- Barajas: The cold blood of the veteran Air Canada pilot
- Audio: Conversations between the Air Canada pilot and control towers
- Video: This is the wheel of the Boeing 767 of Air Canada
- Air Canada: Aeronautical experts point to wheel fatigue or an obstacle on the runway as causes
It is a very rare thing that breaks the wheel of an airplane. Although it is still more than the result of it exploding is that a part shot forward and gets into the engine. But that's what it seems happened to the plane of Air Canada, in the absence of final investigations to clarify what happened last Monday after the takeoff of a Boeing 767 at Barajas traveling to Toronto.
However, despite the unusual situation, for the pilot it was nothing otherworldly. Or, at least, it shouldn't be. This is explained by Manuel Santos, advisor of the pilot training company Global Training Aviation (GTA), which is also an Iberia pilot and usually performs transoceanic routes like the one that this Boeing 767 was going to do .
"All pilots are required every six months to perform theoretical and practical exams to renew the rating that allows you to fly. And, of course, all these times are practiced with supposed incidents like the one that happened to the Air Canada pilot ."
"It is also true that even if you have done 20 times landing exercises with a single engine it is not the same to do it in the simulator, it is inevitable to get a little nervous every time there is a mishap. And, meanwhile, it is very important to reassure passengers If they get nervous, even if they do not affect the stability of the plane, it is very difficult for you to fly, you cannot go easy if you are constantly shouting behind your back, so you have to inform them of everything you can, as long as you do not generate more panic and have time to do it. "
While explaining this, Santos is virtually piloting an Airbus 320 in one of the simulators they have in GTA. This is one of the main advantages of the pilot profession: you can train in this kind of expensive video games hundreds of times before you have to fly. In this Madrid company with offices in Colombia and Indonesia they have been training thousands of civil and military pilots since 2002. Only at this time, they can have more than twenty airlines training their personnel with them, and they are certified by the EASA and the air authorities of another dozen non-EU countries.
We must bear in mind that this is a business that does not stop growing: every day there are 120,000 commercial flights around the world; 23,000 passenger airplanes are active right now, and civil air traffic doubles every 15 years on average. According to 2018 data reflect that year made travel by plane more than 4,400 million people, equivalent to more than half of the world population.
They land alone
But it is not easy to drive, anyway. And that now, as this expert pilot explains, "the airplanes practically do everything alone. In addition to the autopilot, there are many models already prepared to land alone, and that allows land to be taken in conditions of absolutely zero visibility: with wind fog, etc. What has not yet been achieved is automatic take-off, although it seems simpler, because many circumstances come together that make it more advisable for a person to do it. "
The simulators are prepared to imitate a specific model of aircraft, and therefore it is not possible to reproduce in full the conditions that were experienced in the Air Canada aircraft last Monday in this simulator of an Airbus, although using the current simulators is the same as fly; There is no longer any difference in the sensations that real piloting produces. In GTA they have another one of a Boeing 737, which is a more similar model, but today they have it permanently occupied.
However, there are several characteristics of the emergency landing that we can repeat: fly with an engine off, the landing gear down and use the runway at Barajas Airport to land.
"Flying with the landing gear down is more dangerous, because the plane flies worse. It loses stability and also offers much more resistance, so at the time the pilot decided not to raise it, or could not do it, it was already impossible to fly to Canada, the fuel would not have arrived, because of the resistance the plane would have had a much higher consumption. I don't know if it was possible to get on the landing gear, but if I wasn't sure, I had to let it down, because at better then I couldn't have downloaded it again. "
And with respect to the wheel, "nothing is noticeable, because they are prepared to endure much more, just as the plane is also prepared to land overweight, even if it was full of fuel. The Boeing 767 has no possibility of releasing fuel while flying , and that is why the pilot went around to consume a part of his tank while they prepared everything at the airport and the fighter of the Spanish Air Force, who did a great service, communicated with the pilot and informed him about the state of your landing gear. "
When the simulator does show that the circumstances have changed is when one of the two engines stops. Immediately the plane tilts a lot to the side: "Now it offers more resistance and it is more difficult to fly. In addition, the other engine must run at full power, but anyway the plane is well prepared to fly and land with a single engine And from the ground, when an emergency like this happens, you say mayday, mayday, and from that moment all the planes shut up and you start sending.
You make the decisions and communicate them to the control tower. The others, meanwhile, go to the background and leave the airport free. If you are wrong in your decisions, they will already ask you for explanations when you have landed, but the most important thing at that moment is to let the one who is flying decide, "Santos concludes.
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