Images speak a thousand words – Lets Discover!

Looking at the above image – what is your first thought?

Great Scenary? Image for bragging rights? What is he pointing at? Etc..

Having posted the image, I may have invited the wrath of licensing authorities. When I took the image, it was pure adrenalin gushing through my head as excitement and requested to be clicked as a memorabilia for myself. 

Reflecting back on this, I recalled many things which made me blog about it.

It was a bright sunny day, I was accompanied by a very senior Flyer in the hanger who later became an instructor and is now a First Officer on A320 fleet of Air Asia, India. As I was accompanied by a senior flyer, I decided to get adventurous. In my flight plan, I planned on flying altitude of 7500 ft – however on this particular flight, I decided to go higher to 11500 ft to experience what it would be like and took the necessary permissions with Radar Controller and reached the level and this image was taken. Great! Now let’s discuss about this image.

There are a huge load of negative things about this image – However, the positives that can be gleamed are also worth the discussion.

Radio Telephony(RT) Aspect:

I would be verbose here with my RT calls I made that day as I got some RT lessons directly from the controller that day.

Aircraft: HydCTRL VGE REQ CMB to eleven thousand five hundred feet for one zero minutes.

Controller: VGE HydCTRL CLR CMB to seven thousand five hundred feet (with a smirk).

Aircraft: NEG REQ CMB to eleven thousand five hundred feet VGE.

Controller: VGE HydCTRL say again REQ as one one thousand five hundred.

Aircraft: (Now I realized my mistake) HydCTRL VGE REQ CMB to One One thousand five hundred feet for one zero minutes.

Controller: VGE HydCTRL CLD CMB to FL115

Aircraft:  CLD CMB to FL115 – Will REP RCHG – VGE

Navigation Aspect:

The route I was flying was Eastbound heading hence as per Semi-Circular Rule for VFR, the cruising altitudes can be Odd+500 ft only – Hence the 11500ft.

The other mistake I did while climbing to FL115 was just climbing on my QNH. While I was passing FL90, my senior flyer colleague interjected saying you have been cleared to FL115 – Its flight levels, change your Altimeter to QNE. I was lucky to have had been pointed that day but it’s a good point to remember to change between QNH and QNE while passing above or below Transition Level (TL for my AD Control area was FL80). My excitement made me forget it 😒.

Engine/Technical Aspect:

The heavily re-bored engine of my aircraft was dragging to climb the required height at this level. For the first time, I realized that even an aircraft can move slower than a bullock cart(slowest mode of transport – I have ever been). Technically speaking, the slow climb is due to two factors:  

 1. The air density at that level is low hence the engines though performing well cannot produce the required thrust. 

2. The aircraft engine is designed to operate optimally at certain altitude and higher it does not give the best performance. The flight level approaching was almost close to the ceiling levels of the aircraft(FL135 for C172) (the rate of climb reduces – again due to less air density)

Human Factors Aspect:

There is a significant difference bodily in terms of flying at that altitude. Every human being will have their own effects – reinforces that all of us are unique and special in our own way. Nothing can be termed as undesirable/overly special characteristic. When I was at FL150 and while trying to exactly keep my altimeter at that level – I was inadvertently climbing few feet/descending few feet. This caused a slight irritation in my ear. This prompted me to immediately request a descend to FL90 after few minutes. The reason for the irritation in ear is due to the pressure difference at sea level and at this FL(Read more on Barotrauma). Here I am re-iterating again, it could happen or not to an individual – its entirely case by case. Normally, above FL90 a pilot can experience effects of Hypoxia and hence should not be attempted Solo.

The air regulations aspect:

Firstly, as per Indian DGCA requirements, photography is prohibited and requires permission to be taken from authorities for taking any. However, I am posting this article and picture in an attempt to encourage thought process around this very old rule with relevance to current scenario. No attempt is being made to change any rules, but views presented so that all stakeholders can together re-discuss this and come to a conclusion.

The first thing about photography and current day trainee pilots is to take ‘selfie’ or a pictures with fellow pilots/their bird(aircraft). The reaction is almost instantaneous. This can be attributed to the availability of mobile phones with high end camera in everyone’s hand. So for administrators, the first point of action employed was to ban taking mobile phones with the pilot before going for a sortie. However, this proved detrimental because for long cross country flights involving landing at other aerodromes, taking permissions from Control towers etc was quite a challenge. Also I read that mobile phone becomes a secondary ELT in case of a forced landing/ditched landing and could help save precious time for SAR.

So the issue is about camera and Pilot. Camera is now an integral part of every smartphone and current day Pilot requires a smartphone to access weather, reports etc. In my previous job working for a mobile manufacturer, I was aware of internal discussions around putting a front facing camera too in addition to the rear camera. I must admit there were very compelling arguments for both inclusion and exclusion (cases very similar to the one we are talking) but end of the day it’s the customer/consumer who wins and hence cameras were included. So here too specific changes cannot be achieved.

So finally it comes down to the Pilot. Putting a blanket ban on taking photos will it work? Is it practical? To understand this a bit more, we need to delve into the mindset of the current day Pilot. Before we do that, I would explain my frame of mind going into this clicking picture. All during my training days, I was quite conscious about clicking pictures in the cockpit. But I did have a picture taken and kept it to myself – this was purely for self motivation. I felt it was very important for one to feel good and perform. Besides that I never took any pictures at all when I was flying – only on ground with fellow pilots and with bird. However, on the eventful day of the flight, I performed a maneuver (ie. Climbing to a FL not performed by many of my batchmates) which brought in a sense of elation and had the enormous urge for a memorabilia – hence my request for clicking the picture. Comparing to all my flying batchmates, being an older guy, I too had a fallacy. So given the young pilot mindset it was obvious in the current trends of the world, it would be extremely tough - not to make him click a picture. Besides, there could be a need to show abnormal behaviours of certain instruments(like needle flickering etc) and hence the need to click the picture.

Now let me put forward the argument for other spectrum of this debate. If you had noticed, I deflected off the path grossly – Ofcourse cloud was the initial reason was deflecting from the path but had it been a normal clear day, the amount of deviation was excessive and slackness on my part could also have enabled me not to course correct/find a better path closer to desired track. A closer look at the tasks at hand at that point were – the aircraft was not maintaining height due to less air density + clouds + offtrack + urge for clicking picture. In the melee, a poor decision resulted at that point(This poor judgement could also be a side effect of Hypoxia). 

As both arguments have been made – it could be seen as a conundrum like many things in life. Finding the right balanced solution would be an icing on the cake for everyone to enjoy!

Disclaimer:  As the topic is about understanding human and procedure, it should not be viewed in commercial or legal ways. To be focused only on procedures, processes and performance learning/improving aspects.