NeilKI
I recall a Turkish 737 with 3 crew burying itself in a field short of AMS.. Autothrust took some of the blame, even with a clear error indicated on the PFD. -They were behind the aircraft.
A 777 crew who clearly recognized and safely landed an aircraft from a Low Energy situation. -They were ahead of the Aircraft
And now a 777; in all likelihood behaving exactly as designed (though the design may now be improved -FLC behavior et al) spread all over SFO and CNN.
The crew appear to have been several seconds behind the jet
ULH is challenging, and both B&A have made huge inroads into reducing that stress and increasing safety, however, the notion proposed here by several; that a visual landing in a Wide Body jet in VMC on a 2+mile runway is approaching the limits of their skill set..
I fear releasing the 12 hour student to do same at another Californian Airport was a grave mistake..
Thousands of crews have operated hundreds of Aircraft into SFO, and very few of them clipped the sea wall and killed people. it's unfortunate our profession is being brought into disrepute; especially having to explain the trainer/student scenario on this trip, clearly it's a shock to the general public, though i suggest the situation for surgeons may not be dissimilar.
Coward & Burkhill always looked good after 038. They look even better today..
Flight safety is a matter of probabilities. Most of the systems that you fly are 10^-7 reliable. That does not mean they will always work it means that they have a low probability of failure. Pilots are some of the least reliable parts of the system - read NASA ASRS for a few hours and you will realize that. It is essential to realize that you may screw up and that is the reason the system is 10^-7 and not 10^-8 it is also why the PM should be watching like a hawk. The more approaches that are made the more likely the one in 1000.000 error will occur. It is a straight numbers issue.
Inadequate flight crew monitoring has been cited by a number of sources as a problem for aviation safety. In a review of 24 Controlled Flight Towards Terrain (CFIT) accidents, the International Civil Aviation
Organization found that in half, the “crew did not monitor properly” (ICAO, 1994). The National Transportation Safety Board determined in a special study of crew-caused air carrier accidents that 84 percent of the 37 reviewed accidents involved inadequate crew monitoring or challenging (NTSB, 1994).
Following a 1995 accident involving an air carrier collision with trees on final approach to Hartford, Connecticut, the NTSB stated, “If the First Officer had monitored the approach on the instruments...he would have been better able to notice and immediately call the Captain’s attention to the altitude deviation below the minimum descent altitude” (NTSB, 1996). In addition to NTSB data, prior reviews of ASRS reports related to problems associated with poor intra-cockpit relations reveal that many of these reports also involve inadequate monitoring.
http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/docs/rs/56_...Inadequate.pdf
ASRS report volume: Averaging 5,962 reports / mo, 285 per working day