeak all they like but cannot prevent a captain taking that fuel.
It comes down to one simple question really; as a passenger, who would you rather decide how much fuel is onboard? The captain sitting up front, or the airline shareholders sat bubbling in a jacuzzi somewhere.
I believe that a lot of the well known carriers actively dissuade flying stick. Any deviation uses fuel, which costs money, so they generally instruct their crew to use A.P. and G.P.S. unless in an emergency. Plug the route info into this
then babysit for as much of the flight as possible. Taxi ing has to be manual, as does take off, everything else is down to the machine ( so I’ve been told)
then babysit for as much of the flight as possible. Taxi ing has to be manual, as does take off, everything else is down to the machine ( so I’ve been told)
Maximus_Meridius101 said:
I believe that a lot of the well known carriers actively dissuade flying stick. Any deviation uses fuel, which costs money, so they generally instruct their crew to use A.P. and G.P.S. unless in an emergency. Plug the route info into this
then babysit for as much of the flight as possible. Taxi ing has to be manual, as does take off, everything else is down to the machine ( so I’ve been told)
You know there are actually some real commercial pilots on this thread...then babysit for as much of the flight as possible. Taxi ing has to be manual, as does take off, everything else is down to the machine ( so I’ve been told)
rs4al said:
Maximus_Meridius101 said:
I believe that a lot of the well known carriers actively dissuade flying stick. Any deviation uses fuel, which costs money, so they generally instruct their crew to use A.P. and G.P.S. unless in an emergency. Plug the route info into this
then babysit for as much of the flight as possible. Taxi ing has to be manual, as does take off, everything else is down to the machine ( so I’ve been told)
You know there are actually some real commercial pilots on this thread...then babysit for as much of the flight as possible. Taxi ing has to be manual, as does take off, everything else is down to the machine ( so I’ve been told)
grumpy52 said:
Slightly off topic.
How often do pilots hold a full captain ticket but fly as first officer?
Is it common , done to gain experience of an aircraft type etc ?
Pilots are trained to operate in specific seats, so generally they don't swap about. Exceptions to this are training Captains, who are qualified to operate the aircraft from either seat (such as when training a new Captain, or a Captain new on type). How often do pilots hold a full captain ticket but fly as first officer?
Is it common , done to gain experience of an aircraft type etc ?
Captain's will remain Captain's if they switch fleets, so it's not rare to have First Officers with more experience on type, if a new Captain has come across on to that fleet . . . . regardless of this, the Captain is still the boss!
Switching airlines is a different story altogether, so there's plenty of stories of First Officers who were Captain's in previous airlines, but had switch back to the right hand seat, with a change of airline.
grumpy52 said:
Slightly off topic.
How often do pilots hold a full captain ticket but fly as first officer?
Is it common , done to gain experience of an aircraft type etc ?
It’s not like on ships where a captain is a recognised qualification like master mariner. You get promoted in your airline and then if you change job and go to another airline, usually you’re no longer a captain.How often do pilots hold a full captain ticket but fly as first officer?
Is it common , done to gain experience of an aircraft type etc ?
Some new airlines may take you on as a direct entry command though (if you were a captain somewhere else previously) and they were expanding quickly and couldn’t promote their own pilots in time, but in most you’d have to join at the bottom as a first officer again.
So in some airlines the captain might be checked out to fly on the right hand seat (where the first officer sits) and this gives the airline flexibility so that they can crew the flight with two captains if necessary when they were short of pilots or it was a last minute change etc. In this instance a captain may be operating the flight in the role of first officer and the other captain (in the left seat) would be the actual captain on the day.
Even then you’d usually swap around half way through the duty as it’s usually about flying somewhere and then back at some point. Usually involving some kind of comedy captain Philips reinactment
https://youtu.be/dvA-mimf2yg
For me I’d say this happens a few times a year and not all airlines have captains checked out in the right hand seat, so maybe there it’s even less common.
Also you might be doing some training or after a long time off and you might be rostered with a training captain but you’d likely still be flying in your usual role of the captain.
5150 said:
grumpy52 said:
Slightly off topic.
How often do pilots hold a full captain ticket but fly as first officer?
Is it common , done to gain experience of an aircraft type etc ?
Pilots are trained to operate in specific seats, so generally they don't swap about. Exceptions to this are training Captains, who are qualified to operate the aircraft from either seat (such as when training a new Captain, or a Captain new on type). How often do pilots hold a full captain ticket but fly as first officer?
