From
prospector:
To my mind, the fact that one person wore so many caps in the Company is the prime cause of the occurence. One should not have to worry about the cost of a missed approach, flight to the alternate, alternate transport or accommodation for the pax whilst carrying out a difficult approach single pilot. That these factors must have been given undue weight at this time would perhaps be why the nav aids (ADF's) were not even tuned to carry out a missed approach, which, with the actual Wx must always have been a distinct possibility.
As
you stated, that was in
your mind, and is pure unfounded speculation on YOUR part, and which in FACT is contradicted in 1.1.8 of the report, where it states:
During the cruise part of the flight, the passenger seated in the co-pilot seat, who was wearing a headset, had some conversation with the pilot. He subsequently recalled that the pilot had told him that the Christchurch weather was poor, and if it got worse they might end up in Woodbourne.
Why is there the supposition that the pilot of ZK-NCA did
not become visual, when the preceding B737 only just over 3 minutes beforehand had made a landing off the same approach?
Irt the "erratic" flying of the ILS, this is again possible for reasons other than the pilot's handling ability eg. ice on the antennae, scalloping of the signals from the LLZ and G/S transmitter, a change in the aircraft's handling characteristics.
Strangely, there is no mention of any NOTAMs, esp. wrt serviceability of the navaids. From my experience, I know of 2 ILS's that have permanent scalloping of the LLZ - causing the autopilot to wander from side to side all the way down finals when engaged.
I would be interested to know if the LLZ at CHC exhibits this characteristic, and what the pilots of the B737 experienced during their approach.
Perhaps some of you Kiwis who fly regularly into there can comment.
Hudson also raises what may be an extremely important issue - the integrity of the PAPI. For my part, many years ago as an F/O experienced a T-vasis in Launceston simultaneously displaying full fly UP
and full fly DOWN during an approach when there was shallow ground fog.
I haven't seen the same with PAPI.....yet.
As
Hudson notes:
Conditions were ideal for erroneous VASIS light signals - there is plenty of documented evidence of this shortcoming in VASIS/PAPI design. Low fog and mist over the VASIS can cause significant light bending resulting in erroneous signals as seen by the pilot.
Add to that some light drizzle on the plexiglass windscreen, not fitted with external wipers, nor defrost, and the links of the chain join up one-by-one.