If we examine the direct & indirect causes of recent accidents, loss of situational awareness (perhaps caused at least partially by lack of much recent hand-flying ) features very heavily.
Thinking of Turkish in AMS/AF over the Atlantic / Asiana in SF . . if these guys were in the habit of sometimes disconnecting everything & flying (airspace & weather permitting) a bit of raw data in all phases of flt, these accidents would be less likely.
This "engage at 1000' disengage at 500' " mentality is great for freeing up some brain capacity for monitoring, but it doesn't half erode the hand/eye coordination that we are supposed to possess when the sh1t hits the fan.
A few raw data ILS's on the nice days just before the PC are a stark reminder of how difficult it gets if we allow a skill to deteriorate.
Whilst I agree that a 500'/1000' gate will save more incidents than it causes, it is nice to have had the skills in the past to have perhaps safely operated outside that cosy envelope.
Visuals at night rolling wings level below 300' may sound cowboyish, but it is very satisfying to have (had
) that level of coordination before OFDM put a stop to it. Makes a visual into the setting sun on 22 at Nice less of a toil than I found it recently too.
Perhaps years of pushing it a little are also beneficial when it comes to deciding if a particular approach is "on" or not. Many times my colleagues are absolutely adamant that it won't work, only to be proved wrong at 500'/1000'. It is by no means that I am smarter than them, merely that having seen what is & isn't possible, from the era when we were free to find out for ourselves, I have perhaps developed a more enhanced perception of what the machine is really capable of.
I am all for SOP's to protect us from ourselves, but still advocate that thinking (& operating) outside the box, when treated as a skill to fall back on, rather than as an everyday modus operandi, can save our sorry asses when we do have to use it. Airline training Dept's also need to waken up to the fact that they are breeding a generation of systems operators for whom a simple visual is rapidly becoming a "non-normal" & that just ain't right.
Ref Iberia, whilst decelerating approaches are perhaps SOP, I would imagine respecting some stabilisation gate is also in there. Whether they did respect that or not isn't the root cause of this ( & indeed could have exacerbated it if they had performed a GA from low level) lack of SA from the Tower would be 1st on my list.