Driverab330

That’s normal. The 773ER’s wings do not like cruising at high altitude unlike its fellow 772 brother and the Airbus A330/350. In theory, you may climb to REC MAX and still has 1.2Vs1g stall margin ( or 1.3 depends on the certification ). In real life we updated the FMC CG value from a default of 7.5% to whatever the Loadsheet ZFW CG value - a figure which we deduce from FCOM 3 Supplementary procedure. After updating the FMC CG figure to a more aft value (some where around 20% ish) , you will get about 1000ft more on REC MAX. To be honest, FL350 - 360 / 370 is what we normally end up at the end of a 14-16 hour flight. The airplane only wants to go up to 380/390 when the ZFW is very light resulting a GW of about 230tons. The airplane spend most of its time cruising at FL300-340, which is super annoying flying in South East Asia in summer time bouncing around when dodging thunderstorms. This is is in stark contrast with the A359 when the initial cruise altitude is already at FL350 departing out of Newerk for Hong Kong.

Initially, we relax the back pressure to help to nose to come down, because if we keep pulling back the nose will stay up in the air until the elevator loses the lift then slam down. basically, we all fly the nose down in a consistent rate of de-rotation until just before the nose wheel touches down then we sort of do a "little flare" to cushion the last bit. As to how much you need to pull back depends on the CG and Autobrake settings, in A/B 4, we will need to pull back a bit more at the last stage to arrest the "slamming motion" of the nose. A/B 3 or less requires much less effort. What I just talked about was the moment just after the main gear touched down, at some condition the nose will tend to come up after the spoilers are deployed, so we relax the back pressure but we don't think what we do in real life before we do it, just like a rotation on take-off, just do what we need to keep the rate of de-rotation consistent. **A little story just happened to me recently on Take off on an A330, I rotated normally but when the pitch attitude went passed 12.5 deg, the nose suddenly pitch up dramatically, and I had to give it a push forward a bit very briefly on the side stick to arrest the pitch up. Therefore, it is important to look outside and just react to what we see. ** This de-rotation technique on landing is no different on the Airbus, just fly the nose down. The whole idea is to do whatever we need to do "to keep the nose coming down at a controlled and fixed rate of de-rotation" Having said that, throughout my whole career as an airline pilot I only ever fly FBW jets, so unfortunately I am not sure how the old jets behaves on landing. Because FBW airplanes (both A330 and 777) behaves quite similarly and have a very consistent handling chariteristics in all flight phases. However, I have never heard of people including those who used to fly the “classic 747-100/200 or Tri-Stars” complain about the 777 de rotation, therefore the technique must have been the same.

I was always taught to “fly the nose to the ground”. When flying a jet that is ~75m long, a simple let go of the control wouldn’t work. On the real airplane, if you don’t fly thennose to the ground it will slam on it. Because when the spoilers are deployed after the main landing gear touched down, the center of pressure of the Wing changes and the airplane will have a tendency to pitch up. Exactly like what it would happen when in the air except this time fBW is in direct law and won’t help you to correct it. Usually this pitch up moment is canceled as the autobrake begin to apply braking and the reverser are deployed. But this “pitch up after touch down” has happened to me in real life and I had to help to nose to come down by actively flying it down including putting in slight forward pressure on the control column.

You may try to do the VHHH - ZSAM pattern, that is the usual ferry flight we do. The other regional pattern the -8F flies is VHHH - RJAA / VVDN / VVTS etc. Another interesting route the CX -8F flies is from SYD to Wellcap (YBWW) - a regional airport then continue to Hong Kong. https://www.thechronicle.com.au/news/family-visits-airport-to-watch-history-in-making/2849100/ Have fun!! It is truly a beauty. I wish I could have flown it for a few years, but now it is too late.

If you are any where below 320tons on the 773ER, I would recommend using de rate of any form. The use of De rate in normal circumstance makes your rotation and pitch attitude after airborne fairly consistance for lighter weights. It is almost “dangerous” to fly a 773ER at 200-250tons with full TOGA thrust with a low initial level off altitude of 3000 to 5000ft, because you will be doing 18+ deg pitch up after airborne and climbing at 3500-4000fpm. And you will see ALT capture at 1000ft. (It’s good fun if you have the airspace to yourself until at least 7000-8000ft). I used to regularly fly the 773ER at regional weight so we always use DTO2-30c or something like that. the interesting thing I have noticed is that DTO2 -56c has less thrust than CLB2. I did a ferry flight once with an empty airplane at 185tons including around 10tons of fuel. We zoomed up at 3500fpm after airborne even with DTO-56c and when clb 2 is set we actually climbed faster.

