Originally Posted by PAXboy
If air crew, ATC and others involved, felt that someone was going to kick their backside - then rules might be followed.
I realise, of course, that the chances of this happening are effectively zero. I know that CAAs around the world have not got the money and people to even begin to hold the tiger by the tail. In this specific case, I hope that all the staff of the carrier will have got a very nasty shock and that the crew will be made an exhibition. The FAA ought to be jumping on them to see why their Cpt failed and what other procedures of theirs might be failing. They won't of course and I know that this ideal is from an old fashioned world!
Well, I wouldn’t be so sure of that outcome. While I’m sure to many observers it seems like the National Aviation Authority (NAA) for a particular country either does too much or not enough on any given situation … probably the curse of all regulators. But here, I think I’m on fairly solid ground saying that the regulator in any state would look at this type of occurrence as something that warrants additional scrutiny. As this occurred in the US, this incident (perhaps “accident” depending on the dollar value of any damage) will likely have the FAA focusing a lot of interest in not only the training background of the pilots involved (notice the plural) but on their respective operating backgrounds as well. Additionally, I would be quite surprised to learn that there was
not a review of what that specific airline trains their pilots regarding flare and flare attitude and what, if anything, these pilots are told regarding any differences with less or more flaps during final through the flare and touchdown. Additionally, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn there was an “informal” discussion encouraged between the assigned Principal Operations Inspector (POI) and each respective US certificated airline regarding the same training issues. The FAA Flight Standards personnel are mostly pretty competent chaps who know that an airplane lands most safely and surely from a level flight attitude – which, while varying from airplane to airplane, almost never exceeds 4 to 6 degrees of positive pitch attitude for any airplane. I certainly wouldn’t want to be the next US airline training manager to have a pilot flare an airplane to 13 degrees of pitch attitude (17 degrees AoA) and then allow the airplane to settle on its tail!