For either the 737 or the 777, that should have resulted in a climb and a safe go-around. Approach to satll is something we DO train for.
This is not correct, when you train for that you stop trimming the aircraft well before reaching the stick shaker, which wasn't the case for the Turkish. A lot of people comment on the fact that they didn't use their fully workable engines, which is totally incorrect and shows an obvious lack of understanding of the report. Let's have a look at the official report instead of reading absolutely wrong comments made by so called professionals (
the bold characters are my comments):
http://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/docs/ra...ary_EN_def.pdf
According to radar data the localizer of the instrument landing system was intercepted at approximately 5,5 NM from the runway threshold. The standard procedure is that the glide path is approached from below. Because of the shorter line up for the runway at 2000 feet the glide path had to be approached from above. This is a major factor in this incident as on a normal interception thust needs to be reduced while in this particular case thrust had to be added in order to stabilize the glide. Many accidents occurred during similar interceptions from above. Once the localizer was intercepted the crew selected, by means of the vertical speed modus of the automatic pilot, a descent speed of 1400 feet per minute to catch the glide path. The autothrottle system entered the retard mode, and the thrust levers were moved to the idle position and remained in retard modus. In order to conduct the interception from above the crew had to select a vertical speed. While engines were on idle the aircraft was still accelerating due to the Vz. The glide path was intercepted at approximately 1330 feet and the aircraft was now also at the correct altitude for the approach of runway 18R. The aircraft speed had during the time the aircraft was in vertical speed modus increased to 169 knots, and decreased again when the aircraft followed the glide path. Once the crew had intercepted the GS (at 1330'!) and recovered a normal Vz the speed started to decrease towards Vref.
At approximately 900 feet , the flaps were selected to 40 by the crew they most probably had to check the speed for that... and the speed continued to decrease. At approximately 770 feet, the crew set the selected airspeed to 144 knots. At that moment the actual airspeed was 144 knots. As the speed was decreasing toward 144 kts the crew selected it as the approach speed, expecting the AT to adjust thrust to maintain it. This demonstrate that they were monitoring speed a 770 feet on the contrary of what many people wrongly believe. Reduced thrust between 2000 and 770 feet seemed absolutely normal as they were too fast due to the high Vz GS interception from above.The autothrottle system should have maintained the speed selected by the crew but, with the thrust levers at idle, speed continued to decay. Because the automatic pilot wanted to maintain the glide scope, the automatic flight system, in response, commanded increasing nose up pitch and applied nose up stabiliser trim.
The stick shakers activated at approximately 460 feet which is only 310 feet below the selection of the approach speed... meaning that they only had 310 feet (about 30 seconds) to notice that speed was dropping without adjustments from the AT. This is far from the 2000 feet of unmonitored descent described by some "professionals" of this forum. , warning the crew that the angle of attack (AOA) was too high. The data of the digital flight data recorder show that the thrust levers were immediately advanced but moved back to idle.The crew immediately reacted by manual thrust adjustment while the AT immediately neutralized it. When the thrust levers returned to idle, the autothrottle was disengaged. Whether these actions were performed by the crew or automatically is still under investigation. At that moment, the speed was approximately 110 knots, the pitch angle was approximately 11° Aircraft Nose Up (ANU) and the recorded AOA was approximately 20°.
At 420 feet the autopilot was disengaged by the crew and attempts were made to recover the correct flight position by pitching the aircraft. 40 feet below stick shaker activation the crew decided to disconnect the AP and pitch down to preserve speed. At 310 feet a negative nose position was reached of 8° beneath horizon. 8 degrees of nose below horizon shows that the aircraft responded to the pitch down command from the crew. Almost simultaneously the thrust levers were advanced to their most forward position after which the aircraft ascended somewhat and the nose position increased.For the second time in few seconds the crew acted on the thrusts levers which finally gave full thrust as the AT was disconnected. This full thrust adjustment caused the aircraft (which was trimmed to minimum speed) to climb due to the engines momentum. The combination of full thrust and trim position created a pitch-up movement which most probably exceeded the elevator's nose down inputs. At that point pushing on the stick wasn't enough and the attitude increased again. According to the last recorded data of the digital flight data recorder the aircraft was in a 22° ANU and 10° Left Wing Down (LWD) position at the moment of impact. The aircraft stalled as a result of the high induced attitude.
What strikes me in this report is that the crew had to conduct a GS interception from above with excessive speed in IMC (interception from above at 1330' with 169 kts). There is a major ATC factor in my opinion. Following that interception the crew obviously monitored speed as low as 770' since 144 kts was selected during the deceleration. While the crew expected the AT to adjust speed kept decreasing until stick shaker, which occurred 310' lower. This didn't give them much time to realize the AT wasn't working properly and this is far from the 2000' of unmonitored speed commented by "professionals" who obviously didn't even read the report. As the stick shaker was activated the crew applied full thrust manually (which came back to idle), disconnected the AP and pitched down. Realizing the levers went back to idle the captain re-adjusted the thrust to the maximum and the aircraft entered an uncontrolled pitch up movement leading to the final stall.
In any case they crashed without using fully serviceable engines, they crashed with engines at full power which basically caused the stall due to the extreme pitch up trim position. Engines were set to full power for the last 300 feet, it wasn't a matter of a basic go around. If the BA guys had recovered full thrust after stick shaker activation they would also have enjoyed a roller coaster trip.
In regard to the BA038 they basically achieved the worst gliding performances they could. Not only their aircraft flew a wrong path aiming way too far beyond the threshold, it also wasted all of its energy to fly at an extremely low speed which is definitely giving the poorest gliding performances, especially with headwind. Reducing to minimum speed is basically how you achieve the shortest gliding distance. You don't need to be an astronaut to understand that (even if the space shuttle guys are doing it for real). Ask any helicopter pilot familiar with autorotations, it's exactly the same thing. If you add to that the fact that they still had little available thrust, flying at best glide speed would have made the most effective use of this available thrust while flying slower increases minimum required thrust. Again, this is very basic.
Again, for those who are little bit slow to understand, I'm not judging any crew, but I think it's excessive to fully blame the Turkish crew without proper understanding of the accident while calling the BA guys heroes as they achieved the worse gliding performances they could...