777 Crash and Fire at SFO

[Dispatch Dog]

Hey Gabriel, your PM is full...

[Evan]

So the two people described by the UAL 744 F/O who were stumbling around on the tarmac 1,000 ft or so behind the final resting place of the fuselage, the ones who were ejected from the airplane, were likely the two flight attendants in the aft crew seats...what an ordeal!

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/l...,7205529.story

From that article:

The Washington, D.C.-based Flight Safety Foundation, which advocates for airline safety, said in a recent published report that 97% of the time, pilots do not abort a flight from an unstable approach. The reasons they most often cite are their experience and competency to recover.

This comes as no surprise. As I said in the Yemenia thread, high cockpit hours can just mean bad culture, more well practiced.

[Evan]

Continuing an unstabilized approach is a causal factor in 40 % of all approach-and-landing accidents.

In 75% of the off-runway touchdown, tail strike or runway excursion/overrun accidents, the major cause was an unstable approach.

Source: Airbus

[Dispatch Dog]

It would be an interesting exercise to look at all the approaches into SFO, or any airfield with similar requirments to shoot a manual approach to see how many could be categorized as 'stable'.

If there is a trend relating to Asian carriers or any other group, then this would be a good place to actually start dealing with the issue further.

BA's QAR procedure where pilots performances are reviewed based on actual flight data would surely produce interesting results based on Tom's article.

[lapzdplt]

From all the info provided so far, I would say the captain was a stubborn fool, but not necessarily an incompetent pilot technically. If you look at the graphs at http://flyingprofessors.net/what-hap...-flight-214-2/, it looks like he realized he was way above the glide slope about 4-5 nm out, having turned on to final about 15nm out(see .kml on same site). Assuming the PAPI was working, and the sun shining almost right at it, this may be when he saw it and realized he needed to get down. The graphs appear to show that he then slowed and began a rapid descent, presumably by cutting the engines to idle. At that time he was traveling over 300 ft/second. You could say he finally "landed" about 1000 ft. short. This means if he had just waited another 4 seconds to do what he did a few miles out, he might have made it, so his guesstimate was pretty close. Like I say, he was a fool not to bring back some power let alone do a go around as soon as he saw the lights going red while over a mile out(where he dropped below the path of the UAL plane), and his apparent failure to admit he misjudged cost a lot of people dearly. How much of this was face saving I don't know, but I sure don't buy the pilots excuses about the A/T and airspeed.

[Vnav]

I'm interested by the comment in the NTSB relaease that the pilot lost sight of the runway because of the high AoA.

The pilot who said he lost sight of the runway was the Relief Pilot on the augmented crew who was sitting back in the jumpseat and would have a different viewpoint.

[snydersnapshots]

Looking at the pics on AV Herald.... Why or what is the extra dark area of pavement that has been added between the Google Earth pic and the start of the runway as it exists now ? Could that have fooled the pilot into thinking the runway started there ?

As Gabriel said, that is a displaced threshold and you're supposed to touch down beyond it. That one is relatively short, but at some airports, Newark for example, they can be quite long.

As a pilot, we're aiming for a point farther down the runway--the two large white panels you can see about 1000 feet down the runway are the aim point, so no, the displaced threshold shouldn't have had any effect on where he was looking during the accident. I've landed on the 28's at SFO MANY times over the last several years and to show you how much attention we pay to the end of the runway, I can honestly say I didn't even realize the displaced threshold was there until you mentioned it. I'm sure I saw it during the approach, but never paid that much attention to it since it's so short.

[Dispatch Dog]

The pilot who said he lost sight of the runway was the Relief Pilot on the augmented crew who was sitting back in the jumpseat and would have a different viewpoint.

Ah! That makes sense. Thanks

[sjwk]

So the two people described by the UAL 744 F/O who were stumbling around on the tarmac 1,000 ft or so behind the final resting place of the fuselage, the ones who were ejected from the airplane, were likely the two flight attendants in the aft crew seats...what an ordeal!

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/l...,7205529.story

According to the BBC, the two passengers who died were also found on the tarmac (unless these are the same two?), butthe report also indicates that one may have survived the accident but then been hit by one of the emergency vehicles.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23249012

[obmot]

Ah! That makes sense. Thanks

Would a jump-seat relief pilot have any 'responsibility' per se, or for all intents and purposes will he have no repercussions (career, etc.) if this is in fact found to be pilot error (by the left seat/right seat guys).

No one commented on my Q earlier in the thread re: pilot repercussions, if any, after an incident like this, so the entire issue may be moot in any event.

[Vnav]

Would a jump-seat relief pilot have any 'responsibility' per se, or for all intents and purposes will he have no repercussions (career, etc.) if this is in fact found to be pilot error (by the left seat/right seat guys)..

The pilot inthe jumpseat performing as an XCM or extra crewmember absolutely has the responsibility to point out any unsafe situations.

Even if it's just a pilot from another airline riding my jumpseat I always brief them to speak up if they see me doing something stupid (which is pretty much every leg I fly )and that's a pretty standard brief throughout the industry.

[Leftseat86]

As Gabriel said, that is a displaced threshold and you're supposed to touch down beyond it. That one is relatively short, but at some airports, Newark for example, they can be quite long.

As a pilot, we're aiming for a point farther down the runway--the two large white panels you can see about 1000 feet down the runway are the aim point, so no, the displaced threshold shouldn't have had any effect on where he was looking during the accident. I've landed on the 28's at SFO MANY times over the last several years and to show you how much attention we pay to the end of the runway, I can honestly say I didn't even realize the displaced threshold was there until you mentioned it. I'm sure I saw it during the approach, but never paid that much attention to it since it's so short.

I think the displaced threshold on the 28s is rather recent. You can see where they painted over the old markings in relatively fresh black paint, and recent google earth imagery doesn't show it yet.

[flyerforfun]

Two things.

1) "The power gradient/reluctance to speak up" has been evident in crashes with pilots of other cultures (Tenerife comes to mind as a biggie! THE NUMBER ONE LEAD Air France pilot and poster boy starts his takeoff, FO hints and hints that the runway may not be clear)

Was KLM, not Air France at this time, and the Captain was Dutch, not French.

[phoneman]

After reading this I am never flying Asiana or KAL. I'll even fly Air France if I have to...[/QUOTE]

DITTO!

[Dispatch Dog]

Was KLM, not Air France at this time, and the Captain was Dutch, not French.

Capt Van Zanten. He let me sit in the left seat of his DC8-63 en route to Rio when I was 9 or so. He and many KLM pilots like him helped fuel my passion for aviation.
I have never been able to reconcile the man I met with his actions of that day in 1977.