Hmm,
did this pilot make a bad decision? I think not. If it were so we'd be talking about in another thread here.
Strikes me as good planning gone to sh*t by the things we cannot control.
Kudos to the pilot for a safe touchdown.....most of us would get spinchter strain doing it in daylight, let alone with out eyes closed
Just my half cent
Jas
You have got to be kidding me.
- He departed underfuelled - refer Jamairs post, and regardless of whether or not there was an exemption, he still did not carry prudent fuel.
- He could have diverted to New Cal after he received WX advising that he was now below the alternate minima. Had he been departing that point in space with that WX it would have required an alternate or suitable holding fuel. He had neither the fuel nor the brains to divert.
- He arrived with WX that was even worse still, and knowing he was low on fuel he never declared it or an emergency.
- He flew several VOR approaches which are not runway aligned by a mile or two from memory and require a circle to land.
- After a couple of them he tried yet again.
- He had a F/O that was not endorsed on GPS approaches, yet he was, but they never tried one. The RNAV for RWY 11 IS RUNWAY ALIGNED.
- He could have had the the FO call the numbers for distance and height to the SNFWM and flown a 3 degree profile watching the Radar Alt which it should have had, and flown the RNAV as a sudo ILS, and landed the thing on the runway. Might have been hard work and scary but should work.
- Some folk will argue "but that is descending below the MDA why would I be encouraging busting the minima, well he went well below the minima when he crashed it on the water
.
Bloody lucky of the highest order that anyone lived, let alone the patient. Lucky the bloke who spotted them stopped where he did, by rights he had no reason to belive he should have.
So......poor planning, poor in flight monitoring, poor decission making in the cruise and poor decission making once it all turned to sh!t .
So show me one area of this guys flight operation where you can honestly cut him some slack? Maybe commercial pressure prior to departure? If so then he should have diverted in the first instance, and that extra cost would have shoved it right up the ar$e of the company for being so stingy. Of course he did sink a perfectly servicable jet on the bottom of the sea in return.
I too think the ATSB will be getting all manner of requests to distort the facts to minimise the arse covering required for the obvious.
