News Asiana 777-200 Crash on landing at SFO

[Andy44]

At least, it was a good practical joke about paying attention what you write as journalist. Should happen more often :lol:

Much like when the NY Times get caught reprinting an Onion article.

 

[Weirdo Earthtorch]

I hope the bet was worth the reprimand.....

Reprimand? I reckon the intern is now an extern...

 

[ADSWNJ]

Quite amazing that the NTSB allowed that to happen, and quite stupid for the news channel not to fact-check it, especially since the names had been well known for over a week.

 

[Urwumpe]

Quite amazing that the NTSB allowed that to happen, and quite stupid for the news channel not to fact-check it, especially since the names had been well known for over a week.

I think it is rather a sign of "not calling the official channels, but trying to bypass and get insider information".

 

[C3PO]

Quite amazing that the NTSB allowed that to happen, and quite stupid for the news channel not to fact-check it, especially since the names had been well known for over a week.

Aircraft crash investigation agencies never EVER publish names or gender because they can't be a factor in an incident. Any journalist should know that the NTSB is the wrong place to look for names.

 

[ADSWNJ]

Attempting to summarize the almost 2000 posts on Pprune.org on this accident ... there's predominantly 5 themes circulating:

1. The 35 hours of 777 experience the captain of this 777 had, coupled with the fact that the right-seat captain was also on his first flight as training captain. The PF was a long time A320 pilot, so there has been technical discussion on reversion to Airbus experience in this stressful situation.

2. The Korean cultural issues. People talking about how hierarchical the Korean society is, and how this made a steep power gradient on the flight deck (with the PF graduating the same aerospace university in an earlier year than the PNF, and he had the left seat, etc). The concern is that the training captain may not have felt free to speak up as much as in other nationalities / cultures. CRM is a critical issue to get right - look at Wiki on Tenerife Airport Disaster for the origins of this thinking. Of course - this Korean cultural topic skirted the line of xenophobia / racism in some people's eyes, and for others - we cannot afford to be politically correct when saying what needs to be said about the standards and issues with some of these airlines.

3. Technical discussion on the 777 controls, approach mode options, auto-throttle settings, analysis of the glideslope, stabilization criteria, etc. Lots of interesting discussion on human/computer interfaces and how can a human be lulled into crashing a relatively brand new quarter-billion dollar plane short of the runway on a beautiful cavok day, and how we come this far that pilots don't know how to even fly their planes without the magenta line?

4. ATC - lots of comments about how the ATC tries to cram planes in to these challenging side-by-side visual approaches, from much too high and fast ('slam dunking them'), and frequently asking the pilots to cut in early on base for spacing. Lots of hairy stories about pilots having to really dirty up their planes to lose altitude and speed in a hurry, whilst avoiding the TCAS conflicts with planes flying almost dead into each other on the approach (i.e. feeding alternatively the two active landing rwys), then having to slow unnaturally slow in the big planes to not overrun a smaller plane on the other approach (and cause wake turbulence), etc. Comparisons to UK ATC where they say the UK ATC would never put a plane anywhere apart from on the extended glideslope at the right speed for they type of plane, consistently every time.

5. For me the most interesting discussion ... the airport guidance systems and the extended outages of flight-safety equipment during the repositioning of these runway touchdown points (ironically to improve safety, but almost for sure a part in the disaster for this flight). A non-pilot banking IT guy said something to the effect of: when we do a critical systems change for a banking system, we would always have the old and the new system side by side - formally testing out the new system, signing it off, going live and having the fallback ready for immediate back-out if needed. In the case of this airport, it seems like ... let's switch the old system off, and in a few months we'll have the new one working, whilst meanwhile we have a crash and loss of life due at least in part to not having these safety systems working (e.g. ILS, G/S). The pilots all said nonsense ... planes land every day without the guidance systems and any competent pilot should have been able to execute this landing. The non-pilots said ... and what if the pilot is on the edge of competence ... and you have taken away one more safety system that could have saved lives that day. The experts said ... if you set up radio transmitting equipment in that area, then everything needs recertifying and calibrating, because of electromagnetic disturbances. The non-experts said ... so do it already and why are we even having this discussion.

Anyway - I thought it was an interesting take on the situation.

 

[n122vu]

I think it is rather a sign of "not calling the official channels, but trying to bypass and get insider information".

"Tell me this isn't a government operation."

 

[RGClark]

...
3. Technical discussion on the 777 controls, approach mode options, auto-throttle settings, analysis of the glideslope, stabilization criteria, etc. Lots of interesting discussion on human/computer interfaces and how can a human be lulled into crashing a relatively brand new quarter-billion dollar plane short of the runway on a beautiful cavok day, and how we come this far that pilots don't know how to even fly their planes without the magenta line?