Is it common , done to gain experience of an aircraft type etc ?
Captain's will remain Captain's if they switch fleets, so it's not rare to have First Officers with more experience on type, if a new Captain has come across on to that fleet . . . . regardless of this, the Captain is still the boss!
Switching airlines is a different story altogether, so there's plenty of stories of First Officers who were Captain's in previous airlines, but had switch back to the right hand seat, with a change of airline.
Maximus_Meridius101 said:
I believe that a lot of the well known carriers actively dissuade flying stick. Any deviation uses fuel, which costs money, so they generally instruct their crew to use A.P. and G.P.S. unless in an emergency. Plug the route info into this
then babysit for as much of the flight as possible. Taxi ing has to be manual, as does take off, everything else is down to the machine ( so I’ve been told)
No that’s very wrong.then babysit for as much of the flight as possible. Taxi ing has to be manual, as does take off, everything else is down to the machine ( so I’ve been told)
Lack of handling skills leads to crashes so we’re encouraged to hand fly the aircraft (where appropriate) to keep our skills going.
If you think about it, having pilots unfamiliar with hand flying the aircraft and being unfamiliar with things like power settings and pitch attitudes for different phases of flights is a recipe for disaster when it all goes wrong.
I lost my job in the head office at Flybe last year, and one of the many things I looked as we tried to make the place profitable was fuel carry.
As a rough rule of thumb, I seem to remember that the cost to carry 100kgs of extra fuel on a flight was roughly 1.5kgs of burned fuel on our Q400 (turbo-props.) This figure wasn't something I was involved in calculating. It meant at the time if each of the 450 flights a day was carrying 100kgs more than we needed to, then we'd have burned an extra 600kgs of fuel, so roughly £600 at the time. Per day, so even allowing for rounding and stuff, 100 extra kgs per flight was costing us about £200k a year.
When I started in 2018, we were only about £1m away from breaking even, so it was a key point of making sure our operation was profitable. I worked with our fuel efficiency pilot who did some office work and was out flying as well to refine the predicted fuel burn in our models to get the RIGHT predicted amounts. Whilst we wanted to reduce overall burn, it was more important to have the RIGHT amount on than the least possible amount.
Cynics may suggest that's not really how it was, and others may have experience from other airlines or from Flybe at a different time, but whilst I worked on that, we wanted to carry the right amount.
In the past the analysis was based on iterative change, with pilots feeding back when they felt the predictions were wrong, but based on very little scientific analysis.
I analysed actual fuel burns on a data set of about 170,000 flights, and mainly looked at the most common flight pairs. The flights were broken down into direction as well, so Manchester > Aberdeen was seen as completely different to Aberdeen > Manchester.
I also looked at the "worst" runway pairings, and used these to model the fuel burn. Taking Aberdeen as an example, the runway runs roughly North > South, but all approaching traffic comes from the South. If you have a North bound flight that has to loop round to land facing South, as was most often the case due to a prevailing wind from South to North, you're going to use more fuel than if you get the shorter routing of coming straight in facing North.
This meant that the dataset was still huge, but also still looked at the worst case runway pairing for each route. We had a huge sample size still, and were able to refine the planned fuel carry for a number of the routings. Some went up, but more went down. The fuel burn calculations were then put into test in the real world, with the previously mentioned pilot taking the higher of the old vs new predicted fuel amounts on his routes for the next couple of months, (always erring on the side of safety.)
He recorded actual fuel burn vs old vs new plans, and the new plans were accurate to with a percent or two in the cases of getting the "worst" runway pairing, as mentioned above. So the new plans were more accurate in the real world, and in the cost / benefit analysis, we expected to make savings of around £350,000 per year on excess fuel carry.
Keep in mind that there would have been no change to all the contingencies so expertly described above, this was purely on flight plan fuel.
Then Flybe went bust, so my work never made it into the actual flight plans anyway. But it was a very interesting exercise. Hopefully this gives people confidence that whilst airlines are a commercial enterprise, safety is front and centre of what they do.
As a rough rule of thumb, I seem to remember that the cost to carry 100kgs of extra fuel on a flight was roughly 1.5kgs of burned fuel on our Q400 (turbo-props.) This figure wasn't something I was involved in calculating. It meant at the time if each of the 450 flights a day was carrying 100kgs more than we needed to, then we'd have burned an extra 600kgs of fuel, so roughly £600 at the time. Per day, so even allowing for rounding and stuff, 100 extra kgs per flight was costing us about £200k a year.
