News U. Politics Joe Biden Congress Extremism. Special Projects Highline. HuffPost Personal Video Horoscopes. Follow Us. A few more factors. It sounds as if one of the pilots was on IOE initial operating experience meaning he was new to the aircraft but not to flying into SFO.
The charted visual approaches at SFO will eat your lunch if you get behind early. Great summary and analysis! This is exactly the kind of in-depth reporting that the major news media CNN for example should be bringing to the public, rather than hour after hour of essentially on-air babble.
I totally understood everything you presented. I should, given my education in aeronautical engineering and flight mechanics! Well done. Of course, this was an unstable approach.
Any approach that has the tail of your airplane dragging in the water what appeared to happen, from my perspective, after watching a video prior to reaching the runway is unstable. They are not the best pilots. They are VERY good at doing things to near perfection, when it is something they are trained for. Visual figure it out yourself approaches are not something that they are well trained for. They obviously did not figure it out too well. Mentioned in passing, in the MSM, was that the pilots at this airline used to be mostly all?
So, the GS has been out of service for several weeks now, as they install new antennas. But the PAPI was in service, until right about the time of the accident, which suggests to me that they may actually have struck it.
From the aerial shots, the aircraft obviously slide across the PAPI, so this makes sense. The PAPI was definitely off the day before the crash. Thanks for the great analysis. I also believe you are right, but no one of you are mentioning lack of engine thrust engine failure to be a possible contributing factor? As I see the radar plot this could also have been the case, if they when they were finally stabilized inside distance 2 Nm tried to add thrust but with no response.
Every answer brings a new question. The point of my post before there had been any real data analysis by anyone was to show that the approach was unstabilized. So understanding that it was unstabilized is key to the next question, Why was it unstabilized? What I knew that is correct is that at some smaller airports, the PAPI is not designed to accommodate larger aircraft, and there have been accidents where the wheels of a larger aircraft touched down before the threshold as a result.
Airflow over the wings IAS is all that matters here. That would put it up in the same general range as the UAL aircraft that was observed at knots GS. And because the METAR at the time indicated generally a crosswind, the correction from groundspeed to airspeed near the surface would be small. But the graph should be labeled with the actual variable used. Also, I looked at the winds aloft forecast, but by the time I did my analysis, it was the forecast for the next period. Any pilot out there know how I can do that?
I find it absolutely remarkable what you have been able to put together in short order from publicly available sources. What irks me is that the expert talking heads on TV could have looked at the same data in only a few minutes and concluded the same thing:.
This is part of the data from FlightAware I used. That should be reason enough to go around at that point. Go around! This analysis including preparing the graphics for the post took only ten minutes. Why did none of the experts do this simple thing? I did hear an analyst on CNN reference the FlightAware data, and he came to the same conclusion you did.
Seems pretty straightforward. Interesting and very informative to me, being a captain, the ocean going ships type. Cheers from Spain- Claus. That would explain the high pitch attitude we saw in the amateur video. This is quite possible. It is possible that they did not have landing flap, although not likely.
It would seem that the AF crash over the Atlantic, the commuter crash near Buffalo and this Asiana flight all shared the same feature: the pilot pulled the yoke out rather than pushed it in. Had the pilot dropped the nose as he increased thrust, he still had enough altitude to overfly the runway and do a missed approach—but lose face in the process. Other more experienced pilots were in the cockpit, letting him hone some experience.
They were probably letting him make his wrong moves, telling him to correct them at the last moment, assuming things would work out. See my Update 2 above. It shows the flight path on Google Earth. Note that the last data point is well beyond the point where the plane came to rest, and feet in the air. I have around hrs on the and fly for an Asian carrier. Most of the online opinions and talking heads apply to different aircraft or operations or are just plain wrong.
If, for whatever strange reason, the thrust levers remained at idle, then when the pitch was increased to intercept the correct glide path from above the speed decay would have been rapid. It is possible the Instructor Pilot who was performing monitoring duties momentarily had his attention outside. Very interesting and detailed explanation. BUT… why did the pilot try to land by himself instead of relying on the auto-pilot? Of course, I do not know the reason but it is clear by the data they aborted the landing.
