Why did it call RETARD?! US Airways 1702

0:00 what could possibly cause a captain to reject a takeoff of the rotation with a perfectly working aircraft and what would happen if he did as always it's both complicated and fascinating and as we will soon find out not everything is what it seems stay tuned in the morning of March the 12th 2014 the 61-year-old captain in this story woke up in a great mood on the previous day he had sat through a meeting with his cardiologist and the news he had received were really good he had been quite worried because his medical had a

0:45 limitation in it due to a bypass operation that he had gone through back in 2011 but now he was pretty sure that the doctors would allow him to extend his medical for at least another year he loved his job and had managed to build up an astonishing 23,800 hours of total experience so far and he had no intentions of stopping to fly early he was operating the Airbus A320 for US Airways at the time and he had flown a total of 4,500 hours on the type making him quite experienced and comfortable with it the 12th of March was going to be his last off day before his work schedule would resume so he spent it relaxing and then he went to bed early in order to prepare for a redeye departure on the following day then on the accident day the 13th of

1:31 March 2014 he woke up at 0 4:45 and felt rested and fine he got into his uniform and drove to his home airport in Fort Lauderdale Florida and then caught a jump seat ride over to Charlotte in North Carolina where his duty was going to begin his flight ended up landing on time and he had managed to get a 90-minute nap on it so when he signed in for his duty at around 09:30 he felt rested and generally in a great shape and this was also when he first met the first officer that he was going to share his duty with she was 62 years old and actually lived in the Charlotte area which meant that she had been able to sleep until 0800 on the 13th and she had also been off for the previous 3 days which meant that she felt great as she

2:17 signed in for the duty now the first officer was also very experienced with a total of 13,000 hours under her belt and that included 4,700 hours on the Airbus A320 which they were now going to operate now the reason I'm explaining all of this is to show you that this was a well-rested and highly experienced crew who also both had perfectly normal training records and no indications of any type of problems a perfectly ordinary normal crew in other words which shows that what is about to happen to them could theoretically happen to anyone in any case after the two pilots had greeted each other and their three cabin crew colleagues they started going through the pre-flight paperwork for their coming three flights the plan was that they were going to start with a flight from Charlotte over to Tampa and

3:03 then from there onwards toward Philadelphia and finally over to Fort Lauderdale in Florida which if you remember was the captain's home airport there was absolutely nothing special in the weather and nots that would indicate any issues except maybe some strong gusty winds in the Philadelphia area later on but apart from that the flight plans were all straightforward so they soon finished up their briefing and then started walking out towards the gates now we don't really know who was pilot flying and pilot monitoring on the first two flights but we do know that the aircraft departed normally from Charlotte and that the two first flight were operated without any significant issues this meant that the crew arrived on time to Philadelphia at around 1649 and when they did they were advised that

3:49 they needed to do an aircraft change before their final flight over to Fort Lauderdale now aircraft changes is a bit of a nuisance for air crews because they generally mean that the first aircraft needs to be completely shut down and have the catering bars closed and sealed and then the new aircraft needs to be prepared again with a full setup instead of the shorter turnaround setup that normally would have been used otherwise and this generally takes a bit longer time to do at least on the bowing 77 that I operate and on top of that the crew obviously also needs to physically move location from wherever their old aircraft was to the new so with the next departure time scheduled for 1750 the crew now had almost exactly 1 hour to get this done which is a bit on the

4:34 tight side but normally should be okay like I mentioned before the weather was quite windy in Philadelphia and the pilots had therefore decided that the captain was going to be pilot flying so whilst he stopped in the gate to talk to the dispatcher the first officer proceeded into the cockpit and started setting up the flight management computer according to US Airways standard operating procedures this new aircraft was a shiny 15-year-old Airbus A320 with no relevant technical issues recorded on it but it is worth talking a little bit about a few of the systems on board this aircraft before we continue first let's talk about something known as the flex temperature takeoff thrust setting almost every commercial aircraft that operate today have engines fitted that