Hi VHOJT, it wasnt me who posted such a nicely written explanation, the credit should go to BusDriver. With regards to the question of “Knocking a few degree off”. In the old days, the airline I am working for now would input a margin of ~1500ft TORA to actual TORA in order to generate a more conservative assumed temperature calculation. Basically if the publisher TORA is 10,000ft our system only takes 8500ft into account. (I forgot the exact margin because it has been a while since we moved to the new practice, may be it was 500ft or 1000ft, because 1500ft seems to be quite a lot) however a few years ago, the management realised such a TORA reduction safety pad harms the payload for most long haul departure to east coast of North America in summer. Therefore they removed this padding, and simply just give us a wider weight band of a particular take off performance calculation. A weight band of a take off performance (RTOW we called it within our airline) is a range of aircraft Gross weight within which the take off performance is valid. For example for a performance of let say TO-36deg V1 168 Vr 178 V2 184, the range of aircraft gross weight is (345.0t - 347.2t). Then in case we have an extended ground delay of 1hr as long as your weight falls in that range we can still go without obtaining a new calcution. That’s how the company increase the de rate of TO thrust by “knocking a few degrees out”. On the airbus side (330/350) our company recently introduce an airbus Flysmart iPad app to the airbus A330 and further reduce to weight band to input TOW +200kg to -500kg. Such action coupled with increased V2 speed for long TORA further enable an even lower assumed temperature of 72c for some of our newer A330. This is all I know. As pilot we do not have control over how much de rate we can get in general. If we are not happy, TOGA / D TO1 / DTO 2 is always available for us to “hard tuned” on the ACARS performance page in order to get the V speeds for the pilot selected thrust rating (or to check for a given weight if we can Take off using DTO1 / DTO2 ). Airbus system is simpler as BusDriver pointed out. Only Assumed temperature (FLEX) or DTO take off. Airbus cannot do DTO1-40c (DTO plus assumes temperature). However the B777 system is more flexible given the wide range of weight the 773ER operates in our fleet. I regularly took off with DTO 2 -30c or more for a short 1hr 20min trip to Tai pei (RCTP) or Manila (RPLL) on a 210tons 773ER. Thats why on a light weight 330, sometime with a TOW of around 156tons with Flex 70c Take off the airplane still climbs like a rocket.

Yes Haneda runway 34L is extremely bad for a easterly x wind. Other runways seems to be ok and not as bad as Narita. In Narita, it can catch people out even if the wx looks gorgeous, because the wind shift commonly occurs below 500ft. So in winter time you will see a 40-50kts x wind all the way down to 1000ft then it reduces to 30kts down to 500ft. At 100-200ft it goes to wind calm on the ground. In fact the two tokyo airports are famous for its low level wind shear. not so much in KIX and NGO. Even Sapporo is generally not too bad.

I have flown the airplane a few times with the system inop. We couldn’t feel any difference from the flight deck at all, perhaps due to the sheer size of the airplane. The system did work quite nicely to reduce tyre scrubbing in tight turns. Talking about the Korean Air landing, I always wonder what did it feel like as a economy class passenger when a landing is hard enough to break a 777 landing gear. I had one which I thought it would almost give me a lower back injury when sitting on the jump seat a long time ago, and it was only 6ft / second sink rate at touch down. The limit for hard landing inspection was somewhere around 8ft / sec.

Yes the “old” SADDE ARRIVAL 🤣 I have been using the Ironman one for a while and completely forgot what it was before. The new taylored arrival ( Pacific 1 / Pacific 2) works quite nicely in my opinion. However we only use it when flying a more southerly route across the Pacific. The worst “Slam Dunk” arrival I have ever done was going into Bahrain from Dubai on an A330. Managed to land from 16,000ft to touch down in 35nm. I knew it was gonna happen so I slowed down quite a bit early before I had to go down. (Unlike the 777, the A330 can never slow down and go down) Thanks for sharing, it is nice to know what LA used to be like. It’s one of my favourite City. I always love to go to LA on holiday, but I rarely request to operate there till to the almost unbarable 15 hours time zone change. With a 24-30 hours layover, its better for me to stay in Asia time zone and stay up in the middle of the night and sleep during the days. 😔 fortunately restaurants in LA opens till late especially those in little Tokyo and China town, I can always catch a short uber ride to grab a decent “brekkie” when I wake up at around later dinner time. Thats why I don’t like long haul flying that much unless the layover is long enough (which is hardly the case now with airlines trying to squeeze rest to maximise productivity). Love flying the 777 at 250 Tons or below for a short 1 hr - 4 hr flights and have a bit of fun. 😁 sorry guys, a bit off topics

