Anyone hear what might have happened. This was as easy a initial departure as you can get.

https://youtu.be/tW2UrzYSv5I?si=Juwy5o615-DZiQVX

 

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.

 

I could be for sure, just trying to give them the benefit of the doubt with reasonable confusion of 150, 015, and 105.

Another thought was someone took the HSI out of MAG leaving New York, and it never got put back. And the HSI decayed and they didn’t notice before takeoff roll it didn’t match runway heading.

Maybe they just pressed the heading button to sink the bug and took off.

It’s hard to slew the HSI 10 degrees nose up climbing or or while accelerating. Dropping the switch directly to mag could have swung it too much for them to maintain confidence it was correct.

 

If that’s the case, then it shows a serious lack of situational awareness, and it also seems to be a very non standard captain she’s flying with. Just my 2 cents, but that’s what I think may have been going on.

 

Controller gave them Left to 105 with takeoff clearance. Whoever was flying was having a problem. They should have been given a number to call.

 

Not to mention that a left to 105 is the standard assigned to most eastbound departures off that runway. The system being in a DG mode makes no sense because you would certainly check that lining up on the runway.

 

Yea. The reason I suspect it wasn’t checked on lineup is because there’s a surprising number of captains at my regional that don’t seem to care for checking runway heading. It irritates me. I’ve even had a few sim instructors that seem to want to skip over that. A lot of them seemed annoyed that’s it on the checklist and I’ve always wondered why they think it’s ’redundant’ checklist verbiage. It’s not. If that heading isn’t checked on lineup it will come back to bite the crew in the rear end as it did here. Another example is departing in a mountainous area at night or in IMC and there’s an engine failure. Now they can’t climb as quickly and they may be heading straight for a mountain on an incorrect heading. It won’t seem so ‘pointless’ to these guys then.

 

Even if you miss the heading and realize it's wrong airborne it's a wing dip, count to 5 and rollout, clean up, contact departure and announce the heading failure.

 

Was gonna say the odds of an IRS RJ9 having headings being off any significance are very, very slim. AHARS is more common for the headings to be off between DG's , thus the reason for EFIS COMP MON all the time , but Minny is not a magnetic anomaly runway airport so they shouldn't have had any problem. I agree with you for sure to always check headings when lined up for TO but I think they just brain farted and totally went the wrong way. The controllers didn't seem over worked up about it which seemed weird. In NY and ATL , ATC would be yelling for sure 😂