Originally Posted by Redgoblin
Thanks to all your responses
Yes it was the Swissair flight 111 in 1998, sorry for the confusion.
The program I saw was from the series on National Geographic TV channel - ‘Air Disasters’.
But still, the captain appeared to have done the right thing, in line with his company procedures and dumped the fuel in order to land safely. It’s probably fruitless for me to say this, but could he have landed heavy, the program highlighted the fact he was strictly by the book, what would you have done in this situation?
The ATC guy also felt guilty afterwards even though he was just following orders, and was also in my opinion just doing his job. Given the fact he didn’t know the situation was getting worse he had no concern to let them land heavy.
The crew acted according to procedures and in my opinion they had not much of a choice. Up until the situation escalated, they had no indication of serious trouble, so they followed the procedures. When the situation did escalate indeed, it happened at a very fast rate which then left them with nothing.
If they had known what we know now, certainly they would have landed heavy (or at least tried to) and certainly not switched the cabin bus off. But they did not, in the opposite, the whole situation was so absurd that they had no CHANCE of even guessing the right thing to do. That is what I meant. There are situations in which the procs won't help you, they might even make a manageable situation worse.