5:20 can produce much more takeoff thrust than is actually needed at least for most of the runways and conditions that they operate in now this is of course in order to give the airlines the possibility to also operate at hot and high airports or in places with high obstacles around where more trust would be needed but using this extra thrust also means that the engines are subjected to more wear and tear on top of also using more fuel and creating more noise than needed so in order to counteract this the engine makers have created different ways to derate the engines basically telling them to use only as much trust as is really needed in order to conduct the takeoff safely in the case of the Airbus A320 this is done by the pilot calculating a flex

6:06 temperature which is inserted into the flight management computer during the takeoff performance calculation that temperature basically tricks the engine into thinking that the outside temperature is higher than normal and to therefore produce less thrust on the Boeing 737 that I fly we have a similar system known as assumed temperature and if you're interested in seeing exactly how we'll calculate that as well as how to fly your home simulator professionally well then check out Ben's and my course using this QR code or the link here in the description in any case it is really important to understand that this flex temperature needs to be reconfirmed every time that there is a takeoff related change entered into the FMC like a new intersection takeoff or a

6:52 change in runway that's because any such changes might also come with a change in performance and therefore a possible need for a completely different thrust setting and that by the way also goes for the takeoff speeds the V1 rotation and V2 speeds who might also need to change remember that once the performance calculation has been made which in the case of US Airways apparently comes in the form of a document sent over from dispatch the pilots will enter and confirm this and in order for the engines to actually then use this flex thrust the thrust levers needs to be placed in the flex MCT detent during takeoff so what does that mean then well on the Airbus the thrust levers have five different detents if we start in idle the thrust

7:39 levers can then be moved backwards first into idle reverse thrust and then further back into the last detent where they will command full reverse thrust but if the trust levels are instead moved forward they will first go into the CL which stands for climb thrust and then to the flex MCT which stands for flex takeoff thrust and max continuous thrust and then finally fully forward into toga which will give either max takeoff thrust or goron thrust depending on the flight segment so for a flex takeoff to be made basically two different things needs to be fulfilled a valid flex temperature higher than the outside temperature needs to have been entered into the FMC and the trust levels needs to be placed in the flex MCT detent now the next system that we

8:27 have to discuss is the electronic centralized aircraft monitoring system or ECAM this system includes a computer network that processes and displays engine and system parameters and corrective procedures in case of any malfunction and the primary components of the systems are two system data acquisition concentrators and two flight warning computers the ECAM will show the pilots different warnings and actions on their screens and the importance of those warnings are then categorized into different colors red requires immediate action amber requires awareness but no immediate action and green just gives information but normal operation can still continue now in case of an amber alert this is then subcategorized into

9:14 two different levels where level one just causes an amber alert to pop up on the screens but the level two alert also activates an amber master caution warning and a single oral chime and that warning will soon come to play a big role here now you have probably also heard how the Airbus have a very rude oral alert which can be announced during the landing flare 10 but as it turns out this alert can also be activated for a very obscured secondary reason which will soon become important and when we're on the subject of obscure things did you know that your personal information is likely right now being bought and sold without your

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11:33 alert is generated as a reminder to the crew to make sure that the thrust is reduced back to idle during the flare if the auto throttle is engaged this alert happens at 10 ft radio and if the aircraft is flying with manual thrust it happens already at 20 ft but it is only activated if the following criteria are all met the aircraft speed is above 80 knots and the radio altitudes are at or below the levels that I just mentioned 10 or 20 feet both thrust levels are not set to idle and toga or a correct flex temperature is not engaged but according to a bulletin created by Airbus back in 2008 this call out could also be generated if the aircraft is accelerating above 80 knots during a

