Originally Posted by
ATC Watcher
Common ! Do you have all the facts to pass this kind of judgement ? you ( and I ) were not in that cockpit , you are just reacting emotionally to a Youtube video.
As to SOPs, yes there is a bible , but have you ever flown in Africa ? I mean as PIC ? You will quickly learn there are SOPs and heir unwritten deviations called " local best practices" and then there are situations that fall outside those 2 categories in which either experience or luck are neceessary to succeeed. , Sometimes it is choosing between 2 evils. and you generally choose the least dangerous one.
FUNC is not in Africa, and TAP is not a Bush outfit I grant you that . I have no idea as to why this TAP PIC did decide to continue the landing well passed the touchdwn area instead of going around , but he or she has made a judgement that worked in the end, Whether that judgement was made using experinece , or was it luck , you and I do not know.
I am giving him or her the benefit of the doubt and I would not have liked to have been in this situation.
5 years PIC ACMI wet lease in the EU and north Africa. 6 years PIC corporate north & Central America. Now 8 years PIC FAA 121. 25+ years total. And not calling you out personally, more the post about it being " a successful landing" above I can't find.
"working in the end"/"successful" are not the measurements to be used to judge ourselves. I am pretty sure that on every GA I have done on an ILS in my career, we would have successfully landed, just like I am pretty sure, if I would have ignored every RA or GPWS warning, there is a good chance I would have survived.
And that is the problem. I have flown maybe 10000 flights total in all those years. There are 100000 flights per DAY. If all of us would take what we perceive as an acceptable risk once a year, and it goes wrong 1% of the time, it would still lead to an unacceptable raise in the number of crashes. And I am not saying I haven't done the same. But condoning it is not the right thing.