Originally Posted by
bunk exceeder
Asiana in SFO kind of springs to mind. Still in VNAV PTH, so autothrottles sort of in but not really, and no ILS so not tracking the glideslope when the autothrottles would have definitely been in like every other approach always. But the handling pilot somehow didn’t know what was going on, nor did the other three notice, where hands on throttles would have helped and there should have been been, and always should be an obsessive focus on airspeed. And vertical speed for that matter.
That’s not quite what happened. The trainee was slightly high on approach and had selected FLC mode to increase the descent rate. When he then input the Missed App Alt into the MCP the aircraft started to climb to the new, higher altitude. He disconnected the autopilot and closed the thrust levers manually to regain the profile from above. In doing so the auto throttle did an
indirect mode change from speed controlling to HOLD which, as we all know in hindsight, will not wake up.
As in the Turkish case the situation was coincidentally masked by intercepting the glide path from above and it occurred at the end of a long duty.
Now years later Boeing is fixing the HOLD trap in new aircraft, but a simple EICAS caution should have been introduced years ago.
Ditto the Dubai 777 crash due to TOGA confusion. They should’ve introduced aural feedback for inactive switch selection but they haven’t.
So, given FOQA fear g/a are the norm these days this accident will happen again. In fact it came damn close a couple of weeks ago.
The airmanship argument is a distraction that gives the manufacturers a free pass.