12:19 takeoff if the flight warning computer can't establish what flight phase it is in for example due to an incorrect thrust setting in that case it might default into thinking that the aircraft is in the landing phase instead of a takeoff and since all of the above criteria will then be met it will also activate the alert now the guidance from Airbus if this were to happen was to then immediately move the thrust levels into the TOA detent which would both silence the alert and also make sure that the aircraft has maximum take of thrust set for the takeoff now I know that that was quite a lot of information to keep track of but it will all make sense soon I promise so back to our story the captain was still outside when

13:04 the first officer started inputting all of the performance data into the flight management computer she also entered a route that they had received via their flight plan but for some reason she entered runway 27 right as the departure runway instead of runway 27 left which the flight plan had said now this is a pretty easy mistake to make since the select buttons are normally right next to each other on the FMC CDU and in any case this should have been picked up during the later ATC route clearance verification procedure which both pilots had to do together but for some reason this was then also missed when that procedure was completed now it is possible that some complacency was involved here we don't really know these root checks are obviously just as

13:52 important as all other checks that we do but sometimes especially if there is a perceived time pressure they can end up being rushed anyway the rest of the setup was completed just as normal and by time 1702 so just 2 minutes behind schedule US Airways flight 1702 was finally pushed back from its stand with a total of 154 people on board now the weather that the pilots had received from their 80s indicated clear skies with great visibility a temperature of 0° C and winds coming from 290 degrees at 18 knots gusting up to 28 so quite windy but mostly down the runway but the 80s also indicated runway 27 left as its departure runway so that would have

14:39 provided the crew with yet another chance to verify that the correct runway had been selected but that didn't happen just before the aircraft pushed back the crew were advised to expect an earliest departure clearance time of 1829 which would mean a slight delay so the captain decided to initially only start up one of the engines and taxi out single engine now I know that this is standard practice in many airlines since it saves both fuel and emissions but we don't do that in my airlines since it also increases complexity and pushes workload forward closer to the runway in any case when the push back was completed at around time 1754 the company sent flight 702 their final weight and balance

15:25 information and the first officer entered it into the computer but it is a little bit unclear if she used the uplink function to do this or if she entered the VS speeds and flex temperature manually through the CDU in any case the departure runway was not changed at this point instead at time 1808 the crew contacted the ground controller and was given taxi clearance towards runway 27 left for departure the taxi out was then completed uneventfully and the aircraft soon found itself at the back of the departure queue as number six for departure and as they were waiting the captain started up the second engine and then conducted a flight control check at time 1821 and 22 seconds the crew were switched over to the tower controller where they were

16:10 advised that they would now be next in line for departure the crew read this back and the first officer then started to challenge the last part of the taxi checklist but as she was doing that she was suddenly interrupted by a call from the cabin where a cabin crew advised that there was a passenger in the toilet this was resolved a short moment later when the passenger walked back to his seat but this is actually a great example of the kind of distractions that can often happen to us pilots and any distractions always increases the risk of mistakes being made that is actually one of the reasons why strict adherence to checklists and procedures is so critically important if we pilots ever find ourselves for example rhyming a checklist meaning reading without

16:57 thinking this needs to be promptly acknowledged and then the involved checklist needs to be restarted from the beginning again I'm saying this because the part of the checklist that the first officer was dealing with when this interruption happened here included to check for the correct takeoff speeds and settings and that particular checklist point must be done with the correct runway inserted now the pilots would have been able to spot this both on the FMC CDU and on the navigational display if it had been referenced in the checklist flow but it wasn't in any case during the time that the first officer was dealing with the passenger in the back the crew now also received their clearance to line up and wait on runway 27 left and as the captain read this back and started moving forward he

17:44 suddenly did notice that they had the wrong runway in the FMC probably by doing his own kind of cross check now like I said earlier this can definitely happen and even though there are several steps included in the procedures to cross-ch checkck this if an error still has been left this far there are plenty of ways to still fix it the correct thing to do would have been to call ADC back and advise them that they couldn't accept the lineup clearance and instead would have to hold at the holding point for a few more minutes now that would have not made the controller very happy but changing the runway comes with a lot of potential threats so it's absolutely not the time to rush but in this case the captain just continued to slowly taxi into position while simultaneously telling the first officer to quickly

