“Severe Ice Detected”

It’s May and I think it’s safe to say the winter is over in the Northern Hemisphere.

However, icing condition still exists frequently, due to the adiabatic cooling in the atmosphere (the higher you go, the cooler it gets). It’s pretty common in spring, as the different air masses interact with each other and the temperature and moisture contents are in the sweet spot for in-flight icing.

Recently I experienced this first hand. It was raining with SC, CU and TCU clouds present around the destination airport.

I was the PF, approaching with Engine Anti-Ice on, as I was expecting to penetrate some clouds during ILS approach in temperatures around 3 degrees Celsius. Around 2000ft, I had a sudden chime and an ECAM message:

“SEVERE ICE DETECTED”

We did a quick ECAM action by turning on the Wing Anti-Ice. and the ECAM message disappeared. I carried on with the approach with WAI and EAI on, as the representative surfaces were clear of ice. I was curious about the Vref additives, as this was Vref15 + 10kts on the 737, but I wasn’t sure of the proper speeds on the Airbus. Since the ice probe and ECAM were clear, I assumed no ill-impact on the flight characteristics. As a precaution I added 5 knots to the approach speed though. The plane handled fine, except for the increased idle thrust, giving us a little bit of increased landing distance.

But I dug into the books in case I missed something today and I’m a little bit embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know the full details back then. There are two pieces of information that I got to brush up from POM and FCOM today:

1. SEVERE ICE DETECTED message disappears automatically when you switch on the WAI, regardless of the condition of the lift-generating surfaces and the ice detectors. There could still be residual ice on the critical surfaces when the message disappears. So always respect the min speeds. Also, be sure to check out the representative surface for any evidence of ice. Especially since the Horizontal Stabilizer doesn’t have WAI, assume that the ice is still present if the TAT hasn’t warranted the melting of the ice.
2. The minimum speeds are:
   1. in Conf Clean: VLS+15kts. in any other Conf: VLS+5kts when WAI is operative and;
   2. VLS+10kts or Green Dot when WAI is inoperative.

As far as I’m aware there were no messages about ice on the Status page once the WAI was switched on. And a RCL button didn’t bring anything back up. I’m thinking maybe it’ll be displayed on the bottom right side of the ECAM, but not sure.

With the reduced flying schedules during COVID it’s hard to find the motivation to keep the knowledge up to date, but there’s no excuses for not studying when it comes to flight safety in your extra spare time.

Cheers,

The ECAM I encountered. This pic seems to be from a flight sim A321, but you get the point.

Mechanical Backup Mode

During the furlough I simulated many emergencies to keep my proficiency up, and sometimes for fun.

This is one of them. I simulated a complete failure of the 5 flight control computers (3 PRIMs and 2 SECs). So I could only control the aircraft with rudder and pitch trim + power settings. It is designed to allow pilots just enough controls to reset the flight computers, but I decided to see if I can land. It was surprisingly difficult – I had to go around once due to a premature flare from a 3 degree glideslope. This time I came in at a lower approach angle and it was easier.

Enjoy!

Vienna, Austria

Hello all,

I apologize for the unexpected break in my posts. With COVID-19, my job security hasn’t really been stable, and I also had to get a surgery, followed by a long recovery and rehab. But I’m happy to announce that I’ve fully recovered and I’ve been recalled back to work after some time off!

This time I’d like to write about my favourite layover so far, Vienna.

It was my longest flight at the time. It took place in November 2019 actually.

The flight quite long but not as boring as flying to Australia. We took off in late afternoon, and crossed Chinese airpace, into Mongolia, then entered the Russian airspace. Then I took a break (it was a 3-pilot flight because of the flight time), and came back just in time for the sunset.

Then to my surprise, as we traveled further west (strictly speaking, southwest) I saw the sun rise again, and then set again. It was truly interesting, but it wasn’t until later that I figured out why this happens. This basically occurs because of the curvature of the earth. The speed of the plane and the southwesterly travel allows us to catch up with the solar rays. I’ll explain this further at another time.

