Posted on 07/07/2013 8:11:12 AM PDT by george76
A navigation system that helps pilots make safe descents was turned off at San Francisco airport on Saturday when a South Korean airliner crashed and burned after undershooting the runway ...
The system, called Glide Path, is meant to help planes land in bad weather. It was clear and sunny, with light winds, when Asiana
...
San Francisco International has turned off the system for nearly the entire summer on the runway where the Asiana flight crashed, according to a notice from the airport on the Federal Aviation Administration's Web site
(Excerpt) Read more at ca.news.yahoo.com ...
I was watching a video taken from the inside of the cockpit of a commuter plane landing at a small airport in the foot hills... on downwind, base and final a computer voice was giving dire sounding terrain warnings and even saying repeatedly, “Pull up! Pull up! Pull up!” on short final. The pilot of course was wisely ignoring this distraction and just flying his plane, but it kind of made me glad that I don't have that kind of crap installed in our airplane.
The worst landing I ever made... I was coming into a small airport that I had been to before, on short final my passengers yelled out, “Watch out for those wires!” The wires of course went under the runway, but he saw the poles on both sides that had conduits that routed the wires down.
It distracted me for a moment at a critical time in the landing sequence. I nosed up briefly which caused the plane to lose airspeed. I immediately pointed the nose back down, but then I had to flair much more than normal to arrest our descent as we entered ground effect near the surface of the runway. This put us in a nose high attitude and the tie down for the tail actually started scraping on the ground before the main gear touched the pavement. It made a bad noise but fortunately did not hurt anything other than scraping off about a quarter inch of aluminum from the tie down.
To me this 777 accident sounds a little like a jumbo sized version of what happened to me during my worst landing. My guess is that something distracted the pilot and caused him to deviate from his normal approach with tragic consequences.
thanks
Notice that the less damaged areas are around the doors where there is more structural material.
It looks like the threshold to Runway 28L had been relocated. If the PAPI’s and Glide Slope transmitter had not been moved to the new threshold that would account for them being out of service.
An ILS has a Glide Slope; a glide path refers to either a GPS approach or a runway with a visual assist ie VASI or PAPI.
I can see that. My question is whether it was changed recently, and that's the reason the PAPI was OTS.
I looked at the current NOTAMS, but if there was one for the PAPI being OTS before the crash, it has been superseded. The current one is dated a few hours after the crash.
Slipping: what saved the "Gimli Glider".
I used to fly the same way, when the POH didn't prohibit slipping with flaps. And, of course, in gliders it's another way (plus the spoilers, if any) to carry "a little extra power" on approach.
It was my impression, back when I was flying, that the only power pilots that knew about slipping were those with glider time (and that was the case for the Gimli Glider incident).
So with the ILS and PAPI down, did this pilot have to rely on good'ol stick&rudder airmanship? How much training do they get on that scenario?
Descent rate is about 50% higher than normal for the ground speeds in question; one thought crossed my mind was that they had the spoilers deployed and never stowed them. The post crash pics don’t support that though.
The safety nazis have created an atmosphere whereby in an effort to make a situation foolproof, they have actually made it worse. It's like that in the electric power industry as well. And, I'm sure, many other industries. They try to codify all actions, eliminating the thought process from all activities.
This is the classic "boy who cried wolf" scenario - the alarms go off so often for mundane, unimportant reasons that when something critical does happen, the pending alarm is ignored. In effect, the warning system has cried wolf so many times that it isn't believed when the proverbial wolf does appear.
It looks like they had to rush their descent through the last few thousand feet, and when they checked their descent rate they lost too much airspeed.
Question is what were the devices on the plane that help with approach, elevation, etc showing? Were they malfunctioning, etc. and what does the pilot voice recorder show?
No. Because you are a pilot is no reason to berate others who don’t use your terminology. They didn’t invent the radars nor the radio systems.
You putz, there has been NO information that ATC had a damned thing to do with this accident.
Yet you post your photo and rant on multiple threads, tossing out the intimation that controllers led these little tow-headed, rosy-cheeked pilots down the path of certain doom.
The number of people who become 'supervisors' early in their career, and stay there forever, is an application of the Peter Principle, and you appear to be a perfect example.
Most, (not all, but most) young ATC sups are/were lousy at and/or scared of the job of controlling. I have known of high level staffers/sups who have never actually checked out on operational positions...and lots more who did, but only certified for 'light traffic'.
Any of these sound familiar???? of course they do.
Quantas never crashes.
According to another Freeper, it is because the runways are being remarked, changing the touchdown point for the ILS system. The system is scheduled to be turned back on after the markings are finished and the system re-calibrated and tested for landings at the new mark.
We might never know why that plane had to declare mayday. You know, why were there holes in the top of the fuselage? Why did the landing gear fail? Why did the tail shear off? Things like that.
Sequester? Using too much carbon-based electricity? Is this what we have to look forward to when the coal power plants are forced to shut down due to new EPA rules?
I think the PAPI is replacement for the VASI, I always was watching the VASI when landing.
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