Driverab330

If the PFD says NO AUTOLAND and the pitch mode did not change to FLARE, you did the flare manually.

The airplane itself does not know whether the airport ILS system is CAT 1 / 2 /3A /3B /3C. This has to do with the integrity of the ILS signal and other ground related systems i.e back up power to the ILS, LVP approach and runway lightings etc. as long as you have at least LAND 2 showing in either one of the PFD, you may perform an auto land in any ILS approach. In fact, an CAT 1 minimum or above auto land is quite often performed in real life. However, some airline may have an in-house approval process to those CAT 1 only runways, for example an real auto land have to been successfully performed for a number of times by check and training captain in day VMC in order to verified the autoland performance to such runway. Some runway with unusual slope may affected the ability for the airplane to conduct an autoland. For example. FAOR (Johannesburg) runway 03R, the Airbus A340 could not perform an autoland. But the Boeing’s are ok. The 777 autoland is terrific. The video below shows a cx 777-300 performing an autoland. The cross wind was 25G35kts that day. (A friend of mine was flying on this particular flight)

Do you normally check the LEGS page against any arrival / Approach charts? If you don't have the charts, I guess the best way is to at least look up on the ND in PLN mode to see if those waypoints line up correctly or make any sense to you. Sometimes in real life the ACARS failed and we cannot download the route automatically, we do manual entries anyways in the RTE page. Even if the route are downloaded automatically quite often some way points are missing as well.

I see what you mean Jaime, I like that the fact they put the notice like that in Madrid. It really does help to reduce the likelihood of inadvertent LOC overshoot.

hmmm... I believe it is the case when the chart doesn't say anything about you are allowed to intercept the LOC on a radar vector without atc permission unless cleared for procedural ILS from the IAF approach, because there are time when they really need you to go across. Again I am speaking from the experience I have in the area where I spend most of my time flying in, no reference to the books. Every time when I am not happy, I will just ask atc to clarify their intention. But, hey, thanks for the heads up!!! I will have the opportunity to fly the Madrid starting from this summer, any local knowledge would be highly appreciated!! :smile:

finav77 was correct. Just to share my little real life experience flying around the world. In real life, the approach controller will, at the latest, give pilots an intercept heading to intercept the final when the airplane is about 2.0nm from the extended runway centreline. This is very common in Narita, Hong Kong, LAX, ORD or JFK, when ATC tries get you on the ground as soon as possible. And the shortest final distance for an ILS approach should , in general, between 6-7nm from the rwy threshold (not from any book, this is what I normally get unless clear for visual approach). Very occasionally, the approach controller would say to the pilot they intend to vector them through the localised for extra spacing, in this case, one shall expect to fly across the extended runway centreline. However, for good airmanship, every time when we, on base leg, fly pass 2nm from the runway centreline and not getting anything from atc saying "expect vector across the LOC", we shall ask ATC for his/her intention. Especially when flying to airport with parallel runways conducting independent approaches. It happens quite often that sometimes the controller just simply forgets about you. normally for the 777, speed is about 180kts on base leg with flap 5 or 15, assume no tailwind, the airplane will fly pass the LOC is we don't start our turn in less the 2nm from the runway centreline. Even the AutoPilot cannot defy the law of physics which defines the radius of turn of the airplane as a function of Groundspeed.

That's what I understand as well. However In your case you lose both airspeed display on both PFDs, I would just go straight into Unreliable Speed memory items and action the unreliable airspeed check list after the flight path of the airplane is under control. Because if you look at the very end of the unreliable checklist page 10.1 on the QRH the "addition information section", it says that you may get NAV AIR DATA SYS EICAS message in the event of encountering an unreliable airspeed situation. As pilots we don't know what possibilities other than " air data from one of the pitot tubes disagree with the other" may triggers the NAV AIR DATA SYS and there's always a chance that you can lose both L and R pitot tube data while the Center pitot still works and this may trigger the NAV AIR DATA SYS Eicas. Not sure if it is a bug, because this type of a "bug" may well happen on the real airplane which itself is highly computerized. Therefore I would treat it as an unreliable airspeed situation and deal with it that way. Hope it helps Cheers

