Thai Airways really low around Melbourne Airport
 

Just read The Age at my favourite shopping mall. Small paragraph noted with sub heading Thai flight too low.

" A Thai Airways plane flew too low as it landed at Melbourne Airport last night. Air Services spokesman Matt Wardell confirmed that the aircraft was too low as it approached the runway. Air services Webtrack system recorded the Bangkok to Melbourne flight at about 1020 ft over Sunshine North at 8.19pm yesterday. About two minutes later the flight was recorded at about 4121 ft.

Mr Wardell said ATC staff realised the plane was too low and instructed the pilot to fly around the airport and reattempt the landing. The plane landed safely at about 8.36pm. Mr Wardell said Air services Australia would report the flight to ATSB"

Interesting to see the outcome of that investigation. Automation complacency again?

I don't like the term "complacency" in this context. I don't believe crew after crew in these situations are complacent; they are reliant, which is against their training, but only natural as humans get subconsciously seduced by the wizardry.

Before a lot of people are killed in these situations, either pilots need to be removed from cockpits completely so human error can never occur, or there should be a concentrated effort to improve monitoring skills. The only way that will occur is by making pilots do this stuff manually, regularly. Only then will they be in a critical, monitoring mode when it really counts, close to the ground, because they will know how to do it themselves, and so will know what the automatics are doing when the aircraft is (trying to) doing it.

They did something similar off the 16 ndb a while back

Capt Bloggs

... and all removing pilots from the cockpit will do is move the direct source of "human error" from crews to system designers. That said, I agree with your sentiments.

They nearly arrived at Essendon once, I was right behind thinking where the :mad: is he going, yes you go down the Essendon localiser, but you don't stay there!

I remember that. I think it was in the 70's.

But yes we are the real pilots who actually read and understand an approach plate?? Always said these damn computers would make average pilots into bad pilots....

Aeronautical data integrity
 

In these days of automated systems and system to system (and data card to system) data transfer, have we (or the regulator) missed an important step in ensuring the integrity of aeronautical data from source to end use. In the "old days" humans helped put stoppers in the cheese hole - some of those humans are now out of the loop.

Just a thought - but one I have often voiced frequently.

MJG

let's wait for the report from ATSB

Any ATSB notes yet?

Situational Awarenes
 

Incidents like this nearly always come down to one thing. A loss of ( or lack) of situational awareness. Know the MORA, know the MSA's, know where you are, know where you should be and understand the data presented on the approach charts. In a word 'Airmanship'. Now I am not pointing the bone as I know we are all only human and we all make mistakes but a good and thorough approach briefing that includes carefully cross checking the information presented in the FMC goes a long way towards eliminating this type of error.

Lecture over.

Maggot

So...what he said then!

Go back to my question, in recent times we have had allegations by CASA of 2 Tiger, 1 DJ and now this one.

What is going on out there because it is starting to have a smell of industry systemic failures or a change in regulatory scrutiny.

Agreed Maggot. It's not that hard to get it right!:hmm:

That could be anything from three months to a year judging by past history.

What is the elev of Sunshine North that was quoted ?

What was the Thai plane meant to be at over Sunshine North?

It is starting to make JetStar look good !!!

Provided you have the right people, with the right training and experience doing the job, and those people aren't burdened by the collective stresses of fatigue, modern rostering preactices, pay not comensurate with responsibility, degraded ATC services and engineering support, reduced autonomous authority, overloaded/overworked ground support personel, and ever increasingly complicated SOPs and legislation.
Even with all of those things most of us can cope well, but every pilot group has a few stars, a large proportion of competent pilots, and a few who drag their heels. If you end up with two crew together who are from the last group.....it's too much for them and the results will are starting to show themselves.

Framer,

Thank you I was feeling ignored which on some occasions is entirely justified, but not on this one.

My point was is there any linkage of issues noted by the Senate into a seemingly increased frequency or is the regulator now looking at it more often.

Perfectly reasonable questions I would have thought.

Basically Airline management and Regulators have alowed the holes in the swiss cheese to line with greater ease than ever before. Profits before saftey.

OFDM with high capture rates and a regular system of feedback to the pilot population, coupled with a system of educating crews in guarding against undesirable trends also helps. As does an effective training organisation and an efficient set of SOP's.

Maggot

AvHerald have a plot for the aircraft Incident: Thai B773 at Melbourne on Jul 24th 2011, descended below minimum safe altitude and ATSB now have the incident on their website Investigation: AO-2011-086 - Operational non-compliance - Boeing 777, HS-TKD, 11Km south Melbourne Airport, 24 July 2011.