How A United Airlines Boeing 777 Almost Crashed Into The Pacific

Excellent, they blamed the pilots so I can sue to get some dollar for being on the plane. Got to love America

Who else should they blame?

The biggest issue IS that United did not preserve the flight data from the aircraft even though it appears the pilots' statements were done on the day of the flight. This incident in that regard mirrors the incident in which an AA 777 taxied in front of a DL 737 which was taking off.
They clearly discussed the incident after the flight stabilized and that should have been preserved.
it is only because Jon Ostrower of The Air Current analyzed public flight data that this became serious enough for the FAA and NTSB to get involved - which should have happened the minute the plane landed in SFO.

The issue here like the UA 767 hard landing in IAH which resulted in totaling that aircraft is that two relatively inexperienced pilots on that aircraft or in their roles were paired together.

Did the co-pilot not repeat what flaps are set to after setting it to 15?

Isn't this "old" news? I heard about this several months ago and today at least 3 different bloggers have posted it.
What gives?

It looks like a preliminary report was released a few months ago. But the NTSB’s final report was released on 10 August. So that’s new news and as such no surprise there’s been lots of reporting in the last 24 hours.

A simple fix here would be to require "closed loop communication" between captains and first pilots. This would require the first pilot to repeat what he heard as the captain's order, confirm then proceed to his action. This is how it works all the time in hospitals between doctors, nurses, surgeons, anesthesia etc when asking to administer medications during procedures, emergencies etc.

I know flying is extremely safe, but I'm shocked closed loop communications are not standard in every cockpit.

Is there a first-hand account somewhere? This seems terrifying.

This is exactly what I was thinking. Is it not *required* for pilots to communicate with each other closed-loop the way they do with ATC, at least for critical communications like this? And if it's required, did the pilots communicate this way? And if it's not required, why isn't it?

That’s the theory in hospitals but generally not followed. Hospitals are incredibly unsafe places, especially now that they are busier than ever and have less staff.

I've heard secondhand reports that the cabin was calm. But it seems that following the media coverage, several people came out saying that people were screaming. I wouldn't trust that.

Typo: Captain actually had 5000 hours on the 777 according to the NTSB report. I would probably consider that pretty well experienced on the 777. I don't think you can easily upgrade to a captains seat without a decent number of hours on that type (as FO), for any airline.

What's more interesting is that the FO has 5300 hours total, but 2395 as captain on another fleet, about half his flying overall.

So what happens to these pilots? Re-training? Were they suspended? fired?

Don't have an opinion, but curious on the outcome from this perspective? What's right and helpful?

miracle on the hudson speedrun any%

What I'd like to know: was the plane in stall and falling with the nose more or less level until they realized, pitched the nose down and gained speed to get out of the stall? did they not even know they were losing altitude until all the alarms were going off? The plane couldn't have possibly entered a dive when this started to happen...

Pilot error all the way!

Curious why the first reaction to overspeed the flaps was pull power and not increase pitch angle. My first instinct is get away from the ground/water and climb. They were somewhat heavy, pulling power seems wrong.

Confusion on the description of the weather conditions. Wind shear is not normally associated with clear skies. I thought there were thunderstorms in the area.

It was initially reported, the pilots reported the incident but United failed to pull the tapes/data.

B777 low altitude leaving Maui in Dec 2022

Sounds like the pilot lost his instrument-flying focus, and didn’t maintain positive pitch throughout the initial climb. Complicated by actual IMC, heavy rain, wind shear, auto throttle, flap-based speed restrictions, and a miscommunication with the FO about the flap setting. Interestingly, the pitch down didn’t occur until after all the flap shenanigans were over, and the flap setting had gone from 20 to 15 to 5 to 1. I’d say they these paid professionals need retraining/practice on their instrument scan, if they let an undesired and potentially catastrophic descent continue for an entire 10 seconds. At least they only had sea level to deal with - imagine if they were climbing toward higher terrain. This points out yet again, the complications introduced by partial automation, while the humans are still in the loop. Both humans made errors, and the automation contributed by simply following instructions that were at best wrong for the conditions.

Can someone explain why the altitude wasn't noticed as decreasing? It talks about the attitude, and how the nose was pitching down, but why weren't they watching the altitude? How does that get to 700 feet without being called out?

