For those who picked a anomaly with my recent posts and quotes, here is what I posted (it had been deleted by the mods):
Blaming individuals is emotionally more satisfying than targeting institutions.
This came from one of the links PEI_3721 posted.
To Olasek and Coagie, I ask you this. Given that you both believe that blaming the institution
is easier than the individual by letting the pilots off the hook, what then is your solution to the accidents where apparently incompetent pilots crash perfectly serviceable aircraft (or ones that have temporarily U/S ASIs) into the ground? Are you happy that they have been removed from the gene pool and won't do it again? How many others are there out there that do not deliberately violate SOPs but are still going to have a accident and what are you going to do to find them and stop them having that accident?
Originally Posted by PEI_3721
I prefer not to overuse ALT SEL; it has great safety value in setting up an approach procedure and after a missed approach.
The only thing we do differently is to set it on the MDA (catchbasket). We don't use it down the approach.
Perhaps your technique is more focused on conducting the (NP) approach – ‘how go’s it’, correct for accuracy; whereas my view is more of a gross safety check, which in some circumstances (see previous link) requires an immediate climb to a safe alt / profile.
Not quite: the aircraft is positively controlled down that profile. I think the whole concept of starting at the FAF and simply flying a constant rate of descent or FPA and hoping you won't clip steps or get to the MDA prior to the MAPt is fundamentally flawed.
If in this accident the procedure was commenced at an incorrect range, which resulted in being consistently low (assuming a constant approach), the error might have been detected by an intermediate check of altitude and range. This method has some consistency with crew activity at MDA where altitude must dominate.
When and where the error could be detected depends on the choice and number of alt/range entries, which in this case was 2, BASKN or IMTOY, where the latter might have been too late.
That is precisely why having and using a detailed distance/altitude scale is superior; profile errors are picked up immediately they manifest themselves instead of waiting until a "not below" step comes up on the chart. A couple of those "TAWS Saves" involved crews that did not use the distance/altitude profile, even though it was published on their charts.