As far as the Birmingham incident is concerned:
The aircraft was on a private flight from Voghera, Italy to Birmingham Airport. It was being flown by the chairman of a business with the intention of attending a meeting in Birmingham; he departed Voghera at 0843 hrs. En-route he stopped at Angers, France and Antwerp, Belgium to collect members of his staff who were also to attend the meeting.
Addional external pressure factors to land at the intended destination.
That's a classic one in risk-management.
There were NOTAMs in force at Birmingham Airport in respect of the replacement of the Runway 15 ILS and availability of navigation aids; these were not noted by the pilot prior to commencing the flight to Birmingham.
Unaware of the need to fly a NDB approach, considering how he flew it he was out of practice. Flew the approach between 177 and 200 (!) knots. I have no expereince in a TBM but that is outrageous, even for a pilot very experienced on type, which he was not. If you look at his vertical profile he was 700 feet too high at some point.
The radio hickup should have been his last "warning flag" out of three:
- Unexpected approach for the ILS being out of service
- Unstable approach, at some point 700 feet too high
- Unable to contact tower
At this point he should have initiated the missed approach and contact the radar facility.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the rules for Comms failure, IFR or VFR.
He never checked the frequency, never switched back to approach and never tried Comm 2.
At 180 kts and 7 miles he had 2:20 to sort himself out before touching down.
At 120 kts and 7 miles that would have been 3:30.
Data recorded on the TBM suggests that the pilot became visual with the runway at about 600 ft aal (900 ft amsl) and at a range of about 1.3 nm from the threshold. When interviewed, he was unsure of the point at which he became visual but the position indicated by the data appears to be reasonable. He configured the aircraft for landing with the gear and first stage of flap, waited for the speed to reduce below the full flap limit speed of 122 kt and then selected landing flap. He visually checked that the runway was clear while correcting the aircraft’s flightpath and then landed. The tower controller assessed that the TBM touched down abeam the Bravo intersection, about 270 m from the displaced threshold and 170 m short of the main touchdown markers.
All of this at 1.3 miles. That airplane should have been configured for approach at 7 miles.
On vacating the runway the TBM pilot contacted Ground on the #1 radio without difficulty.
That's his last nail in the coffin right there.
Ref the incident in question, without a positive clearance I would have gone around myself but I have some sympathy for the pilot. We all misdial frequencies from time to time.
I agree with you, however the consequences are sometimes much more serious then other times.
We all make mistakes, even nice people. This case there could have been 50 fatalities for something that would have been clearly avoidable and is a matter of stupidity and arrogance. Clearly a pilot overstepping his skill boundaries by a mile.
he gained a stand alone FAA Private Pilot’s certificate in the USA in December 2006. He completed his Instrument Rating (IR) at the same time and last renewed it in June 2010 in Italy. He was required to fly an NDB approach during his initial flight test but was not required to fly one during his renewal test. The TBM pilot could not recall flying an NDB approach between his initial IR test and the incident.
He should never have attempted this approach or gone missed on the third thing going wrong.
I am no drama-queen but a Q400 full of fuel, that could have been 50 fatalities.