If I understand correctly, flight recorders are only 2 to 3 hours of conversation/data. Talk of 24 or 48 hr recorders has been mentioned, but no action.
Sure would have been helpful to get the tape of the DL & AA incursion at JFK in January. The AA crew kept flying to London allowing the tape to loop.

I can imagine flying above the ocean can be challenging for pilots because it’s hard to visually tell how high above the surface you are unless you’re super close. Especially on a clear day. I watched a video about the Aeroperu accident. Not having the right instruments or proper awareness in that kind of situation can be hell for the pilots and the passengers involved.

"What's right and helpful?"

Learning from mistakes. We all make them, some are more significant than others. Not sure about the pilot world, but ATC shifted from a punative culture to a safety culture a couple decades ago. Used to be 3 strikes and you're done. That's one reason why ATC got it's reputation as the most stressful job, and why it had a high suicide rate. (wheras nowadays, it varies significantly, and is usually fairly chill).

I'd imagine that the pilots... with a direct view of what was in front of them... realize the gravity, and will not be making that error again. Their lives were at stake, too.

Unsure about any retraining/refresher, but most definately they aren't being fired over this. Nor should they be.

Maybe it’s just this audience that would have noticed it but I still can’t believe that there were no passenger accounts of this—did they think it was normal? Was there a super low cloud cover so they didn’t realize they were almost in the water?

How did no one report that after they were climbing after takeoff all of a sudden the ocean was like right there and they were diving—no phones, no live streaming? Just seems weird how things went on like it was routine.

Terrible job by all parties involved. Should have never happened and thankfully the GPW indicator clued in the two dummies to pull the fuck up. Thank goodness the plane didn’t crash!

Hey, pretty good try with the photo. Except this is the usual approach to Maui, flying in South over the isthmus, with Kula and Haleakala to the left, before making a 180 degree turn right, with the West Maui Mountains and the wind farm to the left, before the final approach North to OGG. I happen to know, because I live right below that right engine on the photo, LOL. Maybe only 1% to 2% the departure is to the South, when we have a weather inversion, with winds blowing from the South. The usual departure is to fly into the trade winds, blowing in from NE. Aloha.

Yeah, but that was at night.

Is it normal to retract the flaps to just 5 degrees at only 2000+ feet on climb out in such a heavy aircraft? Seems a bit premature but Im not a pilot.

In my youth, as a Check Capt. with East African Airways, Comet 4c and SVC10, .. if I asked for flaps 20.. 1st officer would set flaps to 20 and CONFIRM.. flaps set 20. Yanks gone too auto and soft and sloppy??

Ground proximity warning system have prevented a lot of accidents. Controlled descent into terrain used to be the primary cause of commercial airline hull losses.

I’m somewhat surprised & confused as to the NTSB’s investigative conclusion regarding UAL 1722 - PHOG departure on 12/18/22.   Certainly the communication CRM aspect contributed, seems like the Captain was very much tasked loaded with flying the aircraft.   The Captain’s airmanship was the main component.

A flaps 20 t/o at MAX thrust will result in a time compressed transition to a normal climb profile if you’re not ready for such.  Sounds like the Captain failed to appropriately brief the departure to include the non-standard profile.

I believe the NTSB failed miserably regarding this investigation.  Would be interesting to know Boeing’s involvement in the investigation.

That makes more sense, I thought it would be odd to roster both a captain and FO with little type experience.

Looks to me like the pilots, while messing with the flaps, got disoriented, distracted and quit “flying” the plane. As a result, found themselves in a dive very close to the water. The GPWS system alert AND pilot compliance saved the day. There are other procedural oddities here but they are too obtuse for this venue.

Miscommunication was not the cause of this - it was only a minor contributor. The captain's choice to hand fly the departure followed by his getting distracted from flying the airplane (the flying pilot's first responsibility). The triple autopilot system on this aircraft is very capable of handling the aircraft in conditions such as this and would have been the better choice to begin with. Had the autopilot been engaged early after liftoff the captain would have been in a better position to monitor the flight and the departure would likely have been completely uneventful.

Two questions arise in my amateur mind:
1. Should the flap setting not have been read back to the Captain by the co-pilot just as it done over the radio with ATC regarding altitude etc. to ensure everyone is on the same page?
2. Are there consequences for United for not reporting this immediately?