I've reached my limitation on limitations

Today was a pretty good day overall. Started out with the indoctrination test. It was a 50 question test that we had two hours to take. I had to get an 80% to pass. I was done in 30 minutes and got a 98%. I guess that's what you get when your life revolves around studying for a week and a half. Ugh. Back to it tonight, but I'll explain that later.

The rest of the day was learning about CRM, or Crew Resource Management. Not only had I taken a class on this subject at UND, but it was a concept that I taught to my students, so I had a fairly good grasp of it. A little background for you; back in the day (pre-1980) Captains of airplanes were gods. What they say went, even if it wasn't always right, and co-pilots didn't really and couldn't really say otherwise. The reason for this was that back then captains were primarily ex-military, most with extensive combat training. The thought of the day was that if a pilot could fly a fighter, he could fly a jumbo jet no problem. Well, that worked out for oh...about 5 minutes. Nobody's perfect, but captains were treated as such. Therefore, if a co-pilot saw something wrong, they didn't question the captain's authority or decisions. Needless to say, it didn't take long before people started dying. It really all began with a United Airlines flight that went down back in 1981. The NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board, they conduct all accident investigations with the help of the FAA) concluded that the accident was preventable if only the captains authority hadn't been so heavily relied upon, and the whole crew worked together. That's when CRM really came about and accident rates started to drop dramatically. It basically means that everyone's opinion in the cockpit and using all available resources to come to a positive outcome. So even me, a brand new first officer, can challenge the decision of the company's most senior captain without fear of any consequences. One of the best illustrations of CRM actually working out really well was United Flight 232. Enroute to Chicago, Flight 232 had a catastrophic failure of it's number 2 engine. (It was a DC-10, which has one engine under each wing, and an engine mounted on the tail. The number 2 engine was on the tail.) The failure in and of itself wasn't a big deal. The aircraft is perfectly capable of flying along on two engines. The crew quickly realized that they did not have any control over the airplane. The DC-10 has three hydraulic systems which are used to control the roll, pitch, and bank of the aircraft. It is a triple-redundant system (that's why there are three systems) so that if there were a failure of any two of those systems, there would be another one to enable the pilots to control the airplane. Well, all three of those systems went out. When the engine on the tail failed, it threw a fan blade into a part of the aircraft near the rear. This very spot on the aircraft was the EXACT place and the ONLY SPOT on the aircraft that ALL THREE hyrdaulic system lines were placed next to each other. Can you guess what it did? Yep. Sliced right through all three. So it wasn't that they systems weren't working, it was that there was no fluid in the lines. The crew got on the radios with the main maintenance hangar for United back in San Francisco, and they told them what was going on. Maintenance had no clue what to do, cause there was no porcedure for this type of thing. It wasn't supposed to happen. By the way, a plane with no way to control pitch, bank, and yaw is like a car without steering. The crew figured out that they were able to descend the aircraft by reducing power, and turn the aircraft by changing the power settings of the engines that were working out on the wings. They got cleared for an approach into Sioux City, Iowa. One other problem that they had is that brakes were part of the hydraulic system, so they were now useless. Imagine putting a 600,000 pound hunk of metal on the ground at about 250 mph with no way to stop it and you may get the idea. It takes a LONG way to stop on its own. Well, in the end, they make it to the runway (a major miracle in and of itself) but when they landed, they hit hard enough (remember they had really no way to arrest the descent of the airplane) that they sheared off all the gear. So they slid on the belly of the aircraft about half way down the runway, but at that point, the right wing hit something on the ground, which made the aircraft tumble THREE TIMES end over end. It finally came to rest in a field off to the side of that runway. About 111 people died, but 180 people lived. The reason that this is viewed as such a success is because those people who lived shouldn't have. It was through the efforts of the crew, all working together, that brought that airplane down, saving as many lives as were saved. Google search United 232 sometime. It's a great story.

Anyway, tonight is pretty much all studying. We have a limitations test tomorrow that I can only get 2 wrong on. (There are ALOT of limitations) so I've pretty much been studying for that, though I think I've pretty much got them down, so it shouldn't be too bad. Is it a problem that it's only Tuesday night, and already I can't wait for the weekend? Oh well. We have to be at class tomorrow at 7 am instead of the normal 8, so I'm off to bed!