Originally Posted by
vilas
Vessbot I disagree on 2 of the three accidents you quoted. Indian airlines and Asiana both were visual approaches manually flown. There was no mode confusion because even to get confused you need to know what's going wrong. They were flying an approach without ever looking at the speed or ROD. The IAS in Indian case was 26kts below Vapp and in Asiana case was 31 kts below Vapp. They would have crashed even in a Dakota(actually more easily). The tragedy is both were under command check and not copilot release check.
I don't follow. If you know what's wrong, then you're not confused, you're the opposite: you accurately know the situation. Confusion is if you think the automation setup will result in something different than what it's actually resulting in. And it can come in 2 flavors: first, not even knowing anything is wrong and merrily blundering toward CFIT; and second, knowing
something is wrong but not understanding exactly what or why, and usually accompanied by an attempt to fix by frantically pushing buttons and twisting knobs.
Unless you think that the Asiana pilots
intended to be 31 knots slow, or the Indian pilots
intended to be 26 knots slow, (and
intended to level at a selected altitude 2300 feet underground) then how can you say that they were not confused about the modes, or what the modes should have resulted in?
Their failure to monitor their airspeed didn't come from a generic laziness toward monitoring (although it was part of it), it came very specifically from a conditioned expectation that the automation mode (AT only, yes AP was off) would have it taken care of. I don't see how this would happen in a Dakota.
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Actually we disagree with all 3 and not 2, because by process of elimination, it appears that you think the 3rd one (Flash 604) was mode confusion, while I think it's not. They accurately understood that the AP wouldn't engage (or would quickly disengage after trying), but they did not accept that this was forcing them to fly the plane, and instead placed all their mental energies into continuing to try to engage it as it completed a wingover into the ocean.