We also had a warning come up because of the extreme cold temperature of the air (and thus the cold fuel in the wing tanks). This warning is based on the freezing point of Jet-A fuel, and we had Jet-A1. Thus we had 7 degrees buffer from this point. We were fine.

BING! *Master Caution Reset*
Fuel. Fuel Lo Temp.
ECAM Action.
Fuel Fz Pt Check. If Jet A: Not the case. If necessary: Not the case. Clear Fuel?
Clear Fuel.
ECAM Action Complete

I had a 4-day layover in Vienna. The flight attendants were super nice on the plane. They even gave me Haagen-Dazs ice cream and kept on trying to chitchat with me every time I passed them on my way to the lavatory. One of them asked me how old I was, (since it’s rare for them to see a longhaul pilot my age), what I intended to do in Vienna and etc. I told them my master plans and told them how I had my 4 days planned out completely. I wanted to tell them that I wanted to travel privately but I forgot. I think they expected me to hang out with them. I think they were disappointed that I did my own thing for 4 days. (I had my reason for that… But not allowed to talk about it here)

It was a busy evening. The STAR structure at Vienna airport is quite complicated to look at if it’s your first time, but with Airbus FMGS database, it linked up nicely with the transition. I can imagine how much of a nightmare this could have been on the Boeing FMS.

Next morning, I headed out bright n early to downtown Vienna. I purchased the Vienna pass for 3 days and a couple of airport train tickets.

First I went to Stephansdom. The big cathedral in the centre of downtown Vienna.

Stephansdom

Stephansdom

Stephansdom

Downtown Vienna

Then I headed off to Hofburg.

I realized that in order to find tourist attractions in Vienna, you just have to follow the smell of horse manure.

Myself in front of the Hofburg

It was late November, and the Christmas markets were set up around basically all the attractions. I look for souvenirs but my layover bag was too small to carry anything really. So I resorted to some apple strudels instead.

Christmas Market

I went to the famous restaurant called figlmuller, but by the time I got there, the line was already over 20m long and I’d have to wait over an hour to get in. I went to the sister restaurant nearby and had a nice schnitzel. (I know I know, it’s not the Figlmuller schnitzel, but it was also good. Besides, I did go to there in February on my second layover there)

Wiener Schnitzel and potato salad

More shopping district

Look at how McD’s blended into the Austrian style building

Next day I went to the History of Arts Museum.

Christmas Market in front of History of Arts Museum

Inside Kunsthistorisches Museum. This was the most beautiful museum I’ve ever been to.

This artifact came from Egypt. Now it’s an integral pillar of the museum.

Hofburg at Night

Gulasch

On the 3rd day, I checked out Belvedere, but my phone battery died in the cold, so I’ve got no pictures of the castle.

And then came the 4th day. It was time to go.

The expat captain was nice enough to give me the controls for this sector. It’s rare for Asian captains to do that on long flights. For some reason they like to think that it’s too much workload for a fresh new FO. But I tell you, not every FO trains the Asian way…

Anyway, the departure out of Vienna is riddled with warnings about noise limits, hotspots, measuring devices and locations. I followed the SID and NADP to the teeth and I did it all manually. Seriously though, with the FD guidance all I really have to do is to reduce the thrust levers to climb detent at the right height. Though, I realized that the Airbus FD is a little bit too aggressive and guides in advance of the maneuver. I initially followed it too quickly and I ended up leading the turns and having to reduce the bank angle on the initial turn.

We had a relaxed evening in the cockpit and I went back to the cabin when the relief captain came in.

Sunrise over Lake Baikal

Over Mongolia

Little did I know, 2020 Christmas won’t be as pretty. I miss Vienna and I’d like to go back when COVID-19 is over.

Delhi, India. VIDP

I’ve heard some (bad) things about flying to India before, but I finally got to experience it first hand.

It’s an animal kingdom here.

The frequencies were so busy we couldn’t get a reply for at least 30 sec after initial contact. I also had go call them 3-4 times each time.