In most part of the world, unless explicitly cleared by ATC to "cancel speed restriction" or in the absence of any such statements specified in the SID chart, to my own understanding, you would need to comply with the procedural speed restriction. It is similar to when the SID have certain altitude restriction on climb, without ATC saying "unrestricted climb" you would have to comply with the vertical profile in the SID to climb to the cleared altitude. There are various reasons for imposing these type of speed restriction. Most common ones are to limit the turning radius of the aircraft for the purpose of terrain or separation issue with other traffics or even noise abatement like departing out of Heathrow. Of course to most heavy departures i.e. 773ER, to maintain 250kts on climb would mean that the airplanes would be flying in flap 1, therefore once terrain is not a concern anymore, most people would ask for high speed in order to clean up. And what you did was correct, when not sure about it just adhere to the SID restriction and ask for clarification with ATC. Just be mindful with the speed restriction on RNP departure and Approaches consist of RF turns, the speed specified in the chart is to make sure the airplane to fly a fixed ground track. Exceeding those speed below MSA even with ATC clearance will compromise terrain clearance.

First of all, don't hold the brakes until TO thrust is reached because if you do that in real life there's a high chance that the engine would surge/stall. We had two occasions where the pilots stalled the engines twice while doing static run up on the Rwy in winter time, he put the thrust too high couple with some cross wind, the result was a loud bang. Try to do a rolling Taking off which is a prefer method to begin a TO roll. I don't notice the TO roll is of any significant difference from real life performance of the airplane at least on the 300ER. The whole purpose of de rate TO is to trade off surplus runway distance in order to save the life of the engine. If you would like to minimize ground roll, try to do a F20 performance calculation. this should give you a lower V1 and higher To thrust setting.

1.8 means 1.8km visibility. 830ft is the MDA and 480 is MDH which is the cloud ceiling measured from the ground. Hence 478 (MDH) + 352 (Threshold elevation) = 830 which is the MDA

Since I am just a normal line pilot, I am an unable to give an answer to your question about 1000 cycle etops verification. hopefully someone with an insight to the etops certification process will be able to answer this question. http://www.smartcockpit.com/aircraft-ressources/Getting_to_grips_with_ETOPS.html if you are interested into etops stuff. This book "getting to grip with Etops" will give you some detail info about Etops. Although it's an airbus material, the same principle equally apply to any etops rated airplanes. Airbus is really good at producing materials like this to help pilots to understand some of concepts. Happy flying

Good to bring this up. This is one of my favorite 777 color scheme as well. Unlike the very unfortunate first 787, the first 777 which did the first flight on June 12th 1994 is still flying with Cathay with RR engines. It actually has a few more factory options than the other -200s which Cathay ordered brand new from Boeing. I bet they will stay with the airline for at least another 5 years as they are currently undergoing a software upgrade program and after that they would probably go straight to the scrapyard (typical CX way to retire airplanes nowadays) The -200 it's my personal favorite. It just has a taste of originality. And after 21 years it still flies like a new one. I hope PMDG will make the -200/300 classic as well to complete the series.

It's a status message. In boeing terms, pilots do not need to check status messages in flight as it has no effect to the safety of the flight and no pilot actions are required, that's why the Blue status cue on the upper EICAS is inhibit after engine start until 30mins after take off. Like Budbud mentioned above, the sts msg only means that some maintenace actions is required once it airplane is on the ground, and quite often it may affect the dispatch of the airplane in the next sector. Because of this if we spot it during cruise we will send an ACARS msg to ground to give engineering a heads up, and write the msg in the maintenance log after landing. Because some item can be a no go item unless it's fixed, or if leave un-fixed will lead to a restriction on ETOPS operation etc. There's an index page in the MEL which we can use the status or EICAS msg to search for applicable MEL procedure. In your case BLEED HPSOV R. means some problem with the R ENGINE high pressure bleed valve. I have had this before in real life. And we ended had to apply the MEL and lock out the HP bleed valve before we can dispatch the airplane for the next sector on the same day. If you can find an MEL online here is the code 36-11-02. The implication of this failure is, there will be insufficient bleed air pressure from the R engine (in your case) at low power setting (<55%). This is no big deal as we just follow the (O) procedure. But there's a trap that the MEL doesn't mention. That is when you start your descend, you will get IDLE DISAGREE msg, due to the bleed air demand from the packs. We get this msg, as mentioned in MEL, because the L engine is commaded to a higher idle thrust setting to compensate for the lost of bleed air supply from the other engine at low thrust setting. This in turn will affect your descend profile management because now there is extra thrust on the L engine ( from my experience it's quite a bit higher than normal idle thrust). As a result the idle descend path is quite a bit shallower than normal idle descend path with both engine in normal idle thrust. But VNAV path wouldn't know that, so if you follows the computed VNAV PATH you will need to use speedbrakes to keep the speed in check, or just go a bit lower than the VNAV profile. This issue becomes more interesting when people are already using speedbrakes to maintain the speed while blindly holding on to VNAV path and then ATC gives a short cut. Hope it help to illustrate the idea. Happy flying

