It is probably 10 times riskier to do a minimums approach in heavy rain than a visual approach in good weather. Do we shut down operations until the weather imrpoves or stay on schedule and land? Non precision approaches have been the norm for decades for a lot of airports including San Diego landing west, the normal direction. It isn't any problem but it takes more attention to do it properly.
During my initial IR training (granted, this was 20+ years ago), the very FIRST approaches I was trained to do were non-precision-NDB, VOR - also with circling approaches thrown in for fun. Later on, these were done also at night and in actual wx (fog, light rain)...sometimes down to minimums.
THEN, I moved onto precision approaches, including back course localizer.
On the advice of my instructors, and my examiner, I kept current on ALL approaches either in the airplane with an instructor/safety pilot, OR, booked some time with an instructor in a FRASCA - I completed my 'recurrent' training every 60 days, and kept that up for years.
This was all part 91 before I started flying part 135. Expensive - a little bit...but a heck of lot cheaper than making a hole in the ground! Has training changed THAT much in the past 20 years??
as sarcastic as it may sound, there were not enough 'real' french passports on board...
We unforatunately live in a world where the passport of the person gone amiss is more important than anything else. After all those passports sell the newspapers.
In the case of AF447 don't forget that a lot of speculation is fuelled by the fact that the A330-200 is the basis for a certain tanker aircraft as well...
Maybe our thoughts should be on today's 3 500 people who have and will die in a traffic accident and the aproximate 55 000 who will die of hunger? I know they don't sell headlines, but their deaths are as real as the others.
Well even though you are most likely right, there could be another reason.
With out knowing, there is a possibility that a lot of people suspect that the Yemeni accident will end up being and unfortunate pilot error, even with out having evidence.
The AF447 accident has from the start, had a lot of wide ranging speculation surrounding it, a sense of sad mystery if you will.
Well, Air France 447 has an air of mystery (esp. given that the black boxes may never be recovered) that this flight does not have.
How many individual pieces of debris have been reviewed on the other forum? There isn't as much on this forum. This seems like a more straightforward case but less info is public afaics at this stage.
This plane, in suspect flying condition, crashed on a night nonprecision approach with howling winds. AF447, OTOH, disappeared from cruise, the normally safest phase of flight.
GB
Last edited by Graybeard : 10th July 2009 at 18:03.
Reason: reword
In 1966/67 I was a training captain on 4-engined aeroplanes based in Aden (ODRK).
For 6 months of the year, we were on runway 26 and for 6 months of the year we were on runway 08. Twice a month I would go flying with 3 or 4 F/Os to practice night circuits.
There was never a problem on runway 26 for there were lots of lights and clues for orientation.
Then we would go on to runway 08 and after take-off there were no visual clues for we were over the water immediately after take-off.
Despite the fact that I used to brief all of them before take-off that they should mainly stick to instruments until they had proper visual clues, several of them started turning downwind in a descending turn which would have ended up in a flight into the ocean had it been allowed to continue.
You would be surprised how many pilots will try to fly a visual circuit with no visual clues!
I'm glad you posted what you did. there are such tragedies waiting for those pilots who have not had great instruction...or even bothered to read a few good aviation books.
In my 34 years of flying...I've started to '''fall ''' for illusions. But instruments, and thinking ahead can minimize that sort of thing.
I once flew a circling apch (vfr conditions) into midway/chicago IL, USA. My copilot was very new (though having some 5000 hours) and when I:
1. pre computed my headings for the maneuver
2. had her tune up the ILS to the runway we were circling to, even though we had used the VOR to get to the circling portion.
she said she had never heard of such things. I also declared a min altitude for each segment of the maneuver, promising to join final no lower than X feet at X dme.
I looked out the window only briefly, and after I had stablized on each segment of the circle.
YOU HAVE TO THINK to fly...let's all start thinking, shall we?
Once again folks - this appears to have NOTHING to do with visual or non-precision approaches. Look at the map?
If you extend the downwind leg and slowly lose altitude from the what the visual pattern altitude should be, you end up at the crash site.
As this is a straight course and less likely associated to a turn some other distraction may have happened. Remember the otherwise intact 1011 ending in the Everglades when the 3 man crew was dedicated to get the landing gear ind9cator working.
3m- thank you - the first 'theory' as to how they got there. Plausible indeed, but it does NOT fit with either a 'visual' approach nor a non-precision once they supposedly 'headed off' downwind. This is what I am trying to say - the 'difficulties' of a visual or NPA ar accepted, but in your theory they had 'abandoned' any sort of 'pattern' and would have been wandering aimlessly, would they not?
I'm still not 100% convinced that this accident followed a missed approach. I know that at least one official statement suggested that a go-around had been initiated and I read of one eye-witness who said that the aircraft had 'veered away' in the latter stages of an approach.
Is it possible that both the above referred to another aircraft and not the Yemenia?
The crash site is on the run in to the HAI VOR from the north. If they were following the published approach procedure I would assume that they would aim to arrive overhead the VOR with plenty of terrain clearance then on to the HA NDB to set themselves up for the visual approach just as the approach plates that have been posted in this thread show.
I mentioned QNH/QFE very early on and others have mentioned it too. Could it be that the wrong altimeter setting was chosen which resulted in them descending into the sea before reaching the VOR?
Linear Mode
