Asiana flight crash at San Francisco

[HPSOV L]

Caber:

That's a fair point, I should clarify that I am really talking about a visual approach without aids involving some sort of base turn to finals.
Actually, I think the pilots in question should not have been particularly challenged by this approach, after all they had a long final and probably had a VNAV reference as you say.
In my opinion it all went south in a matter of seconds when they failed to notice the autothrottle abnormality (or unusual mode) when increasing pitch to intercept the correct profile.
Thus visual approach skills are a bit of a red herring in this case (although it was untidy).
The problem is more failure to monitor and detect an undesirable aircraft state.


Bloggs:

Hey, I don't write the syllabus! I take your point although I don't think every 6 months in the sim gives you anywhere near the proficiency a regional pilot gets. Yet ATC in the States tend to treat us the same.