Arriving high and fast on this approach appears common. None of the prior flights even approached kn. All of them maintained plus.
A few things. Second, they sometimes use 28R with a slight tailwind. All we can see from FlightAware is groundspeed, not airspeed. It may be higher in gusty conditions. Are high energy approaches at high density airports tolerated more in the US compared with Europe to increase the landing rates? Excellent discussion, worthy speculation. However a contributory factor would be the absence of glide path info. For me this remains a crucial piece of the jigsaw.
I hope I am wrong. I wonder if you could do the same glide analysis for AAR for the previous day 5-July. On July 5, AAR went around at ft. The go-around happened 5 nm from touchdown at ft, which is between the two cases above. It was also going slower at go-around. The flight track on FlightAware definitely shows that it went around, from 5 miles out, which would usually indicate that it was tower initiated. Thank you, a very sage and informative analysis.
As with all aviation accidents, there will not be a single point cause — the man-machine interface and the sterility of the flight deck in the descent are going to be interesting; time to resist lazy, single-point-cause speculation as the media seems happy to seek. KSFO a hard-work field around which to operate in a heavy. Pilots were also warned that the thresholds, or beginning, of runways 28 left and right had been moved.
A white line that previously designated the end of the runway was blacked out and a new line painted further west, said Rory Kay, a training captain for a major airline who landed at San Francisco the day before the crash. All Boeing s, like most modern airliners, have cockpit computers that use GPS to create a glide slope for landing that is nearly as good as the ground-based ILS, said Bob Coffman, an American Airlines captain who formerly flew the Moving the threshold would invalidate the computer-generated slope, he said.
But pilots also receive FAA notices on ILS shutdowns and movement of runway thresholds in a pre-landing briefing, so the Asiana pilots should have been aware that they were going to have to rely more heavily on visual cues, pilots said.
This is the normal approach for the runway. The PAPI was on and normal. I have as many questions as most of you do. I think the FP flying pilot thought this aircraft was going to capture the glide slope at but did not because the glide slope was out. After he figured out it did not capture he did what Birdstrike said.
LvL Change trap that commands the auto throttles to go to idle and opens the speed window. Why did he not arrest his descent with power?
The second therory is a little long but I have seen it many times. With only 43 hours in the aircraft he had to have an Instructor Captain in the right seat. If this is the case the right seat pilot may have assisted with the automation in an attempt to save the approach. Now here is the question? Did the left seat Captain think the instructor took the plane?
Were both pilots waiting for the other to correct the descent? With the engines at idle and unspooled it would have taken time to get thrust for go around. Thanks for the site Steve. We need to talk. I agree with most of the above.
I was sitting here doing some research, and stumbled across something that might be of interest to you guys, or, you can refer this information to the appropriate people for further research. Take a look the attached jpeg image. There are two pictures in the image. Disregard the aircraft in the right picture as this is a random picture takes from satellite The runway layout is the important factor. Look the Thresh hold and Touch Down Markers.
Apparently, at some point, this area was moved down the runway. Possibly for Crossing Height Displacement, or to allow better clearance if someone taxied into position, who knows.
But there is now a Displaced Thresh hold where there was not previously. At any rate, if there was old data being used, they would have landed about to feet shorter than the currently published approach. The data base is checked before every flight and the next revision data base is loaded in the FMS ready for the active date.
They were not trained in flying a visual approach, especially from such steep profiles. They were trained 1,2 3, do this then that. They never got the real world sensation of non-standard approaches.
It all goes back to initial training. There is good and bad with that statement thought. We all know there many factors, but a lot comes back to initial training habits.
That said, I see this a lot on flight checks. What to do when something goes non-standard! Scenario based training is just coming into play in a lot of areas.
Students are not getting good training. Interestingly, 49 out of 50 deviations had not been a part of any safety programs, or self — recurrent training since their certificate issuance.
Thus, we go back to the Buffalo Accident, and the Hour proposition. I have not seen the preliminary data on the SFO Accident. I think this is where we will start to see a possible trend in causation. It is disheartening that the airplane deviated so far from the proper approach parameters despite clear airline operating procedures, established go-around limits, available engine and flight path automation, and windows to look out.
