From reading the last few posts I believe this was a simulated CATIII autoland, more than likely required for the new trainee so as to have the observer (possible safety pilot) released.
Nowhere is it said they were doing a CatIII Autoland.
CatIII Autoland training is done in the simulator, not on the line.
I believe the "Trainee" occupying the right seat was fully qualified after initial Simulator Training and was probably doing "Line Training" to complete his qualification. Or it may have been Annual Recurrent Line training.
The pilot in the jumpseat appears to have been un-qualified on this type and was only observing for educational purposes.
Dimiair - you'd better get in touch with Boeing to correct their MOM. PS Flare and retard are individual functions. Try leaving the A/T in to touchdown on a single channel/?visual? sometime.
FM - RadAlt normally indicates about -4 on the ground.
This all goes back to basic IFR-flying. Keep your hands on the throttle and look at your instruments Thatīs the danger of full automation and of airlines who wants their pilots to fly on autopilot until the end...
Itīs incredible that they didnīt notice the idle thrust for 100 sec and didnīt see that the speed was dropping to 40kts below the approach speed.. What were they doing??
According to the Turkish newspapers the pilots were heroes...
You have a good point - just misreading but NO FAIL flag.
So, flying on Autopilot B, suppose the right, on LOC and GS until stick shaker with the throttle retarded due to inputs from the misreading left radio altimeter.
In the cockpit 3 people were present, the captain, seated left front. To his right was seated the F/O for whom this was a training flight. (The F/O held all licenses/qualifications) Another extra F/O was seated in the middle of the cockpit.
Some will use this accident to defend, with renewed vigour, the elimination of pilots from the flightdeck.
Automation caused the accident. The only problem here was that the pilots did not in time figure out that it happened.
This is almost a copy of the 29th of December 1972, Eastern Airlines flight 401 accident in Miami. Two pilots and a flight engineer trying to fix a bulb and the aircraft parking itself in the Everglades.
... along with 3 asses that didn't feel the change in body angle required to stay on the glidepath.
Oh c'mon captain, we know you fly this exact kit, but in IMC and high workload, when did flying by the seat of your pants creep back as a requirement in commercial aviation??
Many where asking why the AT was doing the Autoland command sequence, while the AP was still tracking the glideslope and not going into FLARE (unannouced in FMA on a single channel approach)
We see here that AT was used in conjunction with AP/B on a single channel approach.
AP/B takes it's radar altitude from LRRA B, that worked fine. AT takes RA only from LRRA A, regardless which Autopilot is enganged. Even during a dual channel approach only LRRA 1 supplies data to the AT, that is because AT is a single channel system.
Anyhow... this was a major f**kup by the crew, sorry to say so...
"Today 4 March 2009 the Safety investigation board issues a warning for the aircraft manufacturer Boeing and its first findings about the terrible accident with the Boeing 737/800 of Turkish Airlines.
In this accident nine people dies (5 passengers and 4 crew) and 80 passengers were injured, of which 28 injured are still in several hospitals.
The aircraft was en route from Istanbul to Schiphol (on Wednesday 25 February 2009) and was expected to land on Schiphol at 10.40 hours.
The Boeing had a normal flight, during which until before the approach no problems have occurred.
In the cockpit there were three persons, the captain, who was seated on the left. To the right a first officer was seated, for whom this was a training flight. (The first officer had all the permits) In addition there was an extra first officer seated in the centre of the cockpit.
De crew contacted the ATC (Amsterdam Radar) at 10.04 hours and is transferred at 10.14 hours before the landing- to Schiphol tower. The tower clears the Boeing to land on the Polderbaan 18R.
De Polderbaan is approached according to the set procedure and without any delay, in which frame the Boeing is cleared to descend to 2000 feet (about 700 meters) and is cleared to set in for the landing towards the Polderbaan.
This descend is executed with the aid of the automatic pilot, which is a usual practice at Turkish Airlines (this method can be executed by everyone, likewise a manual landing can for that matter).
From the voice recorder and the black box, which are both in the possession of the investigation board, it appears that in the approach at 1950 feet an anomaly occurred.
At an altitude of 1950 feet the left radio-altimeter suddenly (indicated and) passed on a change in altitude to the automatic piloting system. Namely that the aircraft was not positioned at an altitude of 1950 feet but at an altitude of minus 8 feet. This change influenced directly the auto throttle system with which more or less power is given during the approach.
The radio altimeter normally measures very precisely in which altitude an aircraft is positioned in relation to the ground and can register this from 2500 feet downwards. As has been said, the left radio altimeter is of great importance for giving the right power in case of an automated landing. A Boeing is equipped with two radio altimeters, a left and a right one. From the black box it shows that this anomaly occurred only in the left radio altimeter.