The air traffic controller gives us unreasonable clearance late in stage. For example doesn’t advise us of a impending hold clearance, but shoots to us straight in a full format (missing things like EFC time. In Canada this would constitute an invalid clearance).

“KE481. Descent FL300. Hold present position left turn 2 min leg outbound”

Or gave us a vector straight into a CB. We were smart about it and we turned really slow to circumnavigate it.

The approach clearance was received as we were flying through the localizer. If the captain hadn’t pressed the approach arm button, we would have blown straight through the final and we would have needed a new intercept heading.

After landing the tower told us to vacate via an exit that was abeam us at 60 knots, to which I said “unable.”

How far should I fly upwind to land on the centreline

Flying a relatively long aircraft, I realized that there is something else that needs to be considered that I had very little consideration for on the 737.

The aircraft pivots around the Centre of Gravity. Therefore when we decrab, the front end of the aircraft, where I am, will move sideways (also add the factor that the aircraft drifts downwind. But that depends on how quickly we decrab and how much bank was used to cancel the drift. So I won’t discuss that today.) Upon touchdown, we’ll find ourselves somewhere downwind of where we aimed to land.

Since the CofG changes every flight, it’s kind of a hassle to calculate it. I’ll just use the main landing gear as my pivot point for this calculation. The distance from the cockpit to the main gear strut is 97ft for A330-300. My calculation will be exaggerating the distance a little bit, as the actual CofG is always ahead of the main gears. But hopefully this will somewhat offset the downward drift during the flare.

My aircraft, on average, does about 135 knots on approach. That’s 2.25NM/min.

The rule of thumb for calculating the crab angle is Windspeed/GS in NM.

Therefore at crosswinds of 10, 20 and 30 knots, my crab angles (CA) are 4.5, 8.9, 13.3 degrees.

To find the lateral displacement, we use the SOH, therefore O = 97SinCA.

According to my calculations:

At crosswinds of 10 kts, I have to be 7.6ft upwind of the centreline.

At XW of 20 kts, I have to be 15ft upwind.

At XW of 30 kts, I have to be 22.3ft upwind.

What does that mean to us pilots?

The standard runway width at ICAO international airports (outside of the US) is 197ft.

Standard dimensions of Runway Markings

Therefore at crosswinds of 30 knots I have to aim about 2/3 of the distance between the centreline and the touchdown zone marking to land on the centreline.

Since the LOC antenna is in front of the cockpit, I have to actually offset the Localizer on short final to make this happen. I’ve seen as much as a 1/4 dot displacement in the simulator experiment at the windspeeds up to 35 kts.

The end.

Manila

Sometimes I get lucky too, I suppose.

Last month I had a chance to spend 2 days in Manila on a layover.

What made the trip even better was that the schedule changed last min and I got to fly as a deadhead crew on the way there. A kickass schedule, I must say.

The Business Class was booked up, so I even got to fly in First Class.

Fast forward to when I arrived in Manila, the Hotel was called The Manila Hotel. It was a massive 5-Star hotel with over 100 years of history. Apparently Gen Douglas McArther stayed there while commanding the Filipino military.

I remembered that one of my favourite beers, San Miguel, comes from this country and went to the hotel bar to grab a couple of pints.

Next morning I got up early, got a massage and went to the Seafood Market. I have a pretty good stomach but the overwhelming smell from the nearby sewage plant killed my appetite. Next I headed to the Mall of Asia. For someone who didn’t have a high expectation, the mall was Massive. It’s been a while since I’ve been to the Mall of America in Minnesota, but I think the Mall of Asia dwarfed it in scale. I grabbed a lunch at a Filipino restaurant and then headed took a look around, grabbed some fruits and then headed back to the hotel.

In the evening, I decided to play around in the pool and exercise at the gym. There I ran into the sole male flight attendant that came with me, and we talked about life in general. It’s quite true that a lot of young male pilots are jealous of them because they get to work and travel with pretty female flight attendants. In fact I have a colleague who tries so hard, unsuccessfully, to go on dates (read: harass them) with them, and he’s straight up envious of the male flight attendants. but according to him the truth was quite far from it. Apparently as a minority in a female team environment, it’s pretty hard to get along with coworkers and they end up being isolated from the female group. Just like how he was at the gym.

