The latent failure in this incident was the SOP of the company to change the RW34 altitude to 380'. It is as simple as that. This was the root cause of the incident.
Who the hell derived an SOP to complicate a quite simple visual maneuver by adding 50' to the RW34 waypoint in the FMC to produce a more accurate VNAV path for a "VISUAL" procedure?
On a visual procedure do you really need to have an accurate VNAV path to within 50' over the threshold?
How this SOP to alter the FMC altitude was derived, approved and implemented by flight ops management is what needs investigating.
This incident has very little to do with the operating crew.
The crew were following utterly ridiculous policy and resultingly made a simple error by putting the 380' at the runway extension waypoint instead of the threshold. An obvious potential threat with such a flawed and unnecessary SOP.
To me this potentially indicates an immature organisational structure within flight operations management where policy is implemented with little understanding or review of the potential adverse outcomes of seemingly innocuous standard operating procedures implementation.
Last edited by Potsie Weber; 29th Oct 2013 at 14:11.