Perhaps it is quicker to input directly into the FMC in Route Page. sometimes it has to be done in real life when for reason the Satellite downlink doesn't work. It only takes about 5min. Usually flights from East Coast to HKG fly over the "european" side of the polar region to take advantage of the tail wind over Greenland in Summer. In winter time the route usually goes over the Alaskan side of the polar region. But after all it varies from day to day due to the wind, so it can really be anything. Flying from ORD or YYZ, I have seen non polar route flying over North of PANC head west straight into Russia then comes down into North East China. This may happen when the fuel cost saved from going polar is less than the Overflying charges over the pole. The critical figure used to be around 8 tons of fuel but could be different now with the current fuel price.

To put the BA accident in simple term, it wasn't the fuel which turns into ice and blocked the FOHE inlet, it was the water content which was suspended in the jet fuel that turned into ice. Although the refueler always do a water check at during refueling stage, it's inevitable that some water content is suspended in the fuel. Imagine 0.1% water content of 100Tons of fuel is still a substantial volume of water (~125L of water). When pure 100% jet fuel temperature approaches the fuel freezing point, it turns into a gel type of "liquid" which makes it harder for the fuel pump to pump it towards the engine, until a point where it turns into a gel completely and exceeds the fuel pump capability.

The fuel temp in tank inflight will decrease toward the TAT (total air temperature) which is quite a bit higher than SAT (static air temperature) due to compression effect at high speed. The TAT inflight at cruising level on the 777 is typically around 20c higher than SAT. So typical with fuel freezing point at a default setting of -37c we may get an EICAS caution msg at ~ -60c or more directly when the TAT indication on the upper EICAS shows -37c after a few hours into the flight then sooner or later we will expect to see the fuel temp low msg. On the a330/340 the fuel low temp ecam msg comes out at fixed temp value of -37c to -40c depends on fuel tanks, and unlike the 777, the limit can not be modified on the airbus. For a normal Jet-A1 fuel the freezing point is -47c and JetA is -40c. The best fuel for cold weather is the Russian TS-1 which theoretically has a freezing point of -60c (while the limit of -50c is often used). For 777 we are allowed to modified the fuel temp from default -37c to either "the actual fuel freezing point + 3c" or if other fuel is used i.e Jet A1 -47+3=-44c so as to delay the trigger of the fuel temp low msg to a lower temp which sort of more accurately reflects the actual condition of the fuel. Having to go over the pole at least once a month, it is so far not too much of the problem. Because the actual freezing point for JetA provided by the fuel supplier at let say JFK or ORD is usually around -43-45c. And the lowest fuel temp I have seen so far is -40c over northern Siberia, touchwood. Flights from Europe. Asia and Russia will always have jetA1 or TS1 uplifted so it's practically never an issue. Like someone had already mentioned above if in case it happens either speed up or descent. I prefer speed up for a bit so that I will be able go home a bit sooner at the expense of may be 200kg-500kg extra fuel depends on how long I need to keep the speed up. On the 777, every 0.01 Mach will increase the TAT to approximately 0.5-0.7deg. Hope it helps.

Yes. The airplane can fly happily as long as you are above the Red Army. Think of a windshear escape maneuver and GPwS maneuve, you will be flying just or touching the Pitch Limit indicator with the airspeed within the Vmms. Like other people have already pointed out, what you will lose is the stall margin against G loading. What the book tries to say (you can try in flight sim, and please give it a go to help you understand), at the flap maneuvering speed if you do a 40deg level turn the red army ( stick shaker speed) will move up to where the flap maneuvering speed speed it. Because the stall speed change with G loading and G loading varies with AOB ( the equation is G = 1/cos AOB ) Therefore the lower the speed you go below flap maneuvering the more limiting the AOB or G loading you have before you get stick shaker. Until you hit the 1G stick shaker speed which is at the top of the red army in straight and level flight. Hope it helps to clear things up if not making it more complicated to understand.

You are welcome. It's more like a trick than real procedure. Especially if one needs to clear the FMC quickly during a sim exercise. In real life I would prefer the method suggested by HerzogKraut to prevent selecting the wrong database inadvertently.

