Originally Posted by
tartare
So... at the risk of incurring the wrath of the `wait for the investigation' crowd - what does the hive mind think may have happened here?
Could this have been an incorrectly flown approach?
That would seem hard to believe given how capable anyone flying a $100m jet should be...
Or some sort of power degradation, or weird microburst thing off the back of the deck at the last second?
Just curious...
There is a lot in their earlier video on the same channel regarding how carrier landing training & qualification has been dumbed down following huge incremental improvements in the degree of automation of the carrier landing procedure.
With the F-4 and F-14, it was pretty much all pilot skill with constant control adjustments - from the F/A-18 onwards, the degree of automation has been vastly increased leading to a completely different prioritisation of the information the pilot is scanning.
They all agree there is something badly wrong with the approach - which could have been caused by any of / a combination of the following:
- Out of parameters by so great a margin that automatic systems did not take over correctly.
- Failure of the automatic systems and the pilot failing to notice and react in time or noticing and having insufficient time to react.
- Spool up time on the engine when Mil Power applied.
- Helmet information problem.
Note in the PLAT video how the Wave Off signal "W" has been activated before the LSO can even finish shouting Power for the first time as it is going badly wrong so quickly.