This is really epic. No matter how you have the operational procedures and the technology behind, as long as humans involved anything can happen. Glad that no body was hurt...

 

 

 

Murat Ozgul

I remember when it happened and there were rumours about the co-pilot turning the wrong knob a bunch of us on another forum all leapt into our PMDG Boeings and tried it to see what would happen :)

havent watched the video...but 19,000M is 57-58 thousaund feet lol

There is a correction in video it is 1900 meter actually :)

The FO had 2800 hours. That should be plenty of experience to tell the difference between the rudder trim and FDAS switch.

There is a correction in video it is 1900 meter actually :)

 

Makes much more sense haha

The FO had 2800 hours. That should be plenty of experience to tell the difference between the rudder trim and FDAS switch.

2800 total time or on type? if it's total time, then no, probably not. Most likely a cruise officer in bigger planes never touching anything except the coms before upgraded to FO on a 737

sorry, but in my opinion if you are on your fist day at the job you still have to know your trim knob from you door unlock knob. I´m pretty sure all of us here do, so a certified ATP should. A cruise officer who only handles comms still spent hundreds of hours in a level D sim doind a lot of raw-data/manual flying and preparing for the worst case scenarios. I don´t see how that guy´s gonna dodge this bullet. I say this as a surgeon who knows that there are honest mistakes that society tolerates (just barely and never unanimously) and then there are those mistakes that´ll get you crucified, period.

Wow, I've never seen that one before. Thankfully almost everyone didn't notice a thing.

That kind of thing has happened before, a notorious one used to be a jump seat passenger putting their feet up on the edge of the pedestal and accidentally flipping switches at the rear of the centre pedestal with their clumsy size nines, which is why a fair few switches in that location have little guard rails over them. But whacking full left rudder trim on at cruise speed is a very stupid thing to do for a pilot, even a relatively inexperienced one. We all make mistakes of course, but pilots are paid to not make mistakes, because when they do, this kind of crap happens. It's not like accidentally flipping the wipers on instead of signalling a left turn in your car - there are many lives at stake LOL The pilot should get a right bollocking for doing that.

 

Al

Just after it happened, this issue came up in quite a lot of our flights, during the cruise chatter.

Not a single one of our pilots could see why this happened, mostly for two reasons.

- The tactile feedback you get from the door unlock knob is WAY different to the rudder trim knob (they differ in size, shape and location.)

- It takes quite some time to trim the rudder that far out of centre, before getting a yaw induced roll.

 

Also, the door unlock knob produces a quite loud click when operated, coming from the door itself.

That's what I was thinking. How could a pilot screw that up?

I believe, the FO did not turn the knob deliberately. He wanted to reach the knob for the door, but touched the aileron trim wheel...

Not quite... The roll was yaw induced, through the rudder trim, not the ailerons.

Also, you don't "flip" the trim switches or trim knobs, they are spring loaded to the center. You have to deliberately push them to one side and HOLD them there, to alter the trim.

 

Try it in your NGX, you'll see what I'm talking about. We have done this during a sim session in a Level-D sim, and it really takes quite a lot of time before the plane starts to roll. (Thankfully so, because it is designed that way.)