Quote:
'All procedures are safe if flown correctly'
Trouble is non-precision approaches are often not flown correctly.
There's a long and sorry history of aircraft crashes from this kind of approach, and they will continue to happen until every runway has an ILS and every aircraft and airport has the necessary safety filters.
Two such systems could have saved Crossair 3597 from disaster:
Ground radar based automatic approach altitude deviation warning, which should have been installed on all runways at Kloten following the Alitalia crash but was not. It could have been replaced by human monitoring, but the responsible ATC controller had gone home early.
Enhanced GPWS, which had been fitted to most Swissair aircraft at the time of the accident but not to those of Crossair. I remember flying some trial approaches in an A320 simulator following the CRX profile. 'Terrain Terrain' came in about 30 seconds before impact and 'Whoop Whoop Pull Up' about 20 seconds before; enough time for even the mentally incompetent and physically exhausted Captain Lutz to abandon his criminally negligent attempt at a non-precision approach, and for the pathetically submissive First Officer Loehrer to intervene. They have paid the ultimate price for their foolishness, I hope that others who have been found responsible will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.