Sunday, July 19, 2009

EY 454

If you think my last take off to JFK was real heavy, wait until you finish reading this story.
Last night I was out of Abu Dhabi for Sydney on Airbus A340-600. Total number of crew was 19, with me the only Malaysian on board as the Pilot in Command. ( Bangga sangat, Melayu World! ). Total passengers were 297 and the fuel I ordered was 142,000 kg and that was the minimum fuel required to fly to Sydney including the reserve and contingencies. So the total weight for take off was 378,000 kg, just short by 2000 kg for the maximum limit. After computation, the rotation or lift off speed was at 170 knots or 315 km/hr. Wow that was fast! Just imagine a metal tube traveling at that speed on the ground. Even Michael Schumacher got jealous!

How do we compute the take off speed? Well for each airport, there is a take off chart and what we have to do is just get the wind direction and speed and the take off weight. From the chart, read out directly the take off speed (VR). Beside the VR speed, V1 and V2 speed also can be obtained.

V1 is the go no go speed or decision speed. If any malfunction occurs before V1, the remaining runway length is available for you to stop the aircraft or to abort the take off. After V1, the take off should be continued because the remaining runway length is not sufficient for stopping.

V2 is the safety speed at which the aircraft having one engine failed can safely climb out.

Airbus makes the life easy for the pilot by setting the program for this take off computation installed in laptops. All the pilots in the airline that I am working with are issued with a laptop each so that we can compute the speeds fast and accurate. That is why Airbus removes the steering wheel in the cockpit and replaces it with table.










Using this laptop, V1,VR and V2 speeds can be found simply by filling up the required data on the left hand side.

4 comments:

agent_sesat said...

register dlu kat Mixpod tak pun kat www.myflashfetish.com/ ...
pastu cari lagu smua bagai..and kalo dah sattle...tambah Gadget kat layout
copy paste link dier...kat HTML/JavaScript Add

Unknown said...

software tu airbus design die bg skali ngan laptop tu er?..apa lagi yg guna software tok buat calculation?....airbus streering wheel mcm joystick jer kan?..ada difference banyak sgt ker?

ashburn said...

Software tu option.Landing and loading pun ada. Macam MAS pilot tak guna laptop, I dont know about AA. Semua aircrafts manual,SOP and other relevan publication semua ada kat dalam laptop tu. So tak ada la kena bawak buku, basically gi fly bawak passport,licence and laptop jer...
Tpi hard copy ada la dalam cockpit.

Unknown said...

hard copy tu la ..kalau in case trigger problem la katakan...jenuh jugak er nak mencari diagnosis n solution..mesti tebal xhengat...