That evening I had fruits as dinner and I watched the sunset over Manila Baywalk and passed out early so I can do the real tour of the city the next day in the morning and sleep throughout the afternoon for my overnight flight back home.

The next day I took the taxi the first thing in the morning to check out Fort Santiago. I guess my expectation was a bit too high, since I was used to the Canadian and European Citadels.. It was a little disappointing, but the history behind Jose Rizal was interesting.

Next I walked down the street to see the Manila Cathedral and I walked towards the Rizal park, when I felt that I was going to get robbed, so I hailed a taxi and went back to the hotel.

Filipinos are very nice people in general and I generally felt safe in the streets. But the streets of Manila were really really really dirty. I’ve been to quite a few countries in SE Asia, but I think the Philippines is at the bottom of the list for cleanliness. This is a bit strange because I always thought of the Philippines as a reasonably developed country with almost everyone speaking English fluently. Also, most of my Filipino friends in Canada are affluent. But I felt that the country could do a bit better cleaning up and had a lot of potential for improvements. Perhaps I felt that way because I’ve mostly been to the tourist destinations in SE Asia, whereas Manila was the capital of the country not geared towards tourists or vacationers.

That evening, I grabbed some really good seafood dishes at a nearby restaurant (almost lost my appetite again on the way haha) and then napped for the remainder of the evening for the 2am departure out of Manila.

Manila Airport was quite difficult to navigate around as a pilot, due to the inadequate signage and nightly constructions. This is why they had sent a 737 there in the first place. Because of the closure of the main runway, only 737s can take off from the shorter secondary runway at night. Luckily that night, the secondary runway was under repair so they opened the main runway. We took off from there and flew 4 hours back home.

Despite the nap earlier, it was a tiring flight. Usually when you land right before the sunrise at the end of a 4-hr redeye you lose a bit of depth perception so you end up flaring a tad high at Incheon. I became cognizant of that fact beforehand, briefed about human limitations during the landing brief. The winds were relatively calm, so I didn’t have to de-crab. Because I was aware of the visual illusion I was able to flare at the right timing, leading to a soft touchdown.

It was a fun trip, but I think I’d prefer to fly to tourist destinations of the Philippines. But once in a while, layovers in populated cities really help you understand where the majority of the world population live, rather than giving you a false sense of the world based on tourist spots.

Tokyo Express

Well I think the schedulers one day decided to just keep sending me to Tokyo.

I’ve had the chance to fly to Tokyo 3 times in the last 3 weeks. Two overnight quick turns to Haneda and one layover at Narita. Both airports have pretty crappy taxi routes. Haneda because of noise abatement regulations and daily constructions and Narita, because of the stubborn residents that refused to sell their lands to the government. So the airport was built around it. It’s quite hilarious actually.

All the closed & unlit taxiways at Haneda

Complex taxiways at Narita

Aside from the complex taxi routes, Tokyo is situated east of the mountains, so the air is usually very unstable coming into land.

I was the PF landing at Narita/Haneda all 3 times. (Well I asked for that so I can gain more experience rather than taking the easy route back to Incheon.

Haneda quick turns allow us to leave the aircraft for shopping in the terminal for 2 hours. I once had ramen and I usually buy Japanese chocolates (for my gf) and cookies (for me). I like shopping in Japan. Everyone is so nice and everything is so exotic. Although I’m very healthy, I have urge to spend a lot of money at Japanese drug stores. They’re just full of interesting stuff. This time I bought this thing called “Stoppa.” The product claims that it can postpone bowel movements for 2 hours. Considering the hygienic situations in most Asian bathrooms, I thought this thing will always earn me enough time to make it back to the hotel instead of using dirty bathrooms. I have yet to try it tho.

