Not a chance a heavily loaded 777 was doing anything close to 3500 FPM during the flap retraction sequence. 1000 FPM maybe, not much more, probably less.

!!!DISTRACTION!!!


That is the possible cause of this situation which is probably more of a learning experience than anything. If the PM did not announce STALL on the radio no one would have ever heard of this entire incident. Mostly, people are just looking at opportunities to throw stones. Anything can happen to anyone with the wrong mixture of factors. There is more to this story than anyone knows. You would have to be a fly on the wall to really know what happened.


AIRSPEED LOW EICAS message should have popped up first. If that did not get anyone's attention, then the entire crew was truly DISTRACTED by something/someone. No one has said anything about the stick shaker going off, and it cannot be heard in the background audio. Forensic audio evaluation or DFDR would have all that information (FOQA). I have almost never seen a high speed climb requirement of more than 265 kts, on a MGTOW 777F. The 742/3/4 would require 270+ kts, and that was not an unusual occurrence.

Of course all of this is foregoing any system anomalies, which has not been discussed. May or may not have been a factor.


There was minimal loss of altitude, and no unusual attitudes. This was just an "oops" moment that can happen to anyone. Live and learn.

Slight caution on that... I worked at an airline which had a few low-speed events, and after the memos didn't make it stop the FAA got torqued and decided to exclude some such events from ASAP and start making examples. It turned into you were pretty much getting fired the first time if it was something which monitoring *should* have caught. Exceptions for dynamic events (wave, sudden turbulence, etc). But mismanagement or not paying attention would probably get you fired... on the first offense.

Your pilot group should’ve pulled out of the ASAP MOU the first time this happened.

Was this stalling a CRJ2 at high altitudes?

Wouldn't that make almost any issue that normally could have gone through ASAP a potential license impact by the FAA? Can the FAA use the fact that a group is not participating in ASAP to drive investigation attention? Be interesting to see if someone gets mad and opts out of ASAP what the FAA would do. A fair number of the issues that go through ASAP have enforcement implications if it were not for ASAP.

For those complaining about this discussion please don’t. These discussions cause all pilots reading, to think about how they fly their aircraft. I have never been right about the cause of an aircraft accident that I speculated on, but I also learned something from everyone of those discussions. That has contributed to me being a better pilot. Happy Thanksgiving

Fair point. Reading and re-focusing on flightpath control is productive. Reading and thinking "That was a dumb mistake!" probably less so.

Happy Thanksgiving to you too.

In the past, when one party to the ASAP MOU was using it for other than it was meant to, ALPA has rescinded its participation and called attention to the offending party to put pressure on them. Sometimes it takes a while but eventually it is worked out between the party’s and the MOU reissued. This is probably part of the reason why ALPA advocated for congress to pass legislation that made all reports be automatically accepted and the burden put on the ERC as to later reject for one of the half dozen or so reasons spelled out in the MOU. ALPA was successful and now it’s federal law. So I don’t see how it can happen anymore. But anytime a party to a safety program is playing politics with it, it needs to be called out forcefully.

As for FAA enforcement action, you can always use the NSRS program. Although that doesn’t help you in retaliatory action from your employer. Also keep in mind, that only non-sole source ASAP reports could have potential enforcement action. The whole point of ASAP is to capture the sole source information that would otherwise go unreported for fear of certificate or disciplinary action.

You mean their union should have?
Oh sorry, I forgot...