PBL:
Just after the Colombians made a preliminary press release, I opined about the accident on my web site. A few months later I wrote an aritcle about the accident for the Air Line Pilot Magazine:
Here is the opinion part of my posting on my web site some 15 years ago:
MY OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS ABOUT THE ACCIDENT:
The instrument approach from the north at Cali, and its essentially identical terminal arrival procedure, proceed via a dogleg approach course. This approach course begins at Tulua VOR and proceeds down a canyon that just has room for standard instrument flight rules (IFR) terminal and approach procedural airspace. The majority of the instrument approach procedure can be flown at as low as 5,000 feet, msl, in a canyon with terrain rising steeply to 13,000 feet to the east, and over 6,000 feet to the west.
The non-radar services provided by the Cali ATC controller were completely correct and in accordance with accepted international standards. Further, the controller knew that it was essential that AAL 965 begin the approach at its mandated beginning: the Tulua VOR. This is evidenced by his repeated requests for a Tulua mandatory position report.
Although it would have been helpful had the flightcrew had intimate familiarity with the terrain along the approach course, such knowledge was not essential to the safe use of the approach procedure. Instead, the crew should have been conditioned to know that an approach without an ATC-provided radar vector must be flown in its entirety. In this case, that meant starting the approach at Tulua VOR without exception.
However, pilots trained in the United States, and who generally fly in the United States have, as a group, been lulled into generally thinking in terms of instrument approaches in a radar-driven ATC environment. Plus, to move traffic, the FAA itself encourages shortcuts with a wink and an approving nod, so to speak. Air carrier simulator and ground school training deals with radar vectors to the approach's final approach course as a matter of routine.
Further complicating the mix are the area nav systems on modern airline aircraft, which make it easy and tempting to always cut the corner, and go: direct, direct. This is fine in a radar enroute environment, but it killed the crew and passengers of AAL 965. Imaginary TERPs containment areas prior to the final approach segment are routinely breached during non-radar operations within the United States. This is because of inadequate training and understanding by pilots, ATC controllers and, today, most of FAA's management, about the essential requirements to fly the entire instrument approach procedure with absolute compliance. Usually, the transgression is forgiven, because there are no rock walls in the area beyond the protected airspace. But, the rocks can exist, as they do north of Cali Airport. As the United States pushes forward with GPS approach procedures, we will see more approaches hugging the canyon walls, so to speak. Yet, the FAA seems oblivious to the problem.
ALPA's Charting and Instrument Procedures Committee (CHIPs) has been urging the FAA for over three years to publish first-rate, instructional and directive information about all the critical nuances of proper flying of the full instrument approach and IFR departure procedures. These efforts have gone nowhere with a unresponsive FAA. Further, the CHIPs Committee forced the FAA to issue a legal interpretation that, excepting a radar vector, an instrument approach must begin at the appropriate feeder fix or initial approach fix (IAF). But, the FAA refuses to publish this requirement in the Aeronautical Information Manual, much less widely disseminate comprehensive guidance to the aviation community. Because of lack of FAA leadership, it is probably a rare air carrier recurrent training program that addresses these IAF issues at all.
Further, the FAA, in a rush to develop 500 new GPS instrument approach procedures, is creating deadly gaps in these new instrument procedures by violating their own criteria. Instead of always tying the beginning and end points of these new instrument approach procedures to the published enroute airway structure, they are leaving deliberate gaps for pilots and air traffic controllers to try to work through. Also, these approach procedures are often designed to encourage shortcuts around required segments, because of lack of flexible design of individual approach procedures.
The FAA is now pointing the finger at American Airlines' training when, instead, they should be pointing the finger at themselves. Like the cancer that had grown in the ATC system that resulted in the TWA 514 crash at Dulles Airport on December 1, 1974, a similar FAA-induced infection can be seen in the recent crash at Cali.
The crew obviously lacked recent, good training on the essential requirement to begin the approach at the IAF. Instead, they took full "advantage" of their modern glass-cockpit, area nav system, and simply punched in the approach fix nearest the airport which, in this case, was a stepdown fix in the final approach segment of the approach. This confusion and lack of essential understanding was compounded by this stepdown fix (ROZO) being the name of the arrival procedure. Thus, the crew established a flight track that, although it converged with the instrument approach criteria's mandated protected airspace, it was outside of that minimal airspace, which resulted in the airplane literally scrapping the canyon wall.
In conclusion, I submit that more professional flight crews than not would have made a similar fatal mistake had they been in this situation. This can be directly laid at the door of an unresponsive, disjointed FAA.