Originally Posted by
ACMS
yes agree, now factor in that:-
The CX crew were not in “their own backyard”
The CX crew had flown 12 hours through their night time and were arriving at a circadian low period.
The CX crew may only do 2 to 3 PF sectors a month.
The CX crew have to deal with many many different ATC systems all over the World and cannot be expected to be familiar or current on SFO’s quirky procedures that they may only be exposed to once every six months.
The UA crew are exactly the opposite, flying a LOT of sectors in their own backyard and probably frequently into SFO.
This is exactly why SFO ATC should NEVER use this type of visual approach with foreign Long Haul carriers....... ever.
Some countries ATC will not allow visual approaches by foreign Carriers into their Airports following previous incidents for exactly the above reasons I mention above.
Except the initial clearance wasn't for a visual approach...First clearance is to intercept the LOC 28L from a 310 hdg. If that had been done correctly it would have resulted in a subsequent clearance for the whole ILS28L. The LOC was overshot and CX was ASKED if they were able to continue visually, cx said yes, atc gave the clearance for the visual. Clearly autopilot was never disconnected and the cx pilot was turning knobs fixating in getting a clearance for an ILS (cx asking if they cleared for the ils, pilot asking has a different accent from the one who did the radio up until then).
The problem is clear, how fixated we are in automation, how every approach needs to come down to an ILS or an RNAV RNP because God forbid we can't identify a glide slope fluctuation and manually correct it. Too many people flying without confidence in their own skills and this is the result.
Fatigue?No sorry, usually this flt is a 2 FO's set up, with a proper relief crew. Unless they had a different crew complement....
Visual approach too complicated? All ATC asks in SFO is to maintain visual separation with a preceding traffic. We don't fly the Tip Toe or Quiet Bridge visuals, they clear us for an ILS "and please don't overtake the plane in front". ATC has done all the separation beforehand, all the pilot has to do is to maintain it.
Majority of the airports in the US are always at capacity. Asking to have a 5 nm separation on the ILS and be the only one in the area only cause we are a foreign carrier is naive and makes us look bad.
There are different levels of automation, and sometimes we gotta bring it down a notch, but crews are too scared to do it.
That being said, I would expect the UA pilot to get some flak for not responding to an RA, that's just bad. As far as I know, according to the FAA, an RA requires immediate notification to the NTSB, so at some point in the future we may read something official about this