I swore I wasn't going to contribute to this thread anymore, only observe for anything interesting to come out, but...
Now, to get away from the personal vitriol, with a reply to a few earlier comments.
CHARTING Issues
Re discrepancies between Jepp (or other provider, or company special) and FAA charts, obviously the national provider's charts and data reign (even if they have things that could be improved). Jepp, like all authorised chart providers and DB coding and packing organisations, have pretty rigorous quality procedures including independent checking methods. But systems are never perfect and any human interaction also has the potential to contribute error.
Re the 910' vs 915' obstacle just after the IMTOY stepdown mentioned earlier, Jepp sometimes does add margins to obstacles and terrain and/or other obstacles and higher terrain points based on their own data sets. I'm not sure they should (and maybe this varies depending on the LoA they have with the relevant supplying country), but they do. (I have seen this in charts for different countries and have verified through direct correspondence with them on various occasions in this specific regard.)
At the same time, Jeppesen have always been extremely quick to respond to any queries raised with them and in my experience have always been very quick to assist and resolve such issues.
Re any liabilities for errors made by them, well I guess that's probably why (I'm sure) they have pretty big insurance coverage somewhere within the Boeing umbrella.
CHART NIGHT MIN Box
I'd suggest that if you're flying at night, this would be the first box that you'd look at and this would part of your SOP.
Re the Jepp charting discrepancy (at least on the 17-AUG-2012 version posted by Aterpster), while the NIGHT MIN box was blank, Note 2 is a repeat of the FAA note for the Amdt 2A 08-MAR-2012: 'When VGSI inop, procedure not authorized at night'.
So, even 5 months later the chart is unclear in this regard (to me, anyway).
That said, even if the publisher hasn't pick up an error, inconsistency or something that is confusing themselves, it's strange that such a long period can go by before an industry user raises a query. Has this procedure not been used based on a Jepp chart at night before? What of preflight briefings?
UPS Charts & LOC RWY18 at Night
What's more interesting is what
SomewhereFarAway had to say
(bold emphasis is mine):
I'm a Captain with UPS (won't say which fleet) and work in our TC. Currently I am out of the country.
Our company charts for the LOC approach say NA at
night. I'm not talking about the NA at night for lack of VGSI. This is due, undoubtedly to the terrain and black hole effect of night operations.
Also, interestingly, we have an RNAV GPS to 18 which does not have that restriction, but according to NTSB briefings they were using the LOC 18 as reference.
If (and only if) this is the case, and if true that there were no mechanical or aircraft/system-related technical errors (as indicated so far by the NTSB briefings), then sadly it does look as though - for whatever reason - the cause could potentially be related to that same old Distance+Altitude equation (ie, failure to maintain sufficient altitude at the appropriate distance from the landing location).
In the case of the Asiana accident at SFO my personal opinion that it was a bad case of get-there-itis (as well as potentially fear of company reprisals based on FOQA stats) and they should have gone around long before as it was evidently a very unstable approach from 5+ miles out.
In this BMH accident - I'm prepared to await more NTSB findings.
[Gawd it never looks this long when I write this stuff. Sorry
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