...

I read that discussion on Pprune that a "FLCH trap" can cause the autothrottle to be cancelled out but surprisingly nothing about this possibility mentioned by 777 pilots interviewed by news sources, TV or newspapers.
In fact very little discussion about the how autothrottle can be armed and yet an experienced 777 pilot, as was the instructor pilot, could not be aware of this relatively common manual landing scenario where it is not controlling the speed.

Bob Clark

 

[ADSWNJ]

I read that discussion on Pprune that a "FLCH trap" can cause the autothrottle to be cancelled out but surprisingly nothing about this possibility mentioned by 777 pilots interviewed by news sources, TV or newspapers.
In fact very little discussion about the how autothrottle can be armed and yet an experienced 777 pilot, as was the instructor pilot, could not be aware of this relatively common manual landing scenario where it is not controlling the speed.

Bob Clark

Indeed - quite strange the media has not picked up on this bit of the discussion. It's not confirmed yet, of course, but clearly something led the crew to believe they would have A/T when they didn't, and there was a catastrophic loss of situational awareness to let the plane drop so far below reference speed on final.

On the one side - you could argue for more automation (e.g. EGPWS mode to check for stabilized approach at say 600/500/400 ft to show good descent, good speed, good landing config, etc). On the other side ... how much automation do you need to check heading, attitude and speed?

 

[Urwumpe]

If one pilot would have looked at the PFD, he would have seen the "HOLD" indication in for the autothrust easily. But nobody did.

 

[Andy44]

I am just a simple caveman pilot. Your discussion of autothrottles and other gadgets confuse and frighten me! In the prehistoric days I was taught to keep an eye on your AIRSPEED INDICATOR during an approach, by a pilot who was even more of a caveman than I.

Gadgets are tools, but the aviator must aviate. Be responsible for what your aircraft and its gadgets are doing.

 

[garyw]

Gadgets are tools, but the aviator must aviate. Be responsible for what your aircraft and its gadgets are doing.

Quite.

I'm not sure how old this video is but I think it's very relevant. It's a course that one of the American airlines started to doing a few years back which is attempting to teach pilots that if you're in unfamiliar territory or in a situation where you will speed more time typing into the FMGC than dealing with the problem that's the time to hand fly the aircraft and FEEL what it's upto.

yup, it's a class that says to pilots 'FLY THE AIRCRAFT'.

On the one side - you could argue for more automation (e.g. EGPWS mode to check for stabilized approach at say 600/500/400 ft to show good descent, good speed, good landing config, etc). On the other side ... how much automation do you need to check heading, attitude and speed?

Here I have to disagree with you, I'd say that we need LESS automation during that last part of the flight. AF447 crashed because the autopilot said 'I have no idea what's going on here, over to you'. I believe that this 777 crashed because the automation wasn't available (ILS) and the crew were not (as the video about says) 'One with the aircraft'. As I said above, any pilot should be connected to the aircraft. Without even looking at the speed the pilots should have known they were going too slowly because the engine pitch was wrong and the nose was too high.
They should have felt it but they were too reliant on the automation.

 

[ADSWNJ]

Here I have to disagree with you, I'd say that we need LESS automation during that last part of the flight. AF447 crashed because the autopilot said 'I have no idea what's going on here, over to you'. I believe that this 777 crashed because the automation wasn't available and the crew were not (as the video about says) 'One with the aircraft'. As I said above, any pilot should be connected to the aircraft. Without even looking at the speed the pilots should have known they were going too slowly because the engine pitch was wrong and the nose was too high.
They should have felt it but they were too reliant on the automation.

I just offered both sides of the debate ... some want more, some want less.

I agree with you ... in a strictly visual approach, you want to keep the information as simple as possible for the pilot and let him fly the plane like a big Cessna.

No harm with adding the mechanical checks for unstabilized approach as well though, with a go-around Resolution Advisory.

 

[garyw]

No harm with adding the mechanical checks for unstabilized approach as well though, with a go-around Resolution Advisory.

until the automation says 'huh? This approach is unsteady. ABORT!!' when all the pilot is trying to do is sidestep or land in a gusty conditions or at the absolute worst - when there is a major fault like the loss of all hydraulics or because both engines have more birds in them than fan blades.

 

[Urwumpe]

I am just a simple caveman pilot. Your discussion of autothrottles and other gadgets confuse and frighten me! In the prehistoric days I was taught to keep an eye on your AIRSPEED INDICATOR during an approach, by a pilot who was even more of a caveman than I.

