# How Can a Wide-Body Pilot Not Know This

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** 74 Gear
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGgAsLGV994
- **Дата:** 01.03.2026
- **Длительность:** 23:12
- **Просмотры:** 413,312

## Описание

This is a standard radio transmission that most pilots would get if they have been flying wide bodies but this pilot doesn't know it.

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## Содержание

### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGgAsLGV994) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00)

United 39 approach for a contact climate say 10,000 speed your discretion. — That's a call that an international widebody airline pilot didn't understand. It's a call that we normally get when we end up on departure control. Right after we take off, we switch to this other frequency. We get passed from the tower who's actually at the airport to this frequency which we typically call departure control. So you have someone physically at the airport who clears us for takeoff. This is the next person that we typically talk to once we're airborne. And essentially, this controller's job is to get us out of the airport and onto the, for lack of a better word, freeway to get us to where we're trying to go. Think of like a highway. We have all these different on-ramps to get where you're going. These controllers get you where you're trying to get to. Now, moments before that call was made to that United crew, another United crew took a very similar call from the same controller. And this is how the interaction went. Departure low. United 89 heavy. We're passing 2,000. Climb 3,000. — United 8 09 heavy. Not going to depart. You're contact. Speed your discretion. Climb. Maintain one 10,000. — Going to climb 10,000. Speed our discretion. Unit 89 heavy. — Sounds pretty simple, right? And it should be proper radioiology. He's talking to departure control. He tells him what he wants him to do. And you would expect that from a pilot that's been flying for 20 plus years at an airline. United. It's a very senior on the widebody cruise, which a widebody is any plane usually with two aisles. It's not always the case because there are exceptions like the 757, but you typically it takes about 20 years more or less depending on your base to get to have the seniority at an airline like United right now to become a widebody captain. So, you would expect that it would be a relatively senior crew that would be flying that plane, which is something that you would want. The flight we're going to be talking about though is a trip 7200 and that's what this plane looks like. It is a beautiful plane and according to the info that I found online, it was flying from San Francisco to Hong Kong. And why is that route relevant? Well, it's an extremely long flight. I've never done San Francisco to Hong Kong, but I think I've done LA to Hong Kong. I've done it's like a 15 16 hour flight out of LA. It's something that I typically would love to avoid doing. It's not as bad as being on a plane without snacks, but it's still something I would really love avoiding. And online when I looked it up, it said this flight was over 15 hours, which makes sense. Now, the reason that's relevant is because on a flight that's over 12 hours in the US, you have to have four pilots. Anything under eight, it depend. There's a lot of different rules, but typically under eight, you can get away with two. Depends on the time of the day and certain things. Typically 8 to 12, you have three. And then 12 or more, you have four. So without a doubt this flight 15 hours no matter what you're going to have four pilots up there. And while that's relevant is because when somebody and let's say I'm working the radios if somebody makes a call to me and I'm not sure like what did he say? I'll usually look over or I'll say to the other pilots like what did he say? Because there's four people up there. You're always going to have four during takeoff and landing. That's the rule. If you have a what considered an augmented crew, you're going to have all four up there for takeoff and landing. So, at this phase, there's four people up there. If somebody calls me and he goes, "What did he say? " I would ask the other pilots to tell me what he said. And then I would repeat that back to just to verify that was the correct thing. It happens to me all the time. In some places in the world, I have a hard time with accents with certain people. And with four sets of ears, you sometimes can pick something up. But these guys are Americans. They're talking to American controllers and they're saying pretty normal things here. But this is how this interaction went. And you tell me what you think. — United 3910 heavy with you 1300 for 3,000. — United 3910 departure for contact climb maintain one 10,000. Speed your discretion. — Uh 1 10,000. United 39 10. And what do you mean by speed or discretion? — Means the speed that you want to go. Is that your discretion? — Okay. Sometimes heavy need speed faster than normal speed to operationally go forward. — Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, we're under the pressure. You don't need to say that if we need to fly above 250, but we can't go any faster than that. So, it confuses us sometimes. Thank you. — Oh, well, it's one of those things like if you need to do it, you have you can ask, but if I tell you beforehand, you don't even have to ask and it's kind of all good, right? — Okay. Thank you. — All right. So, we're going to get a little nitpicky here on some things because of the way this interaction went. But the first thing that he does is he checks in with the controller saying 3,000 by saying 3,000 which is technically the way that you're supposed to do it. However, he says something else you're definitely not supposed to say but something that I would expect from a domestic pilot and a lot of regional guys did it and you may have heard it. Listen again. — United 3910 heavy 1300 for 3,000. — He says four FLR 3000. The problem is that internationally that can get confusing. And when pilots in the US, and I used to do it at the regionals all

### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGgAsLGV994&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00)

the time, is I would say 1,300 for 4,000 or climbing up to 4,000. And unfortunately in English, two and four are also numbers. And because they're numbers, it can be confusing. And internationally, I've had controllers start using two or four because I don't know why they picked up this terrible habit that some of the pilots in the US have, but they're saying things that you're not supposed to say numbers like two or four. Uh unless they're the actual altitudes that you're going to. So, you'd say 1,300 climbing 3,000. So there's no confusion about the numbers because when you say climbing for 3,000 or 1,00 for 3,000 then it sounds like 43,000 flight level 430. What are you saying? So you're saying something that you're not supposed to say which again domestically I expect it internationally it's sloppy. And I wouldn't normally bring that up, but because he was so intent on saying 3,000, like 3,000, which is the way you're supposed to say it, I thought it was funny that he had that in there as well. — 1300 for 3,000. — But mistakes happen. I've done them all, believe me. So, not a big deal. The part that's confusing to me is that he doesn't understand the most important part of this entire clearance, which creates a bunch of confusion and eating up a lot of air time, which is the situation on the speed. — Uh 10,000 3910. And what do you mean by speed or discretion? — I can't understand how a widebody pilot wouldn't know what that means. I knew about that before I even got to the wide bodies. At the regionals I was flying, I knew that free speed meant that widebody aircraft in certain situations could go above 250 below 10. That's a thing I would think a lot of people would know about. Uh, according to the internet, there's a lot of people who love airplanes that know about that have never flown a plane. So, I would expect that a widebody pilot that was on a crew flying international would know this simple thing about going over 250 below 10. Now, if the situation was that there was only two people on there, I would think like, okay, maybe one guy didn't know and the other guy wasn't paying attention cuz he was busy flying, maybe that's the case. But you had four pilots up there. You're telling me that none of them knew that they could go above 250, below 10. So, I dug into the rule book here, and it's all based off of this rule, 91 decimal 117 aircraft speed. This is going to get super nerdy, so buckle in. First thing it says is unless otherwise authorized by the administrator, no person may operate aircraft below 10,000 ft MSL. MSL means mean sea level, meaning that your plane is 10,000 ft above sea level, which is starts to get a little bit complicated, but if you were in Denver, you're already at 5,000 ft. So, when you take off and you climb 1,000 ft, you're at 1,000 ft AGL above ground level, but you're at 6,000 ft MSL. These guys are taking off from San Francisco, so they're 1,000 ft off of the ground, AGL, and they're also 1,000 ft MSL. Going back to the rules now, unless otherwise authorized, you're not allowed to fly above 250 below 10,000 ft. But keep in mind, these rules were all written by lawyers to make C students like me feel silly because I have to read them five or six different times to understand what it is exactly that I can and can't do. You'll also notice this little section here. It says, "If the minimum safe air speed for any particular operation is greater than the maximum speed prescribed in this section, the aircraft may be operated at that minimum speed. " So essentially what it's saying is that unless you've gotten permission from the FAA to go faster than 250 below 10, you can't do it. Now, does the air traffic controller count as the administrator? From everything that I've read, no. He's not the administrator. In the airlines, we have special rules and things that we ask for and we're given special procedures that we can do. and we submit this enormous book up to these people at the FAA and they go, "Yep, you want to fly your planes and your aircraft that way, you're allowed to do so. " And that is the administrator. It's an person that works in the FA who says, "You airline Boeing ABC, you're allowed to fly your aircraft like that. That's approved. " And one of those things you can ask for is say,"I need to exceed this rule 91, whatever it was that I said earlier, and fly faster than uh 250 knots below 10,000 ft. " Because my plane, when it's really heavy, it can't put its flaps all the way up until we exceed 250 knots. So, you have two different options. You can fly below 10,000 ft with your flaps out, which creates a lot of extra drag, uh, which isn't ideal. you're just kind of wasting fuel at that point. Or because you've asked for permission from the administrator, you can say, "Because

