Hand Flying the 707

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smhusain_1
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Hand Flying the 707

Post by smhusain_1 »

I can remember at least two occasions when long flights were operated by myself and crew without the use of an autopilot. The first one was a direct Karachi to Beijing, Pk 750, where the autopilot could not be engaged in Pakistan airspace with Islamabad ahead of us, and the second, a direct Karachi to Athens freighter in a similar fashion. Re-racking in lower 41 was tried but didn't work. On both flights the book, SOP, called for a serviceable autopilot on international sectors but dumping fuel was not entertained for sake of the company. Pick up for Pk 750 used to be around 4 AM and the freighter to Athens was a night departure with dawn somewhere over Syria. One of our freighter flights dumped fuel coming to Stewart Airfield in New York State from Paris after the INS failed to stabilize on departure, and I was waiting at Stewart for the aircraft.The engineer while clearing the aircraft, made me promise that I would not dump fuel on the return flight to Frankfurt. I had worked out a contingency plan in my mind of going via northern Canada (Goose Bay) and Greenland but everything went well. The controls are sensitive but you get the hang of it and can maintain altitude even during turns within a margin of +-100 feet or less if there was any inadvertent deviation from altitude.
Last edited by smhusain_1 on Tue Sep 23, 2014 5:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Abbas Ali
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Re: Hand Flying the 707

Post by Abbas Ali »

Loved reading it - thank you for sharing.

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smhusain_1
Registered Member
Posts: 225
Joined: Sat Jul 19, 2008 1:16 pm
Location: Brampton, Ontario, Canada

Re: Hand Flying the 707

Post by smhusain_1 »

It was a far sighted decision by PIA Flight Operations Management of not having an autopilot on the Fokker F-27. It was a basic airline aircraft in my days (69-85) and set the hand flying trend which never went out of practice even when the equipment changed.
smhusain_1 wrote:I can remember at least two occasions when long flights were operated by myself and crew without the use of an autopilot. The first one was a direct Karachi to Beijing, Pk 750, where the autopilot could not be engaged in Pakistan airspace with Islamabad ahead of us, and the second, a direct Karachi to Athens freighter in a similar fashion. Re-racking in lower 41 was tried but didn't work. On both flights the book, SOP, called for a serviceable autopilot on international sectors but dumping fuel was not entertained for sake of the company. Pick up for Pk 750 used to be around 4 AM and the freighter to Athens was a night departure with dawn somewhere over Syria. One of our freighter flights dumped fuel coming to Stewart Airfield in New York State from Paris after the INS failed to stabilize on departure, and I was waiting at Stewart for the aircraft.The engineer while clearing the aircraft, made me promise that I would not dump fuel on the return flight to Frankfurt. I had worked out a contingency plan in my mind of going via northern Canada (Goose Bay) and Greenland but everything went well. The controls are sensitive but you get the hang of it and can maintain altitude even during turns within a margin of +-100 feet or less if there was any inadvertent deviation from altitude.