18:30 change the runway over from 27 right to 27 left this happened at approximately time 1822 and 40 seconds and the first officer quickly did what she was told and completed the task in less than 30 seconds but as I'm sure that you've all guessed by now that speed also came with a price you see when you change the runway all the performance data automatically falls out of the computer since like I mentioned before every runway needs a different performance calculation even if the runways are parallel like in this case they could still differ in length slope and obstacles in the departure direction so when the change is executed the FMC will just leave the VS speeds and flex temperature box prompts empty whilst

19:16 suggesting the previous figures in blue prompts next to the empty boxes this is then combined with an amber scratchpad message saying check takeoff data as a reminder to do this step and until the speeds are reselected a red speed select message will also appear on the pilot's primary flight displays but in her rush to switch the runways the first officer completely missed this and those performance fields were therefore just left blank now you might think that this mistake should be quite easy to spot but the problem with rushing is that details like this can easily actually be missed and since the aircraft was now entering an active runway the captain would have been busy maneuvering the aircraft and making sure that both the runway and the

20:02 approach path was clear about the traffic so it was unlikely that he was going to be able to catch this unless of course that part of the checklist would have been repeated which it was not so what all of this meant was that the aircraft was soon lined up and ready for departure but with no VS speeds or flex temperature selected now before we go any further here I just want to mention a very important crew resource management point here if you are a first officer watching this I want you to remember this as an excellent example of where you absolutely need to speak up you see we captains can sometimes be a bit too go-minded and focus on getting the show on the road but changing the runway in the FMC is a crucial procedure to get

20:50 properly done and right and it's therefore always better to take a few minutes to do that which might require you to tell the captain to please wait for a few minutes i'm saying this because during our crew resource management courses we're often faced with scenarios where the first officer needs to speak up about big safety critical things like when a captain is breaking procedures or where a critical error has been committed but in reality it is in everyday scenarios like this that you will most likely have to put your foot down and that doesn't just go for aviation it is the same in almost all jobs out there anyway about 15 seconds after the first officer had finished changing the runway the tower controller told flight 1702 to maintain heading 230 degrees after departure and

21:36 then cleared them for takeoff the first officer read this back and at time 1823 and 34 seconds the captain moved the thrust levers first into climb and then 9 seconds later into the flex detent and at the same time his side stick was also moved forward in the nose down direction in order to get more pressure on the nose wheel to help the steering the aircraft was already accelerating when the thrust levels were moved into the flex detent and as soon as that happened a one-time chime could be heard in the cockpit this was then also accompanied by an ecam message saying engine trust levers not set with instruction in white to move the thrust levers into the toga detent the first officer immediately called out engine

22:23 trust levers not set but instead of pushing the trust levers fully forward as the procedure described the captain now moved them backwards into the climb detent and then pushed them back into the flex detent again while also calling out they're set now what had obviously happened here was that since no flex temperature had been re-entered after the runway change the computer didn't know what thrust the pilots wanted from the flex detent and therefore generated this warning the Airbus systems are generally very well engineered so even if a pilot didn't follow the guidance to push the trust levels into toga the trust would still go up to max after approximately 8 seconds in this case but since the truss levers still would then sit in the flex detent another system

23:09 would also soon get involved here it's also worth mentioning again the difference between the high and low speed regimes during takeoff now I have explained this in several of my previous videos but the short version is that as an aircraft starts building up speed during the takeoff it both uses up more and more runway leaving less and less distance left to break and its total kinetic energy keeps increasing meaning that it will need more distance to stop now obviously all of this has been calculated to still allow for a rejected takeoff all the way up to V1 the decision speed but the pilot actions become more and more critical the closer to B1 that the aircraft accelerates and because of this we pilots typically