### [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGgAsLGV994&t=600s) Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00)

our plane's really heavy, we need to go above 250 knots below 10,000 ft. " And you're allowed to do that. By having our flaps out like this, we are able to climb typically faster because we're going slower, but we're creating a lot of unnecessary drag, which increases our fuel burn. And that's one of the things that makes it tricky at the airline that I work at because sometimes we're taking off close to a million pounds. Sometimes we're at high altitude airports. You could be at 8,000 feet starting elevation, which we don't really have any typical commercial airports typically in the US where your airliners are flying in and out of that are starting at 8,000 ft. So you're at 8,000 ft, which means you have much thinner air. So you're at 8,000 ft. You're close to a million pounds, which is very heavy. And now you're trying to get this plane off of the ground. Now, keep in mind that there are limits of which you were able to keep your flaps out. So, some planes it could be 15,000 feet, some planes it might be 20,000 ft, but you have to have all of your tracks, all of your flaps retracted before you get to that altitude. So, it's not like we can just leave our flaps out to get to whatever altitude we want. There are limitations that we have to fly within. And our airline says, "Okay, here's the plane. Here's the airport. And we've tested everything. you're able to get your flaps cleaned up before you get to this altitude. No big deal. Now go do it. So, you'd have to keep all these different things in mind while you're navigating weather, while you're possibly dealing with engine problems and engine failure procedures and all the other things and you're talking with somebody on the radio. So, there's a lot of things you mentally have to have going on in your head as you do flying. Things like the departure and the arrival is the most timeconsuming, mentally draining part of flying. The cruise is not really a big deal. you're just hanging out and eating. Now, there are two places that you're going to be able to find out, one of them being on the ground, that you're going to need to exceed this speed of 250 knots before you even take off. Some pilots call it a high-speed climb. Some people call it free speed. You can call it a few different things, but essentially what you're trying to do is exceed that rule of 250 knots below 10. One of them that you'll find them on the 747 obviously is the plane we're going to refer to since that's what I'm familiar with. We have it on this page. You'll see right here that in this particular configuration that we're going to have to exceed 250 knots below 10,000 ft in order to be able to get all of our flaps cleaned up. And since we would have talked about that on the ground, we would have said, "Hey, we're going to be at 270 in the climb through 10. " So then we all know that we're going to be asking for a high-speed climb. However, I guess that wasn't talked about here because this happened. — Uh 10,000 3910. And what do you mean by speed our discretion? — Now, there are some places in the world, for example, at what comes to mind for me is Chicago, that it strictly prohibits you from exceeding that. And it shows that on one of our charts that you're leaving when you're leaving out of Chicago. This is what it looks like. It strictly prohibits you from going above 250 knots, below 10, and above 10. They actually have to release you. So, typically what we do is we load in the speed so this plane doesn't speed up when it gets through 10,000 ft. And so that way when it gets above 10,000, normally the plane goes now I can go fast. So we have to put in a restriction into our box that says, "Hey, until you get to like 15,000, usually it's about 13 when they release you in Chicago. " Um, shout out to the controllers in Chicago if you want to let me go a little faster and let me bring the smoke of the 74 next time you ride on my plane. All the snacks that you want. Just throwing it out there. But they typically will keep you through about 13,000 before they let your plane accelerate because there's so much traffic in and out of there and the way the arrivals are structured and the way they're moving all the planes around, they don't want you going forward. They want you going up and getting out of their airspace. That's the way they do it. So, because I've gone in and out of there many times, I know that's the case. Now, on an RJ, a CRJ, ERJ, not really a big deal. on a 74. It's a little bit of a nuisance for us because we have to put in a lot of restrictions and if you don't put them in there, you start going too fast and you're going to get a phone call. Another example that's also very different that can help create some confusion to this whole situation is Germany. They are famous for not letting you go above 250 below 10 unless you ask. And I learned this shout out to a Lufansza 74 crew that I hung out with one day. They told me because I was, let me think about how I want to word this. I was riding on their flight deck because they asked me to, which I guess they're allowed to do. Um, they wouldn't be allowed to do that on my plane, but I was allowed to do that with them. And we were flying out of a place and it was a 74 crew and they got a call like that, free speed, and the guy didn't know, which wasn't a big deal. And so I just I said, which I it's kind of a weird situation, but they said something like that. He said free speed, something like that. And the German didn't understand it because it was the way he had said it. So I said, "Hey, he's letting you go letting you do a high-speed climb. " He goes, "Oh, okay. Highspeed climb approved. " Something like that is what got said, right? And