It is bad enough that some of this automation was apparently disabled, but also one must seriously wonder if each of the pilots in the cockpit somehow thought one of the other pilots was flying the airplane.
In any case, it is hard to argue that anyone in the cockpit was paying attention. It seems likely that the final NTSB recommendations will include comments about cockpit discipline and crew coordination. Does that seem reasonable? Excellent observation. Being that this plane is used for long haul transpacific flights then 43 hours in this plane could mean the pilot only had 4 landings total and none at SFO.
I still think that the final analysis will show that mistakes were made due FLCH trap that pilots all thought the air speed throttling was being automated when it wasnt. My husband is a 17 year veteran of the Air Force 10 active duty and 7 Air National Guard and a 7 year commercial pilot. Malcolm Gladwell author of Blink and The Tipping Point actually wrote about this in one of his books. NO ONE spoke up until a few seconds before impact?!!
The NTSB is saying that 7 seconds out was the first indication that the pilots recognized the need to increase air speed. Passengers and even people watching on the ground recognized the plane as too low and too slow…so how did the pilots not know?! For another, if there are cultural issues at play, then it is the responsibility of the airline and the corresponding regulatory agency to effect training protocols that mitigate this issue. The right question to ask is first, How effectively did the crew manage their resources and coordinate their actions?
Great analysis. It would be interesting to run the same analysis on previous landings of Asiana Airlines Flight , to see if unstabilized approaches are common. Three qualified flight crew failing to decide to abort the landing untill far too late.
I would agree that there is a senerority issue here. But also a lack of live flight time. Whilst I agree with the secondary cause being an unstabilised flight path. Is the primary cause too many vairiables for a pilot new to the ? Pilot overload? Excellent information with informative use of charts to visualize and clearify gathered facts.
Maybe is enough to see a pattern? Would this be enough to classify the approach as unstabilized in your analysis? While approaching, you can easily maintain a minimum air speed automatically, depending on the current weight, flaps. Even better, when approaching automatically APPR mode the minimum. May be someone can reproduce this and report it as a bug?
F11 is figure 11 in the manual. Remember the auto pilot and auto throttles are different controls with different ways to disconnect. Nearly a week after the crash, investigators have pieced together an outline of the event — what should have been a smooth landing by seasoned pilots turning into a disaster.
With each new bit of information, the picture emerging is of pilots who were supposed to be closely monitoring the plane's airspeed, but who didn't realize until too late that the aircraft was dangerously low and slow.
Nothing disclosed so far by the National Transportation Safety Board investigators indicates any problems with the Boeing 's engines or the functioning of its computers and automated systems.
It is the most important instrument in the cockpit," said Lee Collins, a pilot with 29 years and 18, hours experience flying a variety of airliners. You don't, you die. Investigators are still trying to nail down hundreds of details about the crash that also injured dozens. They've listened to the Boeing 's voice recorder, which captured the last two hours of conversation in the cockpit. They've downloaded its flight data recorder, which captured 1, indicators of what was happening on the plane.
The flight's four pilots have been interviewed, as have passengers and dozens of witnesses. Air traffic control recordings and video of the flight's last moments, including the crash itself, have been examined. According to details released so far, the pilot flying the plane, Lee Gang-kuk, 46, had nearly 10, hours of flying experience, but just 35 hours flying a Boeing He had recently completed training that qualified him to fly passengers in the , and was about halfway through his post-qualification training.
He was seated in the left cockpit pilot seat. In the co-pilot position was Lee Jeong-Min, an experienced captain who was supervising Lee Gang-kuk's training. It was Lee Gang-kuk's first time landing a in San Francisco. The weather was near perfect, sunny with light winds.
Lee Jeong-Min and a third pilot sitting in a jump seat just behind the main seats, a first officer, were supposed to be monitoring the plane's controls. The one in Bali the pole jumped by seven kilometers at that time. So there is my question to you sir. Could this happen because of a magnetic pole shift???? Otherwise it is just another pilot that takes the fall.
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