The air traffic controllers are so nice in Japan, although their English is very hard to understand and they don’t understand me if I say anything out of standard ICAO aviation phraseology. (Sometimes you have to explain to them your special requests in plain English but it’s hard to get it across). Another nice thing is they try to let us fly direct to waypoints, instead of making us fly the airways. This ends up saving us anywhere between 5 to 20 minutes of flight time. This is quite a contrast from Chinese ATCs, who make us hold, delay us to let their national carriers jump in front of us, fly to a weird waypoint 80 miles away from our routing without an explanation.

The Narita flight was during daytime, so we got to see the Mount Fuji poking above the cloud deck. It was so beautiful.

And on the night flights, the night scenery of Tokyo is something to see.

Well I don’t have any more flights scheduled to Tokyo, but you can bet that I’m building a “to buy list” for the next visit.

An unexpected layover in Osaka

So one morning I was on a home-standby. I was minding my own business, listening to music and cleaning the house when it started to snow.

So I open up the curtains and it was snowing like crazy. It was a surprise because the forecast had a brief period of mist that day. I immediately knew something’s up and started to get my layover bag ready. But my phone stayed quiet.. So I returned to doing my own things.

Lo and behold, I get a call from the scheduler saying she urgently needs me to take over this 3 day pairing from another FO that had to divert to another airport. Obviously a Captain also had to be called on a short notice.

So I got dressed and headed out the door with my layover bag.

For some reason my phone didn’t work. I couldn’t call taxi, I had to hail one just like in the 90s (In Korea you use an app)

First leg was a domestic sector, followed by a layover (Awesome)

When I showed up to the cockpit I was surprised to notice that the APU was out of service. It seemed like we had to do a cross-bleed start, shut down, de-ice, and do another cross-bleed start. Well s***.

Luckily it had stopped snowing well before I showed up, and they de-iced the plane for us already on the spot.

So we got ready and fired up our #2 engine on the spot, pushed back, and then did a crossbleed start of the #1 engine.

Off we went.

Checked in. Slept.

The next day, I checked out and headed for my second leg: Kansai.

Unfortunately it was the weekend (all banks are closed in this country on the weekend) and I had no way of obtaining Japanese Yen. I had some Japanese money left from the last trip to Japan but I forgot to bring it with me because of the short notice.

I converted about 6,000 Yen at the airport and headed to the plane.

The visibility was super low, and we didn’t have the required visibility to depart from Gimhae. Despite a strong push from the gate agents to board the passengers, the Captain said no. Korean people are quite short-tempered and I’ve experienced first hand what they’d do if they have to be locked up in a tight space, like the cabin of an airplane. His decision was right. Another company aircraft right next to us had a full on riot going on and I could see that through their windows… Poor flight attendants.

About an hour later, the wind started to blow some of the fog away and we were able to start the boarding.

Off we went. It was a bit choppy enroute, but the destination weather was good and I landed in Kansai about 1.5 hours later.

Checked into hotel and I immediately switched on my traveller brain and headed out.

I headed out to Osaka Housing Museum, which I didn’t get to see last time I went with my gf.

But on the way I realized that the place closes at 5pm. I was supposed to get there around 3:30 and I figured it’s best left for a later time. Instead I looked up things to do in that area: Found a very popular sushi place and a bunch of things to buy.

The wait at the sushi restaurant was over 40 minutes and I had a whole kinds of sushi. But my absolute favourite was the tuna belly sushi. It was out of this world. Japanese yellowfin was also good, but it was overshadowed by the creamy meat of the tuna belly..

Top is the tuna belly. Bottom is the regular tuna meat.

I really craved some quality Japanese sake, but I usually don’t drink the night before my flight, so I decided to pass. Next time.

The train ride back to the hotel took about an hour, and I went to the mall to buy some gift and when I got to the hotel, it was already time for me to go to bed.

The next day, we flew to Incheon on our last leg of the pairing.

It was an unexpected layover trip started from a home-standby but 3 short legs over the span of 3 days was pretty awesome. It turns out also, that there was a huge fire at a major telecom company’s network facility and that’s why the phone didn’t work. I don’t think the high-speed internet would’ve worked at home anyway.

