[AS380 Mark Richards]

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

[AS37 Norm Edwards]

Its a good point Mark. Interesting also how times have changed from the days when Flight Engineers were very much entrenched as part of the cockpit crew, and how they have been replaced "electronically"! Although, as with the Kiwi Air Force, or any other Air Force for that matter, who operate C130's, P3K's, large turboprops, there is still room for the flight engineer. Even on modern jets in the military, they will still have a flight engineer on board for tactical flying operations etc.

Norm.