When I started in 2018, we were only about £1m away from breaking even, so it was a key point of making sure our operation was profitable. I worked with our fuel efficiency pilot who did some office work and was out flying as well to refine the predicted fuel burn in our models to get the RIGHT predicted amounts. Whilst we wanted to reduce overall burn, it was more important to have the RIGHT amount on than the least possible amount.
Cynics may suggest that's not really how it was, and others may have experience from other airlines or from Flybe at a different time, but whilst I worked on that, we wanted to carry the right amount.
In the past the analysis was based on iterative change, with pilots feeding back when they felt the predictions were wrong, but based on very little scientific analysis.
I analysed actual fuel burns on a data set of about 170,000 flights, and mainly looked at the most common flight pairs. The flights were broken down into direction as well, so Manchester > Aberdeen was seen as completely different to Aberdeen > Manchester.
I also looked at the "worst" runway pairings, and used these to model the fuel burn. Taking Aberdeen as an example, the runway runs roughly North > South, but all approaching traffic comes from the South. If you have a North bound flight that has to loop round to land facing South, as was most often the case due to a prevailing wind from South to North, you're going to use more fuel than if you get the shorter routing of coming straight in facing North.
This meant that the dataset was still huge, but also still looked at the worst case runway pairing for each route. We had a huge sample size still, and were able to refine the planned fuel carry for a number of the routings. Some went up, but more went down. The fuel burn calculations were then put into test in the real world, with the previously mentioned pilot taking the higher of the old vs new predicted fuel amounts on his routes for the next couple of months, (always erring on the side of safety.)
He recorded actual fuel burn vs old vs new plans, and the new plans were accurate to with a percent or two in the cases of getting the "worst" runway pairing, as mentioned above. So the new plans were more accurate in the real world, and in the cost / benefit analysis, we expected to make savings of around £350,000 per year on excess fuel carry.
Keep in mind that there would have been no change to all the contingencies so expertly described above, this was purely on flight plan fuel.
Then Flybe went bust, so my work never made it into the actual flight plans anyway. But it was a very interesting exercise. Hopefully this gives people confidence that whilst airlines are a commercial enterprise, safety is front and centre of what they do.
El stovey said:
It’s not like on ships where a captain is a recognised qualification like master mariner. You get promoted in your airline and then if you change job and go to another airline, usually you’re no longer a captain.
In the Royal Navy Captain is a rank. The person in charge of even large warships may be a Commander in the case of smaller ships Lt. Cdr.In the Merchant navy there is no such thing as 'Captain' other than as a verbal term of respect.
The ship has a Master.
The qualification is Master Mariner.
If I handed command of my vessel to my Chief Officer he would then sign on as Master and I would sign off.
If I handed manoeuvring of the vessel to my Chief Officer or to a Marine Pilot he would have the Conn. ie Conduct of Navigation.
My qualification remains for it's period of validity, and I retain the right to use the term Master Mariner for life.
My status as 'Captain' only exists whilst I am on board a ship as Master of it.
Tomorrow I am handing over my ship to a Trainee Master I have been teaching for a year. I will remain on board in a supernumery capacity for a week to ensure he is comfortable in the new role before proceeding on leave.
Lily the Pink said:
If a captain is incapacitated mid-flight, does the first officer assume all the responsibilities and authority for decision making or does he/she have to refer back to base all the time?
Of course! They're second-in-command anyway, so they would assume the role of pilot-in-command should the Captain become incapacitated. If time permits, then it's prudent to liaise with operations, but generally if you're flying an aircraft with only one functioning pilot left, then it's a good idea to land as soon as it's safe to do so.
We hand fly as much as possible but also have to take into consideration the workload on then FO on busy departures. If it appears that they are starting to lag the A/P goes on just to help and its a little common sense.
Passing 15000’ on many of our departures usually all we are doing is climbing in a straight line and trimmed so no point hand flying.
Also hand flying makes the 6 monthly checks easier to be honest the fully auto checks are easy anyway so the manual ones are where you need to maintain hand flying skills albeit you use more rudder input on those something we rarely do day to day 
Passing 15000’ on many of our departures usually all we are doing is climbing in a straight line and trimmed so no point hand flying.
Also hand flying makes the 6 monthly checks easier to be honest
the fully auto checks are easy anyway so the manual ones are where you need to maintain hand flying skills albeit you use more rudder input on those something we rarely do day to day 
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