Cycle the navigation database in the IDENT page will delete everything. (Press INIT REF then 1L ) . Not sure if it works with PMDG but it certainly works on the real airplane.

There's a trap of solely reference to RA only. Imagine there s a cliff shortly after the departure end of the runway. Or you are approaching from the sea into an airport where the terrain rises up as you descend. Under these two scenarios the RA will give you a false sense of climbing/ descending if solely reference to it, because it only shows your actual height right underneath he airplane, not with reference to the airport. In the former case, if you look at your RA it will show increasing but you can still be able to do level flight while having the RA showing you that are climbing and vice verse when on the approach in the later case. Therefore most people I know including myself scan all three parameters, RA, ALT and v/s. Because they all compliment each other to improve the situation awareness.

On calculating normal take off speeds ( not the one on the CDU ), there's no requirement to enter CG position. Since, at least for the airline i know, we do the take off perf calculation before receiving the Loadsheet. And any last minute change to the Loadsheet CG ( MACTOW ) would not have an effect to the take off speed as long as the weight is within the band specified in the take off data card. There's an exception to this. At certain airports, especially those quite often has high OAT and high field elevation ( Johanesberg is one of then ), to increase payload, we deliberately load the airplane up with a MACTOW >= 28% in order to increase the take of weight limit on that particular day. In this case the CG from the Loadsheet will have to be more than 28% otherwise the take off data is invalid. So when we get to the airplane, we will confirm with the load controller to make sure the cargos are distributed so that we have an MACTOW >=28%. There can be more exception to it which I don't know. And I am not sure about the CDU take off speed thing because I don't pay attention it before I entered the CG. But the thing is if the CG input affects the speed, any change to the CG would result to a TAKE OFF SPEED DELETED msg. However as far as I know from real life experience is I won't get that msg for a change of CG after take off speed is entered, which happens all the time when the load controller decided to change the loading position of some cargo at the very last minute. Hope it helps.

It Doesn't matter you don't need take off speeds for touch and go. After touch down, just rotate when the speed reaching Vref speed or the bug speed to normal take off pitch settings. And after life off if you want the FD back just press TOGA and flip the FD switch back, you can use the AP above 200ft if you want. change modes as you like after 400ft. Then at 400' initiate a turn with 25 deg AOB and continue climb to 1500' AGL or 1000' AGL depends what you wanna do. Try to use raw data for circuits the whole way, it more fun. Map reference, use 10nm CTR map mode, and to begin with just put the ILS appr of the Rwy from the FM and use the DME distance for you profile after turning on the base leg. After gaining some experience all you need is the Rwy symbol with the extended centerline on the ND which stays there all the time after take off.

You can also try to use the ND. Just use the smallest scale on the ND and turn when abeam the Rwy threshold just like what it is on the chart. It should work nicely assuming you have an accurate position from the FM. If you want a super accurate position just use google earth to work out the coordinate and use the fix page to display the waypoint there. That would work too.

For your info, some of the latest 773ER is certified for flap 25 autoland, due to the increase use of flap 25 landing as part of the fuel saving measures. As far as I know for Cathay airplanes it starts from B-KQO, so I assume airplanes being made around the same time should have the same certification provided it is not an airline option. Like Kyle had already mentioned, it's not that the airplane can't do it, it just the amount of certification work involved to get it done.

Hi Ken, I used the PMDG to aid my real world flying as well. However when I did my conversion I still rely heavily on the IPT ( Integrated Procedural Trainjng Device from CAE ) because it gave me some tactile feedback on the buttons and the rough position of knobs and switched. The other thing is the autopilot behavior on the PMDG777 is not quite the same as the IPT is some area closely resembles the sim and the real airplane. Let alone the FM database is never 100% coded the way as in the IPT, which is supposed to be the same as the simulator and the real airplane. Having said that, the PMDG 777 did give me a good familiarization as to what to expect in the sim and the actual airplane. And I still use it now with caution to practice my hand flying skill. What I think the PMDG 777 is good at use for trainees is during the initiate familiarization stage (self study stage) of the conversion course just before everything starts. I personally reckon it would be better for the airline to buy an IPT and to allow people to use it at their free time to practice some common emergency drills ie ENG OUT in CRZ, rapid decent etc. Just out of curious, does VA allow pilots to use the sim without switching on Motion whenever the sim is not used for Training? Happy flying