Originally Posted by
OpieTaylor
Looks like started a left turn to heading 150 instead of 105, then at the 180 degree mark realized it was the long way to 150 and wanted to confirm with the controller.
When she confirms her brain is confirming left to 150 instead of right to 150 and never notices the 150 error. Just focused on left vs right.
In her brain right to 150 would have made more sense from a 120 departure heading than left.
Why is this controller giving us a left turn to 150 when that’s only a 30 degree turn to the right?
When they confirmed with the controller, he changed the clearance to right turn 105, and they stopped the right turn at heading 015 and held that never realizing that it was never left to 150, and they had never been given a turn greater than 180 degrees like they thought.
Looks like video is showing ground track which may not line up to what they were aiming for.
I don’t think they ever planned on flying heading 105, and realized the controller didn’t make a left vs right error to 150, he messed up by saying 150 instead of 015.
They probably think the controller meant to say left 015 originally when he said left 150, and all is right in the universe when they were flying heading 015.
Heading 105 escaped them completely because when they started swing the big left they passed heading 105 before their brain is telling them not to stop at 015 and swing the bug all the way around to 150.
They “trapped” errors by querying the controller about a left to 150 when he meant left to 015.
When people catch someone else’s mistake that confuses them they quit thinking about the possibility of their own mistake.
They believed they caught the controllers mistake, and never realized they were only ever asked to turn 15 degrees.
I think you may have over analyzed this one. It seems pretty clear that they were instructed to make a left turn to 105 after takeoff. They clearly made the turn in that direction, but continued through the heading instead of rolling out on it. While continuing the turn, the controller queried them to see if they were flying the assigned 105 heading, as it appeared they weren’t. Instead of correcting back to the right to the 105 heading, they continued to make the left hand turn to the north for some weird reason that nobody knows.
It’s possible they were thinking “maybe the controller wants us to make a left hand turn more than 180 degrees and go the long way to roll out on the 105 heading.” If so they should have asked the controller for clarification early on instead of continuing past 105.
I suspect there was A LOT more going on in that flight deck that we don’t know about. Sounds like the PM was the FO and the captain was PF. I could be wrong but that’s what I suspect.