This trip reminded me how important it is to stay mentally ready, even though you’re on a standby. Some people drink the night before (12 hours in advance, obviously). If sh*t hits the fan, you need to put your brain in the pilot mode in a matter of minutes.

I don’t foresee another layover in Japan for a while, but I hope to get another trip like this, so I can finally see the Osaka Housing Museum.

Palau

Palau’s one of our two EDTO routes on the 737.

It’s also labeled an “isolated airport” where our dispatch rules concerning alternate airport is exempt, simply because there is no suitable alternate airports nearby.

I’ve always wanted to go there because it’s ‘s only reachable by our 737 fleet due to the short runway. I didn’t have much hopes because we operate there twice a week and it’s reserved to relatively low timed FOs (I was approaching the end of my low time period) due to the company’s rules on Captain-FO experience requirements. (Meaning experienced captains fly with new FO’s and vice versa). So I was very lucky.

When I departed from Incheon, there was a Typhoon (Named Solik) brewing from just west of Guam. Conveniently, it was supposed to be along route route.

Because of that, the dispatchers tried to change our routing. However they couldn’t get a different overflight permit from the Japanese FIR in time. So we decided to depart with the routing and request wx deviations. Over the ocean, we tend to be able to deviate a lot more than over land. At the end of the day, the Typhoon wasn’t supposed go be penetrating through our route, but rather we’d be scratching through the western edge over the Pacific Ocean.

We got to the aircraft and immediately started setting up the plane for departure. Because it’s an EDTO flight, we had to check the fuel crossfeed, check our HF Radio and SELCAL during setup and leave our APU on for the duration of the flight

All of the sudden the firebell went off in the cockpit. “Fire Warning. FWD Cargo.” I immediately remembered that they were spraying insecticides in the cargo hold so I advised the captain and we just cancelled the alarm and went about doing our things.

When our time was up, we got our clearance and departed on time.

In the air, we checked our crossfeed valve and weather at our EDTO ERA and fuel and we entered our EDTO flight south of Japan. We were flying over the ocean alone. There were no other aircraft nearby and our VHF radios started to become a little bit unclear with static noise. Fukuoka control handed us off to Tokyo Radio and we were on HF. I called in and asked for our SELCAL check and soon the chime sounded in the cockpit, confirming our SELCAL is working well.

Every hour or so, I printed the new weather using our ACARS but as we got to our EDTO ETP, We couldn’t receive anything because we didn’t have a SATCOM in this aircraft. We decided to carry on, since the weather at Palau was supposed to be pretty good. Adding to the difficulty was the storm which was adding a lot of static to our HF radio. At some point we just couldn’t understand a thing they were saying. It was about a balloon launch but I couldn’t make out the coordinates or time. We contacted our second HF frequency. It was to no avail. We went back to Tokyo Radio and asked them to relay Oakland Centre’s message. But Tokyo Radio couldn’t understand my English. We gave up for about 10 min and then our EDTO Exit point was approaching. The HF radio started to become audible again and we were given our “cruise clearance” to Palau. With such clearance, you can descend whenever you wish and conduct an approach. They reserve the airspace for you for a while.

We turned off our APU at the exit point and cruised for another several minutes before we started to descend. I contacted Koror radio for our intentions.

The arrival wasn’t particularly difficult but the visibility was about 3 miles with patches of dense fog. We were able to see our runway before we got to our MDA and we continued to land.

 

After landing, I called the office to report our arrival and we walked straight to our crew shuttle.

Palau is a quiet island in the middle of the Pacific. It felt very untouched by humans aside from the roads and airport. We stayed at Palau Pacific Resort and had a really good time there. I got myself a scuba licence while I was there. It was a magical experience with the turtles and giant clams and the tropical fish.

Even snorkelling from the hotel’s beach was very fun. I was able to see beautiful diverse marine species.

It was a truly beautiful island. And I was very thankful for the 4 nights of stay created by our schedule. It was a paid vacation, basically.

