Posted on 04/19/2020 6:00:26 PM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
Investigators have determined that an Emirates Airbus A380 descended far below the glideslope at Moscow Domodedovo after its crew entered a rapid descent, erroneously believing the jet was too high for the correct approach path.
It descended to 504ft above ground – with a rate of descent of 1,600ft/min – while still some 7.4nm from the threshold of runway 14R, in darkness, before the crew executed a go-around.
The A380 lost a further 109ft, dipping to just 395ft, before climbing away, the aircraft’s ground-proximity warning system having sounded ‘terrain’ and ‘pull up’ alerts.
This instrument reading had been false, because the aircraft was still outside of the zone of reliability for ILS signals and, as a result, was receiving noisy and inaccurate ILS data.
Investigators state that the crew also subsequently aborted a second approach before the aircraft landed on its third attempt.
(Excerpt) Read more at flightglobal.com ...
I’ve never flown them but have heard good things about Emirates both cabin service and safety-wise.
Emirates has always (IIRC) placed on strong emphasis on its reputation. I’m willing to bet that the flight crew is now suspended or out of work.
“The displayed glideslope deviation crossed almost the full scale, from above to below, without engagement of the expected glideslope capture mode,” says the inquiry.
I hate it when instruments swing from one extreme to the other in an instant.
The radar controller was yelling at them, too.
A380 wingspan=262 feet.
Altitude=395 feet.
They were descending configured for landing thinking that they were much higher so airspeed was 200-300+ kts airspeed.
Umm...
So basically we have a situation where plane/crew/passengers were about as close to being all destroyed as anyone could get. This is beyond a FAA reprimand for a lot of people.
Sharia law says your not supposed to break out the vodka until AFTER you’ve touched down in Moscow
“...before the crew executed a go-around.”
Damn near executed a go-under.
Exactly :-)
I I have not told that story in years and it took place either in the late ‘60’s or the early 1970’s.
As soon as I hit the send button, I realized I messed up the punch line, which really is the heart of the story.
My reply actually was “If that was a chicken, we sure are f**ked up.”
Sounds like Russia was trying out some new weapons.
I knew what you were driving at though.
The Pilot Flying was chasing the glideslope. Not unusual in that case to fly through it.
As for a GS being unreliable 7.4 nm from the threshold, that’s ridiculous. The FAF on most ILS approaches is 8 nm from the TDZ and the GS should be rock solid at that point.
Have been on instrument approaches into DME many times and watched them landing in solid IMC due to snow, never saw anyone go bad like this. Maybe actually a maintenance problem with their own equipment - i.e., the airline.
>>”... Maybe actually a maintenance problem with their own equipment - i.e., the airline.”<<
Or, a rouge pilot. Obviously you know the tech issues so having a problem like this comes down to a severe electronics issue, but redundancy failing? Or a very bad manual override decision. If the later then someone is going missing quick.
This is what may have happened.
Mad Mad World: Mickey Rooney, Buddy Hackett
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwR1hRK-aF8
[I know I’m commenting on an old article, I just happened to see this on a search and decided to comment.]
Exactly right, there’s been crashes for this very reason even with these newer safety features. I don’t know about this exact mishap but I think I know what happened, this happening at night is a very big clue.
There’s a human factors thing that happens at night. When approaching a lit-up airport at night, your brain is easily fooled to think that your ground-track distance to the airport is much less than it actually is. Your brain also perceives your altitude above the ground/airport to be much higher than actual. A pilots natural reaction is, “Oh crap, we gotta drop some serious altitude now!” So they drop altitude faster than the regs say they’re supposed to, they figure that the alarms and audible warnings are due to descent rate instead of actual altitude, and by the time they see that they’re close to the ground with an excessive descent rate, it’s too late to pull out. Luckily these guys caught it in time to save it. The human brain is easy to fool, especially at night. Trusting your eyes and seat-of-the-pants feel and not keeping a good eye on instruments has killed a lot of people.
I hope “Air Disasters” is scrambling a go team.
“Why don’t we just shoot them down and be through with it?”
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