Flight Crew Flight Engineer; Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 150; Flight Crew Total 7100; Flight Crew Type 350
Troubleshooting; Workload; Communication Breakdown; Confusion; Human-Machine Interface; Situational Awareness
Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe; Deviation - Altitude Overshoot; Deviation - Speed All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Clearance
Flight Crew Overcame Equipment Problem; Flight Crew Returned To Clearance
Aircraft; Human Factors
I was the Pilot Flying (PF). After takeoff I noticed my flight director was missing the vertical bar but the horizontal bar was displayed. Captain had the same display. Tower gave us a turn to 180 after takeoff. I figured the horizontal bar was still giving the correct climb pitch so I followed the horizontal bar while conducting the turn raw data. Me and Captain started discussing what was happening and he realized that the plane was currently in approach mode instead of takeoff mode. Next we noticed the airspeed coming up on the flap retract speeds so we put the flaps up now. This was out of our normal order for putting the flaps up; the speed was getting fast because the horizontal bar was not giving the proper climb angle. We tried the autopilot and it disconnected and we got a warning. Me and the captain start trying to troubleshoot to get the plane out of approach mode. Next we hear the altitude alert as we were climbing thru 5300 FT; we were cleared to 5000 FT per the OHare8 departure. We pushed the nose over to get quickly back down to 5000 FT. Before beginning the descent the plane reached 5600 FT. On our steep descent back to 5000 FT our airspeed accelerated above 250 knots. The auto throttles had clicked off when the autopilot disconnected. When asked to contact departure we told tower that we were working on a problem and we would like to stay with them until we figured it out. We flew the plane raw data and got everything under control. At some point we recycled the flight directors and that seemed to resolve the problem. Above 10;000 FT we began to try and figure out why that had occurred. We think it was because the Captain's flight director was not recycled after the previous flight. The SOPs had just changed who turns the flight director off on taxi in. It used to be the First Officer's job to recycle both flight directors but new procedure has each pilot recycling their own. At altitude captain asked me if I had recycled his and I said no I was following the new procedure. He mentioned that every First Officer he flies with still does it the old way so he didn't even think about it. I think the main contributing factor is all of the drastic changes we have been experiencing in our SOPs over the past year.
Only after takeoff did the B757 First Officer note that only his pitch command flight director bar was displayed. Believing and utilizing it as functional resulted in the failure to level at 5;000 FT as cleared and an excessive airspeed below 10;000 FT resulted.