Gadgets are tools, but the aviator must aviate. Be responsible for what your aircraft and its gadgets are doing.

Still, it will get more and more rare to DIRECTLY steer the aircraft. Fly-By-Wire has many advantages and will, just like it does in military aircraft, also dominate civilian aircraft.

Thus, you are right, a pilot has to know the state of his aircraft.

But this does not mean that the autothrottle state is not part in considerations. You have to know how your aircraft will react in the current state, and make sure that the aircraft will react in the future so that it will fly where you want it to.

The good old times of simple "stick forward - houses become big, stick back - houses become small, throttle forward - loud, throttle backward - silent" are slowly over.

 

[Andy44]

Quite.

I'm not sure how old this video is but I think it's very relevant. It's a course that one of the American airlines started to doing a few years back which is attempting to teach pilots that if you're in unfamiliar territory or in a situation where you will speed more time typing into the FMGC than dealing with the problem that's the time to hand fly the aircraft and FEEL what it's upto.

I agree up until the word "feel". I was taught that feeling, especially via the inner ear, can be very deceptive. In conditions where the horizon is not visible, you MUST rely on the attitude indicator/artificial horizon, since your senses will lie to you every time. In this case, the attitude was easy to see by looking out the window in clear weather, but airspeed cannot be felt; you must watch your airspeed indicator. The sound of air rushing past the cockpit is not a substitute, even less so considering that your pitch attitude and wind gusts will change even that.

But I agree with your basic premise that basic pilot skills must be reinforced and a pilot must be able to confidently transition back to "stick and rudder" whenever he does not fully understand what his automation tools are doing or what their indications mean.

 

[garyw]

I agree up until the word "feel". I was taught that feeling, especially via the inner ear, can be very deceptive

You're absolutely right, vertigo can and has caused crashes. By feel I mean more of the pilot sitting there going 'That's not right, those engines should be spooling up, why is my nose so high?' than anything more direct.

But this does not mean that the autothrottle state is not part in considerations. You have to know how your aircraft will react in the current state, and make sure that the aircraft will react in the future so that it will fly where you want it to.

Agreed, the automation is a very good thing but how much do you want to bet that the pilots were head down typing and why didn't the PF have his hands on the throttles? In an Airbus the throttles don't move with engine power changes when A/T is engaged but in a Boeing they do. If he was on approach and, as said in the video, was 'tactically connected to his aircraft' and 'mentally flying it' he'd have known a lot sooner that something wasn't right because the throttles hadn't moved.

 

[Urwumpe]

Agreed, the automation is a very good thing but how much do you want to bet that the pilots were head down typing and why didn't the PF have his hands on the throttles? In an Airbus the throttles don't move with engine power changes when A/T is engaged but in a Boeing they do. If he was on approach and, as said in the video, was 'tactically connected to his aircraft' and 'mentally flying it' he'd have known a lot sooner that something wasn't right because the throttles hadn't moved.

If I remember correctly, you no longer have your hands on the throttle in general because it was one risky behavior leading to accidents.

 

[ADSWNJ]

until the automation says 'huh? This approach is unsteady. ABORT!!' when all the pilot is trying to do is sidestep or land in a gusty conditions or at the absolute worst - when there is a major fault like the loss of all hydraulics or because both engines have more birds in them than fan blades.

Hmm - maybe not a RA then, but at least master caution? Else how do you avoid a similar fate again to this crash, where inattention to basic airmanship leads to disaster? If you are fighting with a disabled plane, you can cancel the warning and continue at your discretion. If you have a perfectly serviceable plane in a cavok sky with light winds, and you get that caution, it should wake you the hell up and get you focused on the problem.

 

[garyw]

Hmm - maybe not a RA then, but at least master caution?

For what? that could lead to distractions.

Else how do you avoid a similar fate again to this crash, where inattention to basic airmanship leads to disaster?

Easy. You remind pilots how to fly the plane. This accident wasn't down to a failure of the plane but a failure of the pilot to fly it. Instead, he relied on the automation to do the job for him.

If you are fighting with a disabled plane, you can cancel the warning and continue at your discretion. If you have a perfectly serviceable plane in a cavok sky with light winds, and you get that caution, it should wake you the hell up and get you focused on the problem.

Cancelling the warning still requires an action whilst you're in the middle of a problem with probably dozens of other warnings going off.

I'd be very surprised if this crew didn't at least get a 'SINK RATE' EGPWS warning.