From the voice recorder it shows that the malfunctioning of the left radio altimeter has been signalled to the crew (namely via the warning signal "landing gear should be put down"). From the preliminary data it shows that this signal was not perceived as a problem. "
Something does not fit - in this case the autopilot did not disengage and the auto throttles did retard???!!
It does fit. It don't think it was a dual AP approach.
AP B was in use. So no disconnect. AT get's it signal from the left RA.
Captain FD's disappear and probably a RA flag. This might have distracted him.
We don't know everything, but we can say one thing. They forgot to fly the plain.
I hope the board will also focus on why the recovery failed after the stickshaker. A lot to learn there. As stated before in a previous post. It's not easy, but with basic flying skills and the knowledge that it is difficult I am quite sure it is possible.
[layman] It seems bizarre to me that in a highly automated environment such as the avionics on a modern airliner we are feeding different radalt values into different systems, allowing them the opportunity to make decisions on the same manoeuvre based on different height data.
Can systems be designed so that both radalts feed into the same system and that a single height is derived from that data? After all, the aircraft only has one height AGL. Comparisons can be done based on the individual values within set tolerances and any mismatch flagged to the crew or to systems so that the feed from a faulty source can be eliminated. All aircraft systems are then singing from the same song-sheet, as it were.
[/layman]
In the cockpit 3 people were present, the captain, seated left front. To his right was seated the F/O for whom this was a training flight. (The F/O held all licenses/qualifications) Another extra F/O was seated in the middle of the cockpit.
For your info, The Trainee as everybody calls him is a Fully Licensed and qualified Co-pilot who has passed all of his tests. The only thing he has not is Line flying experience. What he was doing on this flight and what hundreds of other pilots are doing every day is Line Training. Getting training/experience on the line under supervision of a Line Training Captain. The other Co-pilot on the extra seat in the cockpit (Also called jumpseat) is there for safety reasons. He is the so called Safety Pilot. If the Captain would be unable to perform his duty's he should be able to safely land the aircraft.
Why this safety pilot has not intervened I do not know. This might/could be a Cultural problem though.
Most misinterpretation of the last two pages stems from the sentence
"the authrottle went to "retard" mode and the throttles then stayed at idle"
Most of you mean that it went somehow into an autoland mode.
This isn't necessarily so. AT can also go into retard mode if speed demand is lower than actual. This is the case in LVLCH mode or VNAV approach. 737 rated people please confirm. They were on the GS but that doesn't mean that their AP was tracking the GS! Two different things! If you check the ADS-B data you can see that they never accuratly tracked.
The most probable explanation is that they just forgot that they left the engines in idle. They were doing the checklist and maybe discussing other things. Get real, guys. See the obvious!
And again, the only thing they did wrong was not doing a Go-Around at 1000ft.
The press seem to be touting Rad-Alt failure as the primary reason for this crash..... when it was only a contributory factor. As a Training Captain you have to be capable of doing it all yourself under the arduous condition of actually having someone next to you who is working against you. (It would be easier for the RHS to be empty!)
For whatever reason the approach becomes rushed - I can understand that with the enthusiasm of the Schipol controllers together with such low ILS platform altitudes that can very easily happen.... Anyway the approach is rushed, the Training Captain becomes overloaded, maybe he takes the thrust into his scan at some stage but it is at idle- just where he wants it during a rushed approach.
They continue down the slope- maybe he noticed the RA1 was reading rubbish but they're not Autolanding off this so it should be no big deal. At some stage it all comes together and he sits back and breathes a sigh of relief - he has averted yet another GA from a rushed approach. Unfortunately the thrust is at idle - maybe obvious from the FMA, maybe not.
Whichever way it happened the approach never became stable and should have been thrown away long before the stall warning sounded.
Why did the TC not intervene earlier? I have sat and watched my more inexperienced colleagues make their mistakes in the RHS, some of them have been enough to give a lesser mortal an apoplexy. Perhaps the TC was incapacitated ?
Yes they should have picked it up, but this is not a classic 737 it's a new NG....
What sort of modern airliner design permits a single benign failure of an autoflight system to send the aircraft towards a fatal stall if not picked up?
Was said this happened on two previous flights according to the FDR. Guess they will be looking at this to see the previous crews write ups and what actions were taken concerning this R/A. This R/A failure was only a contributing cause to this accident. Better monitoring and situational awareness could have avoided this. Three sets of eyes and no one noticed the airspeed dropping well below VREF.
The 737 does a single channel autoland as smooth as a dual channel autoland. You just get no mistrim, no FLARE announciation and you don't have the needed redundancy, but it works
System behavior in this failure scenario may be considered a contributing factor, but nothing exempts 2 qualified flight crew and an aviation professional in the middle staling a 737NG on final. This is nothing like the Everglades accident; the P1 inadvertently disconnected the autopilot, the aircraft was under manual (read: no) control. the commonality is lack of situational awareness.
Thatīs the danger of full automation and of airlines who wants their pilots to fly on autopilot until the end...