But those 5 days passed by rather quickly and it was already our time to head back. Solik was just off the west coast of Korea and I was hoping we’d be delayed but that didnt’t happen.

Luckily we were given an aircraft with SATCOM this time, so the stress about communicating on our crappy HF was relieved.

Due to the variable winds (in which we assume we have a tailwind) and our heavy load, we decided to take off using Flaps 15. But otherwise the departure was normal.

At one point we couldn’t establish radio contact with Oakland centre so we called them up using our SATCOM. There was a super grumpy controller on the line and he snapped at us “what do you want! Why are you calling me?” What an unpleasant arsehole. We kept our conversation short and I warned them if he talked like that again, I’d file a complaint. He hung up on us.

We kept on checking the weather to check on Solik’s progress. It seemed to go right through Korea but without much damage. Even the winds weren’t that bad.

Finally when we arrived at Incheon, the winds were quiet manageable and we arrived without any challenge. The Typhoon had already made it’s way to the east coast of Korea and it had been downgraded to a Tropical Storm half way across Korea.

l

It was a magical stay and I’d love to go back there. Hopefully I get another chance to go there before I upgrade to a widebody.

“Pilot Deviation”

This past weekend, I was flying a series of 3 sectors within Korea. We were half way through the second leg when we noticed that we’re fast approaching our Top of Descent without a descent clearance. The captain, who was the PM, requested a descent.

The ATC replied “KAir xxxx. Descend FL160. I gave you your descent instruction 20 miles ago.”

Well, we never received one, but, okay? We didn’t have time to argue. We gotta get down soon. I set the MCP Altitude and pressed Alt & Spd Intv buttons, followed by an increase of the IAS to expedite our descend.

All of the sudden the ATC gives us traffic information, to which we replied “negative contact: We’re in IMC.” We had the traffic on our TCAS and we increased our rate of descent to increase our safety buffer. It’s rare to receive traffic info in this corridor of airspace, because the inbound and outbound traffic into Seoul are laterally separated by different airways.

And what the ATC said next is something I’ll never forget.

“KAir xxxx, not following our instruction promptly is considered a pilot deviation and we will be filing a report”

WTF? The captain asked what he meant, to which he tried to reply and stopped.

There was a moment of silence over the frequency and he then handed us off to the approach controller.

Captain asked one more time, but there was no reply.

We contacted the approach controller and since we were in busy Seoul TCA, we decided to not let it snowball us and instead deal with it on the ground.

After ramp-in, the captain asked the ground controller for the phone number for the Daegu ACC.

He called and was able to chat with the manager overseeing the ACC controllers.

The manager was on duty at the time, and turns out what happened was that the controller forgot to give us a descent clearance and instead gave our preceding aircraft a “descent to reach” clearance for a waypoint that was not a part of our route. He thought we were that aircraft and thought we violated both lateral & vertical clearance. The traffic information was given out because we were in a converging course with another aircraft. Thankfully we were able to avoid it with a big margin. The manager said he’ll once again replay the recording and get back to us if there’s anything we should know. A few minutes after the phone call, the controller in question called us and apologized for his mistake. We decided not to file a complaint but no doubt, it was an unpleasant experience.

We’re very lucky this happened in Korea. If an incident like this were to happen in China, they’d withhold the recording and claim that we’re making a false claim (this actually happened before). Since our CVR only records the last 2 hours of conversation, which is only available after an accident, we’d have no proof and we’d be at the merci of the ATC recording which may/may not be available to us.

While I had no doubt we didn’t violate anything, the 50 min or so painstakingly reviewing our flight was quite stressful. Our company has a very punitive system for ATC violations and there were so many things going through my mind during that time.

I’m definitely happy that we were flying in a “civilized” part of the world where there is an oversight over the ATC. Still, a big majority of the world’s airspace isn’t owned and operated by democratic nations and they can withhold information in the interest of “national security.” I hope this changes soon in the future, as the world moves onto a more fair system. I hope also, that our company departs from its punitive system, but a rather solution-oriented system.

Thankfully I’ll be getting my full pay this month haha.