Anyhow this flight was about 30kts slow on final approach.
Odd, I used to chastise my flight students when, on final approach during an instrument approach procedure, they were unable to keep their speed within + / - five knots of the briefed approach speed.
I would presume that professional pilots have slightly tighter standards, given how very important a stabilized approach is. Granted, on a gusty windy day, or with a lot of turb, you may get some variations that you don't normally get, but among professionals the pride of how darned well one flies the approach was once a given.
So the guy not flying in this case, on final, was doing the flying pilot what favors by not singing out "five knots slow" ... and upon not hearing "correcting" ... where then the standard follow up to the first alert that the plane is off of profile ... to make sure the man flying is in the game?
Automatics, all well and good, but if the aircraft is not flying the approach to spec, the pilot must. One needs to be mentally in the game. HAL may get a stray voltage, or a spurious input, or even a spurious human input, and then it's yours!
I don't think I've said anything new here, but I do worry that what I discuss above about pride in precision may no longer be a foundational assumption.
Or maybe I am wrong.
On the bright side, the last few commercial flights I was on were pretty smoothely flown. This includes one where the flight deck crew initiated a go around because they were not happy with the aircraft on the ground encroaching to close to the runway.
Was that HAL, or were the pilots flying the aircraft?
It also includes a crew for American Eagle who were on final into DFW but waved off due to, as they explained over the PA system to us after they were established and getting sequenced in for our approach, that they had been put into an interval that was not sufficient. I got the impression that someone had cut in front of them, or was being sqeezed in, but as I wsan't in the cockpit, I am not quite sure what was the actual situation.
There are still good crews out there, and thanks for that.