before reaching SMT (in the old day for non-RNAV STAR) / CLIFY, we always get a something like "maintain 7000ft over Santa Monica, after Santa Monica fly HDG 250 speed 250kts. Shortly after crossing abeam the runway threshold of RWY 24R, we get descend clearance of 4000ft initially, then ~1800ft and expect a visual approach to RWY 24R. The next action ATC will do is to turn you in for on base, thereafter expect a 5nm final to RWY 24R with a speed control of 180kts till the FAF which is about 4-5nm to touch down. The shortest I have ever had was around 15-18nm to run when it all happens at once. Therefore, it can catch people out when they are not ready for it and lead to an unstable approach. But like everything else in aviation, when you are ready for it, you get a 20nm cruising at 3000ft on downwind flying over Staples Center. 😂 The other typical Slam Dunk arrival in the US is, of course, the SFO arrival coming in from the north over Golden Gate Bridge overflying the SFO at 11,000ft, track south-west after SFO and later make a left tear-drop turn and landing onto runway 28s. Hence, for those who cross the pacific very often going to the US they all have the following "speed brake is your friend and just get the XXXX down" 😂 To be honest, there aren't that many places in the world now where ATC will let you do a perfect profile - i.e. no speed brake descend from Cruise to touch down with the thrust lever only come up at 1000ft and fully configured. The sky is getting too busy nowadays. My colleagues always joked about how people failed their instrument rating in the old days because they forgot how to insert a HOLD in the FMC. It is surely not the case now, we use the HOLD button 8 out 10 flights.

Agree, practice makes perfect. When I first started flying the jet, it took up lots of mental capacity to try to get a "perfect profile", but as time goes on, it is all about approximation and I always believe a theory of "low and slow is better than high and fast". As one gains more experience, a typical line pilot will understand for a typical STAR or arrival, the descend profile is meaningless due to various vertical restriction on the STAR when you are further away from the airport. It is very common for a star to drag you quite low initially then ATC holds you at 6000ft with 20nm to go and a speed restriction of 250kts which makes you high again. Sydney runway 34L Boree arrival is prime example. Not so much in FSX, but the in real life, sometimes ATC, especially those in Seoul Approach, believe a 773ER / A333 at MLW can lose 10000ft in 5nm and they can cut you really short. My record is 30nm to go at 12000ft and 280kts on an A330..... which was almost undoable on the Airbus. Therefore sometimes a little local experience will help. For example, going into LAX coming from IRONMAN arrival, the descend profile before reaching Santa Monica is basically fixed, you only need to watch your speed. Therefore one can enjoy a cup of coffee while going down before reaching SMT (or CLIFY for RNAV STAR) at 7000ft, and get ready for a slam dunk.

Personally I increase the sensitive and decrease the null zone of my yoke to make the 777 flies more or less like the real one. The flight control should be responsive most of the time when the speed is within range. also make sure you are always in trim when flying the 777 as well. If your trim speed is incorrect me set too high you will find it really hard to flare.

Because air coming out from the packs can be extremely cold, I.e. sub zero temperature. and just like what Alan had explained that each air conditioning zone generate heat at a different rate. Therefore you may find for example, the trim valve is always open in the cockpit as well as in First Class and business class. However the position in EY may be different. As as long as you don’t get any EICAS msg and the temp feels right and there is no complian from the ISM. I don’t think most of us would even bother to look at it closely. Good observation by the way.

An A0A indicator provide very useful info. However the only time where I did an approach solely rely on AOA information is when using the BUSS (backup speed scale) on the A330. It is indeed a very useful feature in the event of unreliable airspeed indication.

Thx for the info, I have never have the privilege to fly the 772LR in real life which I would love to.