Originally Posted by
harry the cod
Hamish McBush
Many years ago, a Britannia Airways 737-200 carried out an approach in poor visibility into Leeds Bradford. The crew consisted of a very junior and inexperienced Second Officer, with a highly experienced Captain, ex RAF and a reputation for abruptness and high autocracy on 'his' flight deck. The Captain went below minimums and the Second Officer called G/A twice. The Captain then initiated a G/A and called for gear up. He then saw the lights and proceeded to dive for the runway after initiating a pull up and even after calling for the retraction of the undercarriage. The aircraft landed hard, very hard, and many panels opened within the cabin including masks and luggage bins. What saved them, was under the huge stress of the event, the S/O had selected OFF instead of UP and the gear had remained down.
Never, ever try to predict human behaviour in unplanned and stressful situations. The only thing that's certain is uncertainty.
Harry
And as a result BY changed its ops manual to state that once a go around had been called it will not be countermanded (unless the safety of the aircraft is at risk) Very sound.
I won't speculate on the cause of this accident but a number of issues I have read on this thread really worry me:
The suggestion that the climb performance of the 777 was poor at MLW on TWO engines, is nonsense. After all, all twins can produce a climb on ONE engine at RTOW. On two engines at MLW climb performance is excellent even at plus 50 c, at least on all the twins I have flown. Can't imagine the tripler is any worse.
Any competent pilot should monitor that, even if AT is engaged and TOGA or any other mode is active at a critical phase of flight, that the thrust levers are moving to give the required thrust ! Hand on thrust levers and if you need a lot of thrust in a hurry, firewall the levers, the ECUs will handle the acceleration and the engines can take it !Even the old hydro mechanical AFRCUs would always control engine acceleration, and as QFI I have seen a lot of that after slams !
Still can't understand the hostility towards hand flying when the environment and workload allows to maintain handling skills and instrument scan.
My company SOP was "centre to command " at 1000 feet. Sometimes in a quiet ATC environment I would hand fly to/from say, 20,000 ft or so. I was sometimes asked why. My answer to this was that one day, I might, just might, have to fly a manual, single engine, non precision approach to minimums at 3 am in the morning after significant systems and,/or engine failure. I was not going to be unable to cope, and hand flying kept up my flying skills, just like my manual flying days on Canberras. ( no ap or at). Autopilots don't get out of practice, human pilots certainly do !
I make these comments, long since retired, but after almost 40 years of flying on 3 four jets and 5 twin jets so shoot me down if you wish !