### [15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGgAsLGV994&t=900s) Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00)

but he didn't understand it. So I jumped in just like that. I wasn't obviously part of their crew. I was sitting in the fourth seat, which if you're looking at the diagram on a 74, you got your captain and your first officer. Then this is the third seat, the middle seat. It's called the smart seat cuz you can see everything. And then the four seat is back here. So I was sitting in that four seat cuz I wasn't really part of the crew, but I had a headset because they have these really got a pretty good setup on their 74s. They got these headsets all built in, really cool headsets. And so I ended up speaking up because it was something to make the flight easier and safety of flight issues. So I ended up saying that. We ended up going up and once we got up in the cruise, we all started talking about it because I was kind of surprised that they didn't know that. But then I said, "Yeah, Germany, they never let me go above 10, above two, above 250, below 10. " And the crew says, "Oh, no. What you have to do is say clean speed, whatever. " So now what I do is when I leave Germany, I say, um, Boeing 123, request high-speed climb, clean speed 265, whatever it is that I need in order to get my flaps all the way retracted. They still don't always give it to me, but they will sometimes give it to me because now they know what it is that I'm asking for. If you just say request high-speed climb, they won't do it because they don't know what are you what are you asking? How fast do you want to go? The Germans being precise just culturally, they want to know exactly what it is that you're asking for. So, if you tell them high-speed request, high-speed climb, 265 is our clean speed today, they may give it to you. In the US, he was trying to do that. The controller was like, "What? What's go what's going on? It was confusing because they were kind of speaking two different aviation languages, if you will. Now, this is the last one I'm going to talk about because they were going into Hong Kong, but it just made me think about this. There are airlines that in that manual that we submit to the FAA and we say, "Hey, we may need to go 250 below 10 while we're climbing out because we're really heavy. We want to retract our flaps. " There are situations that we do that request that. There are places in the world though that the controllers will ask you as a pilot to go above 250, below 10 on the arrival. Typically, that's not really a big deal on the arrival coming in. In the US, I've never had that before. There's been times where I can't go as slow as they want me to go, but anyways, there are times internationally that they will ask you, "Hey, we need you to do 300 knots. " And you're at 5,000 ft. Let's say we need to do 300 knots because of the spacing. Hong Kong is one of those places. So, in our manuals and in different airline manuals, there will sometimes be, and I don't know about United, so I I've never read their manuals, but there will be at some airlines the exception that if the controller asks for it, and the pilot in command determines that is a safe course of action in order to safely land a plane or to do whatever it is that they're trying to accomplish, that they are able to exceed that limitation. So these manuals that the airlines provide to the crews are very important and they are written by lawyers. I don't know why they can't just make it super simple for people like me to understand it. But if you read it seven or eight times, you can understand and understand the rules that they want you to do. So there are rules that allow you to go 250 below 10 climbing out. above 250 as you're going in. But you have to know those rules so that way when you're in that situation and you see, okay, this is what they're asking. I know that I can do this because of this one sentence in this 800page manual says that they ask for it and we determine that it's safe to do then we're allowed to do it. So there are situations going up and going down. So it confuses to me to have a person that's doing a 15- hour international flight with a crew that at least one of the people has been there probably over 20 years that nobody was saying like no no just tell them free speed and we'll talk about it. because that's what would happen in my plane if I was flying and someone said like free speed what are you talking about we're confused we can't go I'd just say like dude stop talking we'll talk about that not right then because you're probably 2 feet at that point and you'd want to get up in the cruise but once you got you would say hey listen these are the rules and maybe this was a person that was newer on the widebody but there was four people so it just kind of strange here's what happened next — 39 usually we have these international flights that ask it right off the ground so we just give it every heavy. I personally give it to every heavy in the event that you need it. Give me that for us, too. — Terrific. I appreciate the clarification. — United 3910 center 125 185. Good day. — 2585. You have a good day, sir. 3910. — Now, I'll give the guy credit here. The pilot and the controller. They're both being pleasant and professional. This guy didn't understand it, which is fine. Not a big deal. And the controller has his normal rule. the way he operates, he just gives

