MD-11
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 150; Flight Crew Total 11623; Flight Crew Type 3118
Situational Awareness; Human-Machine Interface; Distraction; Fatigue
Deviation - Altitude Excursion From Assigned Altitude; Deviation - Speed All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Flight Crew Became Reoriented; Flight Crew Returned To Clearance
Aircraft; Human Factors; Chart Or Publication
During the Pecan 1A departure from Hong Kong; just after we rolled out of the turn to RAMEN at 220 knots; the Captain (pilot flying) called for slats retract. The first officer (Pilot Monitoring) repeated the command and moved the flap/slat handle to the slats retract position. As soon as the handle was moved the stick shaker activated. The Captain called 'slats extend'; the first officer extended the slats and the stick shaker stopped. We lost several hundred feet of altitude during the recovery. I was the International Relief Officer (IRO) on this flight. I had been focusing on our ground track as the mandatory overflight of PORPA resulted in going a bit wide of the FMS generated ground track during the departure turn from PORPA to RAMEN. As we rolled out and I saw that we were correcting to track; I looked down at the SID depiction on my [Electronic Flight Bag (EFB)]. When I heard the slats retract call; I immediately looked up and saw that we were still several miles short of RAMEN with a 220 knot speed restriction there. I then looked at the airspeed indicator (thinking that maybe I missed a 'high speed approved' call from ATC). We were still at 220 knots. The green slat retract (SR) on the airspeed indicator was obscured by the Gear Extend (GE) indication superimposed over it as the two speeds were almost identical. By the time I had processed this information and realized that we were still nearly 30 knots below slat retract speed (maybe 2 or 3 seconds); it was too late. The handle had been moved and the shaker was activated. Recommendations: First and foremost; this event illustrates the importance of the pilot monitoring verifying the limiting speed on the airspeed indicator before moving the flap/slat handle. This should continue to be discussed during recurring training. It is often said that the IRO has the best seat in the house when it comes to threat detection and mitigation as the IRO can devote 100% of his/her time to this activity. Obviously; I picked an unfortunate time to look down at my [EFB]. That being said; could I have processed the position and airspeed information more quickly and possibly avoided this incident? Perhaps. At this point I should mention that this duty day followed two near minimum crew rests (for both me and the Captain). An international rest of 12 or 13 hours is simply not enough time to travel from the airport to (an often distant) hotel and back; check in and out of the hotel; eat at least once--often twice; plug in our required electronics (iPads and phones); sync our iPads; check our email for scheduling advisories; shower; shave and sleep eight hours. Something has to be sacrificed and it's almost always sleep. When you factor in the inevitable transportation issues (late bus; traffic congestion; etc.) and hotel issues (room key doesn't work; room smells like cigarette smoke; etc) even more sleep is lost. While sleeping only six or six and a half hours may not necessitate calling in fatigued; it definitely resulted in me performing at less than 100%. [The company] needs to do their part in the fatigue mitigation process. Minimum or near-minimum rest periods (less than 15 hours) should be minimized and back to back minimum or near-minimum rest periods should be prohibited.
This was a 630;000 LBS takeoff 07R out of Hong Kong. We got stick shaker activation at 5000 feet and 220 knots while flying straight and level to RAMEN. We briefed stick shaker threat twice and it still happened. It felt like we were doing straight and level slow flight for no reason and Slat Retract symbol was not in view; so slats retract was called for by Captain (Pilot Flying). First Officer retracted slats and we got stick shaker activation and recovered lost about 500 feet in recovery. This happened with three sets of eyes watching! A mitigation strategy was briefed that I would speed up before slats retract. We all debriefed ourselves after the event we agreed the threat was briefed thoroughly but our mitigation strategy could have been briefed better. Mitigation strategy we had 2 options request high speed which is a normal for us or brief we will retract slats until after RAMEN. Max speed into RAMEN was 220 knots. IRO at last moment noticed SR was covered by GE.
An MD-11 International Relief Officer and Captain reported a stick shaker activation while departing Hong Kong when the slats were retracted below slat retraction speed.