Apejackson

It appears that he was on the edge of being comfortable to go after the delay and that the Maint issue immediately after takeoff put a fork in it. He had made his decision that he wasn’t going to JFK before he called Atl Radio. All of that is fine. Maybe he should have called fatigue before the flight. I might have with that kind of delay before a redeye.

Regardless of all that. The call to Atl Radio was totally unnecessary. Totally cringeworthy. You’re a Captain now. Make the call. As long as you’re safe nobody is going to doubt you. They may not like your decision but it’ll all be ok. Make the call yourself.

The problem is that he signed the release saying he was ok before releasing the brake. The autothrottles going out is a minor QRH procedure then a slight inconvenience on the flight. I have flown thousands of hours in jets that didn’t have autothrottles and it was not any more fatiguing. If anything it would help stay awake during that long trans-con having to constantly babysit it.

DeltaboundRedux

Experience isn't anything more than learning from mistakes.

Inexperienced: "What's it doing?!?"

Experienced: "Oh, it's doing that again."

All of this will sort out in a few years as progression (and accumulated experience, on both sides of the cockpit) slows to a more historically normal rate.

There's a reason majors prefer hiring experienced pilots, military or civilian:

They made most of the "learning opportunities" elsewhere on someone else's $$.

FangsF15

You don’t have nearly enough information to second guess that decision. You weren’t there, and it sure sounds like there were some mitigating circumstances.

That said, the Captain came across as extremely inexperienced lacking any confidence. Sounded like he had never even heard, much less made an ATL Radio call ever. Seriously. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t a super early ungrade “90-day wonder”.

Smooth at FL450

Perhaps. But if the issue to consider is autothrottles being inop, he sure made the fatigue decsion quickly. And if autothrottles were the only consideration, I'd continue. Doesn't sound like weather was a concern and like others have said, the lack of A/Ts could make it easier to stay awake on the redeye. But you're right, i wasn't there...

marcal

I'm almost wondering if the CA was fatigued from the start. The whole communication with ATL Radio/Disp/MX/Duty Pilot is and was a mess. The decision making was a mess and I just wonder if he was fatigued from the start. Also, a ton of things in this video make me suspect this individual not only hasn't been a CA long, but hasn't been at DL long. If I'm wrong about this and he's been around a while then I'm not sure how that is possible. The FO(lady) sounded much more alert.

StoneQOLdCrazy

what is wrong with you? You have no idea what else might have been contributing to the guy’s fitness. Stop 2nd guessing one of your colleagues. Were you the duty pilot?

CBreezy

10xxx number. FO was slightly more junior.

Extenda

I know this guy. good dude. Good pilot. Flew with him when he was an FO.

For context it wasn’t just the auto throttles that were initially broken. Right after takeoff had a bunch of other stuff fail like flight director, AP etc. the AT is the only thing that wouldn’t come back after holding/doing the resets.

had a 3 hour delay for MX leading up to it. Electrical gremlins.

We’re all one flight away from having our own YouTube video Monday morning quarterbacked by the peanut gallery so don’t throw too many stones.

Excargodog

If there is one thing this does show it's that unless you are military on encrypted radios anything you transmit can turn up on a YouTube video in your voice.

Cruz5350

Ya just because there’s roughly 6-7000 numbers between him and the junior pilot doesn’t mean this was an experienced captain. Not saying that’s what you’re implying but this is incredibly cringeworthy.