Originally Posted by
SpazSinbad
Hang on. "...Have we forgotten to teach go arounds recently?" Who is suggesting this? It seems the mishap pilot has been benched because he did not wave off compounded by all the reasons in the accident report to qualify as PILOT ERROR. I don't know if he has a chance to come back but Naval Aviation has many stories (many not public and historical) about pilots not qualifying as deck landers for one reason or another. Some were able to get back to being qualified after more training. Them's the breaks of naval air. I'm reminded of a Super Hornet Senior CAG pilot punching out at night behind the CVN because he thought he was in auto throttle when he wasn't. A PLAT video shows the ejection.
Have we forgotten to teach go arounds recently? I don't think I am "suggesting" that, I am stating that as an observation of what we are seeing people occupying the window seat while relying on automation to do the job. I would have been happy not to see a CAG jettison his ride in there brine, nor read of Elgin's high speed pass from a tight fitting helmet, or a known deteriorating energy state for unrecognised error. This is not isolated to a fleet or service, the airlines have an irreducible level of USAs that occur and have clear wave off policy, yet our drivers continue and land. Expectancy seems to rule the roost.
Years ago, driving a 777 all night to get to 24R @ LAX, beautiful morning, (it's so-CAl..) youngster PF. traffic, normal LAX lineups. Passing 1,000', guy in front misses the only available HS exit that doesn't have a SW tail stuck on it, yet slows down and taxies at a crawl, with the only free off ramp the 90 at the end. Cockpit chat, "expect this to be a GA..." my youngster comments, "... but we are stabilised.....". @ 400', I call "G/A" to the guy on the controls, and tell ATC we are going around. Pleasant scenic of Marina del Ray in the tight RH pattern. Question from approach, " from tower, what was the reason for the G/A?", Hmmm... "noise abatement". "huh?" "noise abatement, there was a plane on the runway, didn't want to make a big noise". It isn't just the flight crew that get target fixation, or task saturation, or helmet fires. The activity we do needs constant comparison of desired state to actual state, to detect the slip. We have a natural confirmation bias from prior successes that the situation we have is not that bad or is salvageable, assuming we actually know we have a slip between expected and actual conditions. Having a helmet fire is not unusual or unexpected, it becomes a problem when the 1st person participant doesn't recognise the overload conditions and act to reset the situation to one where they aren't leaving teeth marks on the elevators.