It's simple. Cleared to 900 mts. Dial in 900'. Figure out you're not supposed to be there go around.
It is said they descended to 400'-ish agl. Correct, they should not have been there, or anywhere near there at that point. But........ if AB's EGPWS is anything like the B738's first it would have woken up the Rad Alt at 2500'. Every airline I've worked for uses this as a situation awareness alert and has an SOP call for it. However, in my last airline, much to my chagrin, it was treated by F/O's in parrot fashion. Rad Alt says "2500" and the response is "OMG etc." They didn't make a cross check to the Baro to see if it made sense and was as expected. They'd made the SOP call and all was good. Duh.
Secondly, I'm assuming EK had flaps out at 8nm but not gear, so there could have been a "too low gear" EGPWS alert before then.
Do they have a VSP display?
They surely have a runway symbol on there MAP that would have been half way up the screen with range rings.
They surely had a DME & Glide slope displayed. The latter would have been alive at some point then off the scale PDQ as they descended.
i.e. there should have been many clues that all was not good with their world long before the reached 400'. AND they should have been VMC visual at night looking for the runway.
People talk about tiredness. Could have been accumulative, but the arrival was early evening not early morning; i.e. a day flight. And tiredness has to affect both pilots to be so lost in space.
Questions, not many answers; from the outside.
Last edited by RAT 5; 21st Sep 2017 at 12:23.