I was also shocked on how much information the TSB report glossed over.
I did not read all the thread here, but I did spend some hours going over the report with a fine comb some weeks ago. From memory here is what I have found. Sorry if I repeat what others have already mentionned.
1) The report does not mention if the accident aircraft had or did not have GPS.
2) The report does not mention if the pilots made an accuracy check, as the required of A320s that have no GPS
3) The report does not mention if the pilots had "Accuracy High" in the Prog page.
4) The report does not mention if the pilot had tuned the DME frequency.
5) The report does not mention if the pilots had tuned the NDB frequency
6) The report does not mention how the pilots determined they had reached the final descent point (FAF)
7) The report mentions that second "Gate" by quoting the Air Canada procedures, but never mentions how the crew implemented or failed to implement that procedure.
Air Canada's Stable Approach Policy is built around an Arrival Gate concept whereby a flight shall not continue the approach unless the required criteria for each Arrival Gate are met. There are two Arrival Gates for every approach; the first is the FAF (or FAF equivalent), the second Arrival Gate is at 500 feet AGL (or 100' above minimums, whichever is higher). A Go-around is mandatory if the criteria for each Arrival Gate is not met.
For non-precision approach, at the first Arrival Gate (FAF), the aircraft must be on the inbound course and on the descent profile defined by the FPA, the vertical speed, or the flight management guidance system.
No flight shall continue an approach past the FAF Arrival Gate unless it is being flown in a way that ensures the Stable Approach Criteria will be met by the 500 foot Arrival Gate.
At the second gate (500 feet AGL or 100 feet above the MDA), no flight shall continue unless the following stable approach criteria are met:
Established on the correct vertical approach path
8) The report avoids stating that the crew went below minimums but only suggests it by stating that the MDA was passed at 1.2 NM and that the PM called lights only at 1.0 NM.
Almost immediately after this call, the aircraft crossed the calculated MDA at 1.2 nm from the threshold. The PM observed some approach lights and called, "Minimum, lights only," when the aircraft was about 1.0 nm from the threshold.
At a ground speed of about 130 kts, 0.2 NM is roughly six second after, and about75 feet below the MDA. Not much, but much longer that I expect from my PM when I'm flying an approach to minimums.
9) The report fails to mention if the crew had entered the CYHZ05 in the PROG page as is normal procedure for these aircraft.
10) The report fails to mention what waypoint was in the database after the FAF. Was it a threshhold, a MAP or some other point ? That would give an idea of what the yoyo would have indicated, and if that might have influenced the crew.
11) The report fails to mention what data was used to create figure 1. Was it the FMS data ? If it was, was the IRS based FMS data valid ? If it was, how do we know it was ? This brings us back to point 2 and 3 above.
12) The report failed to indicate if the crew selected a LOC05 in the FMS, anf if they manually entered a corrected altitude at the FAF in the FMS, or if they just computed it for the FAF without changing the FMS provided FAF (uncorrected) crossing altitude.
13) The report states that the crew computed a corrected MDA of 813 feet. But the report fails to indicate if the crew entered that corrected MDA in the FMS or the regular MDA.
14) The actual communications between the two pilots are not provided, but are just paraphrased. The real verbatim exchange would have provided an insight of what actually went wrong......
There are many other things I have issues with, but what I described above is enough for me to have lost the blind faith I had in the TSB .....
It's a shame they did this, for they shot themselves in the foot. This report will be the proof that lawyers will produce in the future to question the credibility of the TSB when they will be tasked with a more important and complex investigation, one with say, hundreds of lost lives. Will Canada have to outsource their investigations because of this ?
I still think they are competent and would have been capable of writing a good report. Why they produced this half baked report, we'll leave to speculation.