Cathay "Asia's World City" Delivery Pilot Fired for Fly-by

[Matt Molnar]

[youtubetp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7hpVH1IAQM[/youtubene of Cathay Pacific's most senior captains has been fired a few weeks after he buzzed their blasted their new 777-300ER ("Asia's World City", B-KPF) just 28 feet above the runway at Boeing Paine Field at 322 mph. Despite not having sought formal permission from the airline before performing the maneuver, the Cathay VPs and senior management on board are said to have been thrilled when it happened...that is until a video began circulating on the Internet and Hong Kong aviation officials found out about it.

:arrow: Jumbo jet pilot sacked for 'fly-by' at 28 feet [London Times]

[Midnight Mike]

Not sure what the big deal is, it was a delivery flight. These kinds of things are quite common, low fly-by, tip of the wings.... Sheesh.....

[flyboy 28]

"...negative Ghostrider, the pattern is full" :roll:

[T-Bird76]

Not sure what the big deal is, it was a delivery flight. These kinds of things are quite common, low fly-by, tip of the wings.... Sheesh.....

Simple Mike it’s a breach of company policy and in this case he broke it with a brand new 777-300ER. The termination was justified, next time he should just ask. This guy should have realized it’s not his toy to play with. Blind arrogance at its best.

[Matt Molnar]

Fly-bys are common, but flying a big jet with enough fuel for a trans-Pacific flight 330 mph less than 30 feet off the ground has much higher potential to get messy than most. A random wind gust could have made them all toast.

[Midnight Mike]

Well, here is the real reason for the problem.....

He said: “Wilkinson was very much one of the elite in Cathay Pacific and would have been very chummy with the airline executives he was flying that day. If no one else had found out about it the incident would probably have gone no further, but once it began circulating on the internet and Hong Kong’s Civil Aviation Authority got hold of it, that was the end of him.”

Nobody is going to fess up, but, everybody knew what was going to be done

Hell, if it was that big of a deal, they could have grounded the airplane after the incident & found another pilot to ferry the aircraft home....

People at Cathay are just embarrased because the incident was recorded on youtube.com

[Midnight Mike]

Simple Mike it’s a breach of company policy and in this case he broke it with a brand new 777-300ER. The termination was justified, next time he should just ask. This guy should have realized it’s not his toy to play with. Blind arrogance at its best.

Tommy

You know who I work for, & these type of fly-by approvals are more or less a wink-wink type of thing, everybody knows it is going to happen.

Also, this was one of their top pilots & he probably did something similar before......

the Cathay VPs and senior management on board are said to have been thrilled when it happened...that is until a video began circulating on the Internet and Hong Kong aviation officials found out about it.

[AA 777]

To me its ironic as hell. The CEO is on the plane and they toast the captain upon landing and then he gets tossed :roll: The only thing that stands out to me is he was above 250 kts below 10,000. He will probably either fight this and get his job back or be a DEC at Emirates next month! It would be interesting to see how this plays out.....

P.S. Did anyone else see that he was making 471,750 USD a year?? :shock:

[PHL Approach]

How bout to the person that recorded that video. That person pretty much costs the guy his job. You already made the mistake of putting it on Youtube. The least you could do is keep it up so the CAPT could look at it and say "That's bad@ss!". Nope.. now he doesn't even have the video to at least have the ability to get that thrill/rush when a flyby happens and to say to family whatever that it was him.

[Midnight Mike]

To me its ironic as hell. The CEO is on the plane and they toast the captain upon landing and then he gets tossed :roll: The only thing that stands out to me is he was above 250 kts below 10,000. He will probably either fight this and get his job back or be a DEC at Emirates next month! It would be interesting to see how this plays out.....

P.S. Did anyone else see that he was making 471,750 USD a year?? :shock:

Don't forget he was the Cathay Chief Pilot, was probably a simulator Instructor & Check Airman, & also had a bunch of other jobs which would warrant a higher salary....

[PhilDernerJr]

If planes aren't supposed to fly at 28 feet, how are htey supposed to land?! :mrgreen:

Isn't 250mph the speed limit under FL100? 322 is....kinda fast.

[adam613]

Isn't 250mph the speed limit under FL100? 322 is....kinda fast.

Close...250 knots indicated airspeed below 10,000 feet MSL (14 CFR Section 91.117). If you had a good tailwind, you could easily go faster than 300 mph without exceeding the seed limit...

[nwafan20]

322 mph is only 280 knots, so he would need about a 30 knot (34 mph) tailwind.

[Matt Molnar]

How bout to the person that recorded that video. That person pretty much costs the guy his job. You already made the mistake of putting it on Youtube. The least you could do is keep it up so the CAPT could look at it and say "That's bad@ss!". Nope.. now he doesn't even have the video to at least have the ability to get that thrill/rush when a flyby happens and to say to family whatever that it was him.

It is unfortunate whoever posted it on YouTube seems to have bowed to Cathay's baseless legal threats. Unless of course they simply paid him to take it down.

[flyboy 28]

I'd still like to see the video, rather than the gif compilation.

I'm sure it will surface eventually.