23:55 refer to the low speed regime up to 80 knots as the time where we can easily reject the takeoff and therefore will do so for basically anything that includes master caution warnings burst tires strange noises as well as obviously more serious things like engine failures fires predictive windshare warnings and if the aircraft is unsafe or unable to fly but above 80 knots well then it's a little bit of a different story that's what we refer to as the high-speed regime and there we are more goalminded and will typically only reject for critical failures like engine failures fires predictive windshare warnings or if the aircraft is unable or unsafe to fly all other minor issues is considered

24:41 safer to take into the air sort out after takeoff and then potentially return for a landing with the whole runway available to stop on in this case since the speed was still below 80 knots when the warning activated the crew could have easily decided to reject the takeoff and take a closer look at what had caused it but that's not what this captain decided to do instead he felt that the aircraft was accelerating normally and maybe he thought that he had pushed the thrust levels fully forward it's hard to know but in any case the first officer must have been a bit preoccupied here because she now missed her 80 knots call out which serves as both an airspeed cross check and also a clear divider between the low and the high speed takeoff regime and

25:27 then as the aircraft passed 86 knots an oral alert suddenly also activated in the cockpit now that warning was basically only associated with landings for these two pilots so it likely caused quite a bit of confusion here and the captain called out "Uh what did you do you didn't load we lost everything." As he had now likely been prompted to start scanning his instruments and had therefore realized that they didn't have any V speeds either but at this point they were now well above 100 knots and the captain therefore didn't want to reject the takeoff in the high-speed regime and he also remembered the V-speeds from their earlier briefs so instead of stopping they now just continued to accelerate with the alert still

26:14 blaring on in the background now if you remember the reason this warning had been activated was because of the computer confusing the takeoff roll with the landing due to the missing flex temperature so if the pilots would have just pushed the thrust lever into the toga detent this warning would have disappeared but again that didn't happen now the first officer at this stage assumed that the captain wouldn't try to take off without any valid V speeds but she didn't actually call this out and since she didn't as the aircraft accelerated past 143 knots the captain suddenly just said "Well we'll get that straight when we're airborne." And then continue the takeoff at time 1824 and 9 seconds the first officer called out

26:59 "Well I'm sorry but that didn't help very much here since the aircraft had already reached 152 knots which was very close to the previously calculated V1 decision speed of 157 you see we captains are trained to remove our hands from the thrust levels when we hear V1 we do that because we know that a rejection after that speed will likely lead to the aircraft overshooting the runway and potentially breaking up so after V1 we will instead focus on just getting the aircraft safely into the air basically no matter what the only reason we would ever reject off V1 would be if the aircraft is clearly unable to fly for some catastrophic reason like a dual engine failure or a structural failure of the

27:44 aircraft but it is worth remembering here that no one ever practices rejected takeoffs after we won since that's possibly one of the last things that we want pilots to get used to in this case though the acceleration just continued but without any of the associated call outs from the first officer as the aircraft accelerated past 164 knots the captain started pulling back on his side stick to initiate rotation of the aircraft and it slowly then started to get airborne but somewhere around here something must have happened inside the mind of the captain maybe it was the blaring alert the absence of callouts from his first officer a sudden gust of wind shaking the aircraft or it was the

28:30 combination of all of these factors but whatever it was he clearly now started doubting his decision to continue the takeoff in the first place but of course the aircraft was now just about to get airborne using up loads of runway below it and on top of that it was working perfectly so surely there was no way to reverse that decision now right well as it turns out yes there was but not a good one whatever the reason the captain had now suddenly gotten the impression that his aircraft was unsafe to fly and therefore as the aircraft accelerated past 167 knots he suddenly the thrust levers to idle and pushed his side stick forward and the result of this was immediate and

