PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - ATSB report on very low flying Thai Airways B777 at Melbourne.
Old 21st Feb 2013, 23:03
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Old Akro
 
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And 50 seconds to action the go around instruction. That alone should have them denied access to to Australian airports.
I'd be a bit careful about this. We have no transcript to be able to confirm this. It makes me as mad as hell that the ATSB don't do this and I suspect that it is done consciously to avoid scrutiny. Try reading a US NTSB or UK AAIB report to see it done nicely.

In the body copy (not under the go-around sun head) its pretty clear that the pilot initially mis-understood the ATC instruction. At the time of the go-around instruction the aircraft had recovered altitude and was probably at glideslope (hard to tell the way the ATSB present data). I think the ATSB claim of 50 seconds delay is mischievous. I suspect they have taken the time from the ATC first keying the mic to a response in altitude change (ie including engine spool-up time). The report states that the controller issues a second instruction after 35 sec. If it was so critical, why did the controller wait 35 sec for a second call? I question if the pilot heard the first call as an altitude warning and only acted on the second call. If we had a transcript, we could make our own judgements, but we do not. The Mojave Bankstown ATSB report has discrepancies between the draft and final reports which raises questions about whether the ATSB change transcripts to suit the report.

If the second call was the only one the pilot heard as an instruction, then his response time was under 15 seconds, which doesn't deserve the vitriol of the ATSB report.
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