I’ve heard a couple of versions - both similar - from United 777 pilots. It has also been reported in the media both pilots received additional training, which points to human error. It appears this error lead to an undesirable aircraft state. The investigation will reveal the “why”. My hunch, as with most incidents involving highly trained and experienced crews flying very capable aircraft, is it will involve multiple links in the error chain, to include human factors, recency of experience (the FO was reported to be on IOE), procedural errors, non-standard takeoff configuration (word is it was a flaps 20 takeoff), environmental factors (heavy rain/turbulence), and fatigue.
Totally agree with J.D.G. Like most incidents or accidents, there is a chain that keeps growing until the holes in the cheese line up. Horrendous convective weather, inexperienced FO, who was probably the PF (Captain flies out, FO flies back.) If the FO was on IOE he may have flown both legs. 2.7 G in a heavy transport airplane is not to be sneezed at. Boeing builds 'em tough, but there are limits.
So when you engage the autopilot in a 777 with a lower altitude set, it descends at 8,600 feet per minute? I don’t think so, Tim.
Is 20 degrees more flaps than normal? I’m inferring 10 is normal, but have no idea.
During testing, the 777 wing failed catastrophically (and explosively) at 154% of its design load limit. I suspect it could’ve handled double the load of this incident (5.4G) without breaking a sweat.
It would seen that there would be more details in the filed incident report. Is that not accessible for review?
And the Captain would have been a check airman.
It can be agreed that WX played a role here. Looks like pilots did keep nose down to avoid stall and recovered. On one hand the pilots did a fantastic job in this event, on the other the NTSB et al will determine what actions could have been taken to avoid a repetition. Interesting if ‘additional training’ included sim work to enact the same scenario. Wonder if they put out a PIREP? Human factors definitely part of this.
Interesting scenario. Windshear, perhaps? I know we practiced this a lot in the sim (bizjets). Increasing headwind on climbout (from outflow) with corresponding increasing airspeed. This could explain the steep climb; followed by downdraft and tailwind and airspeed falling off a cliff. On another note, any of you veteran pilots experience this? An acquaintance was cruising along in the flight levels in a G-V somewhere in the south Pacific, when they experienced a sudden and unusually rapid increase in OAT. Said the airplane experienced a rapid drop in altitude.
Considering that the flight continued to SFO, would the CVR in this aircraft have preserved the recording from the time of the incident?