29:16 devastating the combined effect of his forward input on the side stick and the undermounted engine suddenly reducing the thrust back to idle was that the aircraft immediately and quickly started pitching forward now the captain obviously felt the speed of this movement and therefore soon reversed his input but it was then too late at time 1824 and 14 seconds the nose gear slammed into the runway recording a load of 3.7g as it did and since the captain was now still pulling back on his side stick when that happened the combination of that their speed and the violent impact of the nose gear now sent the aircraft bouncing back into the air with the radio alimter soon indicating a maximum height of 15 ft surveillance

30:01 cameras in the area actually captured the aircraft at this point fully airborne but it wasn't going to stay that way for very long with the trust still at idle and the captain realizing that they were now flying even though he had decided to reject he again pushed his side stick forward in order to try and reduce the bounce and to get the aircraft back down on the ground and he then pulled back slightly in order to soften the touchdown but at this point the aircraft had lost a lot of its speed so when it now started descending back towards the runway with the side stick asking for a pitch up it ended up touching down with the tail first then the main landing gear and finally with a force much higher than it was designed for the nose gear slammed into the ground and completely

30:47 collapsed you see the nose gear is the most delicate part of the landing gear structure and must be handled with delicacy and care but that was absolutely not what happened here the result of this was that the aircraft now ended up careening down the runway with the nose scraping against the asphalt dragging up a huge cloud of smoke behind it the lack of nose gear steering would have left the pilots with very limited steering ability but luckily they were still able to apply their brakes which meant that at around time 18 24 and 48 seconds the now severely damaged aircraft finally came to a stop on the left side of runway 27 left an evacuation was immediately initiated and the cabin crew were able to deploy almost all of the slides

31:33 except on door to right where smoke was observed outside and two left since the nose down attitude of the aircraft now didn't allow for that slide to actually reach the ground eventually all 154 passengers and crew were able to evacuate safely with only two minor injuries reported and those both happened during the actual evacuation so that was all fine but the aircraft was so badly damaged that it was eventually written off and it is as far as I know still sitting on the apron at Philadelphia airport to this day let me know in the comments if you have actually seen it and don't forget to subscribe when you're down there leaving a comment it really helps the channel the investigation started immediately and in this case the investigators had the good fortune of being able to

32:20 interview both the pilots crew and passengers directly which greatly helped after they had gone through all of the available data including the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder the NTSB found that the probable cause of the accident was the captain's decision to reject the takeoff after the aircraft had already rotated and above V1 contributing to the accident was the flight crew's failure to follow standard operating procedures by not verifying that the FMC was properly set up after the runway had been changed in the FMC now the fact that the Airbus could call out also during the takeoff role came as a big surprise to a lot of pilots in the industry and although the procedure had always been to move the thrust levels into the toga detent if the engine thrust levels not set warning

33:06 was annunciated airbus after this accident updated their guidance to also say that if the call out was heard during the takeoff roll even above 80 knots the takeoff should just be rejected which sound like a quite reasonable thing to me if the aircraft calls for just do it on a separate note I want to use this accident to highlight a few things to you young new pilots out there whenever you think that something should be done or doesn't look Right make sure that you say it i know that that's very hard to do during the takeoff roll especially but a simple should we stop could be enough to get the captain out of a faulty decision-making loop now the

33:52 captain will still be the one taking the decision but at least you have made your voice heard and if the decision still is to continue well then the standard operating procedures have to be completed because the further away from the normal procedures that you get the more mistakes will be made now this was a slightly shorter video and I would really like to hear what you guys thought about it i absolutely love it when you guys send us suggestions as well especially about what accidents and incidents that you want us to cover so please keep doing that and if you want to see my next video before everyone else and also have a chance to come with feedback on it well then join my Patreon crew by scanning this QR code here or go to

34:38 patreon.com/join/mentorpilot i'm actually gearing up for a Patreon hangout tomorrow which I'm really looking forward to it's always great to answer all of their questions in person and it's normally just like having a cup of coffee with a group of great friends now watch this video next is super interesting my name is Peter Hornfeld and you are watching Mentor Pilot have an absolutely fantastic day and I'll see you next time