05-25-2006, 11:49 PM
On Thursday 25 May 2006 at about 06:00UTC, I was flying the PSS Concorde from PANC (Anchorage) to MMMX) Mexico City as part of the Air Source ATWIED Event.
As is always the case, I was flying online on VATSIM and was under control of VATSIM controllers where possible.
As I entered the Mexico City FIR, I changed to the controller frequency for MMMX_CTR, unfortunately the Controller had poor english and he and I spend quite a while trying to understand one another's accent (it doesn't help thta I am a kiwi, living in Australia and have a hybrid of both accents!!).
While trying to communicate with him, I was also managing my fuel and was transferring fuel from the centre tank (Tank 11) to the forward tanks and because of the comms difficulties, I left the fuel transfer switch flicked forward and managed to empty the centre tank and landed with CofG at 48%, but landed smoothly with no damage to aircraft or pax.
A valuable lesson in cockpit management - I can see why the Concorde had a Flight Engineer - and the need to remember to AVIATE, NAVIGATE then COMMUNICATE, not the other way around.
Mark
As is always the case, I was flying online on VATSIM and was under control of VATSIM controllers where possible.
As I entered the Mexico City FIR, I changed to the controller frequency for MMMX_CTR, unfortunately the Controller had poor english and he and I spend quite a while trying to understand one another's accent (it doesn't help thta I am a kiwi, living in Australia and have a hybrid of both accents!!).
While trying to communicate with him, I was also managing my fuel and was transferring fuel from the centre tank (Tank 11) to the forward tanks and because of the comms difficulties, I left the fuel transfer switch flicked forward and managed to empty the centre tank and landed with CofG at 48%, but landed smoothly with no damage to aircraft or pax.
A valuable lesson in cockpit management - I can see why the Concorde had a Flight Engineer - and the need to remember to AVIATE, NAVIGATE then COMMUNICATE, not the other way around.
Mark