### [20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGgAsLGV994&t=1200s) Segment 5 (20:00 - 23:00)

it to us, which is great because it saves us from asking for it because uh technically uh it says that if the administrator gave it to you and you're allowed to do it, some people can interpret that and that's the problem of having it written by lawyers. Some people can interpret that as saying like I don't have to ask for it. You're allowing me to climb this, which means I'm allowed to do it without even requesting it. But it's typically courteous. And what most pilots do, especially that what I've seen is that they'll tell them request highspeed climb and the controllers will usually say free speed. And then in a place like Chicago, you don't even ask for it because you know they're not going to give it to you. So, and then in Europe, you always ask for it or everywhere else in the world, you well, most other places ask for it. Um, some places they just know that you're always going to be going fast. So, uh you kind of have to fly all over the world or get familiar with certain airports to know when and where you can ask for it. But in the US, typically you will tell them even though your manual typically allows you to do it without asking as a courtesy so everybody's on the same page that you're going to be going fast unless you can't. Stupid, I know. So, the next time that you find yourself in a situation, especially with a crew of three pilots, all of you who are listening to the controller and they say something that you don't understand on the radio, turn around to one of the other guys and say, "What did he say? " And or just repeat back what the controller said to you and then turn around and say, "I I don't what does he say? " Free speed. What does that mean? and then they can all solve it up because here you took a lot of radio time and sounded like you were completely lost and you're doing a widebody flight. It just honestly it really caught me off guard. That would be something that I would expect from someone who is just brand new which is possible on doing international. they're brand new and just got caught off guard and maybe they did their initial training where they doing domestic flights because there are times on a plane like that it doesn't have a lot of fuel and so it might be just doing like a I don't know Houston to San Francisco and you don't need to go above 250 below 10 because you're so light but on a flight like this 15 hours you're going to be very heavy you're probably doing I don't know 270 maybe um to get up and get cleaned up and So maybe he just hadn't done one of those or wasn't really paying attention. And I called a friend of mine regarding this and I said, "Hey, I'm doing this video with this guy. " And he goes, "What do you mean you can do 250 below 10? " The guy's been flying for 15 years, but he'd only flown narrow bodies. So he didn't even know that was a thing. I was like, "Free, high-speed climb. " He's like, "Never heard it. " I was like, "No, you've heard it. You just had no idea what was being said. " So, it's possible that this pilot is the only thing that I can think of, had transitioned from and had a lot of experience as a narrow body pilot and is now doing widebody flying and just had no idea that was a thing and just somehow didn't know that through training and now he's in this situation. That's the only way I can understand how it could be the scenario. Anyways, next time just repeat back what they say. Turn around, ask everybody what's going on and you can avoid this situation altogether. I look forward to hearing from you. Until then, keep the blue side

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*Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/52707*