Retiring an airplane is not necessarily that easy

[Tom/CalClassic]

Hi,

I vividly remember one of my first jet takeoffs, a United Caravelle from Cleveland Hopkins in 1964. Everyone commented on the steep takeoff - we weren’t used to that in prop planes. The difference between that and the DC-6B I rode into Cleveland was striking. So I can say that the takeoff contrasts were there from the start.

[mrcapitalism]

Excellent answer Tom, thanks.

[Defender]

Interesting discussion thanks guys. Can't help smiling at the thought of some soul Googling derated take-off and finding themselves on the CalClassic forum

My first Aeroflot take off (TU-134) got the heart racing. Hardly climbed at all, just accelerated almost level. So safety priority with them must be speed not height and no noise abatement. I believe there were aircraft which had a one engine out safety speed quite a bit above V2?

From videos I've watched the big props just seem to lift off with almost no gap between the nose and mains leaving the ground but perhaps the aircraft in question were well below max weight. But unlike the swept wing types where it seems that rotation is essential for lift. 

Bill

[Tom/CalClassic]

In several propliner airline manuals they say to pull back on the stick at V2 -5 kts and wait for the plane to lift off at V2. Then some say maintain 500 fpm climb immediately, but others say to maintain a certain airspeed after METO.

[capflyer]

Nov 18, 2020 17:31:35 GMT -5 Erik said:

CAPflyer, using the RNAV DP's to ensure noise regulations are met is interesting. I wonder if that will come our way as well. At Schiphol, the aim still is to minimise the total noise load on homes from the perimeter to quite far from the airport. 2020 was to be the year where new runway use rules could be established, but then COVID decimated traffic of course and now the cards will have to be dealt anew. Who knows what we may get.

The US has always tended to have noise abatement be as straightforward as possible by either having a fixed procedure (after takeoff, climb to x altitude, reduce thrust until x altitude, resume normal power/speed profile) or having a minimum climb gradient until the appropriate altitude. There is just a higher reliance that the pilots operating the flights will know those requirements and meet or exceed them that there's not a need for anything more complex. In the same way the new STARS that feature a continuous descent path in the US have greatly simplified ATC procedures. If you look at the RNAV arrivals into DFW for example, you'll see that they all have a lot of crossing restrictions and speed restrictions. By putting these in place, it means ATC can concentrate on everyone else and have a much easier sequencing job. Europe has gone to this in some ways, but most of the restrictions are in the final approach or transition segment, not in the arrival itself.

[Erik]

Exactly. One huge difference of course being the various, often small, countries here trying to work in co-ordination, versus one federal system as in the US. And even within our small country, for this single - though major - airport, many parties have a say in the rules. Oh well, it's quieter now than it has been in decades...

Erik

[Jorge]

The fact of there are, generally, blanket regs for many of our procedures is something that made things not just easier for us, but safer overall as well. There are several areas that live in their own little world, though, which I guess is the same all over the world.

One of the things I used to absolutely HATED about IAH was the fact the arrivals didn't mean "*@&@" as far as the controllers were concerned. You spent all that time in the last few minutes of cruise doing a locked tight briefing, you set up the box, you checked to make sure everything was there (crossing restrictions, speed changes, altitude windows, etc), you run the numbers in your head to get a general idea what your plane should be doing in the event the box goes sideways, and in the end think you're a clone of the late, great Chuck Yeager. Then you hit the standby frequency button and check in with approach and are given instructions that basically turn the last half hour of your flight into junk. Made you want to tell the ATC guys what to do with themselves!

Like some of have said here, sometimes the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Sometimes they have exceptions. IAH was a training site, so the controllers were more "hands on" with the operations since IAH used to have aircraft from Singapore, Holland, France, Britain, New Zeland, and even Australia, coming in almost every day. It gave the controllers a chance to handle those countries' aircraft without having to immerse themselves in the zoos of "Sewark," "La Garbage," and "J-'insert "F" expetive'-K."   Unfortunately for us, we ended up handling these changes for almost six months before we got a memo that explained IAH was being used as a training site and therefore we would have to handle last minute changes.  Guess it was better late than never, right?

At least everything is usually settled without too much hassle in the end, so that's always a good thing.

Regards,

Jorge
Miami, FL