what you don't think that being at a 8 mile final at 400 ft agl or lower isn't a huge deal ?

the title of the thread needs to be changed, egpws at 400 AGL instead of a simple go around, comprende

Must have been just after sunset.

10nm from Domodedovo Rwy 14 would put them just over the outer edges of the well-lit Moscow suburbs. Reported as Cavok.

Guys, if you look at it from another angle, would it be possible the crew intercepted and were flying down a ILS sidelobe with a false glide path, which would them shown an on glide indication right until impact.
At 400 agl they then penetrated the terrain clearance floor, and got the GPWS too low terrain.

False or temporarily spoofed (possible?) GS?

From the FlightRadar24 .kml file of the EK 131 track the lowest point I see prior to the successful approach is:

975 feet minus field elevation of 593 gives 382 feet above the field at what I measure to be about 7 nm to the runway threshold. QNH is 1015 hPa so the correction is small (~50 feet?) and we don't know the local elevation where they were but it doesn't look like a valley to me.

So, 400 feet, 600 feet or 300 feet, it's nowhere an A380 should be on approach that far out. :eek:

On the first pass it appears that they never intercepted the centerline for 14R and continued on about a 190 heading for the go around. On the second approach they seemed to make a level pass at approach speed at a FR24 indicated altitude of 2550 feet after overshooting final slightly and then paralleling the extended runway centerline slightly to the left. The third approach appears normal with a dogleg intercept to final and an appropriate descent.

GoAround of EK-131 on 12. and 13. of Sep as well.

There muss indeed be more to the story

If you are flying on QNH, set both sides, it doesn't hurt to put the standby altimeter on QFE? Way, way back I seem to remember we did this very occasionally on the B744, possibly Jo'burg..

We did the opposite on the Global-main altimeters in QFE, standby on QNH. Gave a cross check.

A380 Go Around(S)
 

The only thing I know about A380 is that it is butt ugly!
However, modern airliners that I am familiar with, like the 787,777, and 744 all have radio altimeters that depict absolute height above ground below 2500' AGL. Regardless of problems with setting QNH, QFE, QNE or other pressure measuring instrument.
The EGWPS on these aircraft, and I am sure on the A380, is an extremely complicated piece of technology designed to handle just about every screw up, including mine and yours.
The thing must have been going crazy when these folks ended up at less than 400' from the ground and nowhere near a landing runway! Especially in day VFR with good visibility.
I have no problem with going around, but perhaps airlines like Emirates should take a pause in their quest for conquering the globe and pay more attention to crew rest, training, experience, and overall safety!

Yes indeed you know nothing about the 380 and trust me it s a great plane to fly and yes it has the all the technology you need even a radio altimeter which starts at 2500 agl and if you read a bit more it was by night 1800 utc in Russia.Your last sentence make a bit more sense

Correct.

The 975' AMSL point (± the QNH correction, which we now know was negligible) occurred just as the track was approaching the Gorki Leninskiye ("Lenin Hills" - the clue's in the name), one of the highest points in the Greater Moscow area at approximately 720' AMSL.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparrow_Hills

Situational awareness: Fail

according to "A6EEZ_eceac34" from FR24

1505066057, 2017-09-10T17:54:17Z, UAE131, "55.502243, 37.761009", 2150, 142, 208
1505066034, 2017-09-10T17:53:54Z, UAE131, "55.515976, 37.767918", 1550, 146, 176
1505066025, 2017-09-10T17:53:45Z, UAE131, "55.523365, 37.767906", 1125, 154, 188
1505066019, 2017-09-10T17:53:39Z, UAE131, "55.527603, 37.769794", 975, 157, 201
1505066012, 2017-09-10T17:53:32Z, UAE131, "55.532257, 37.773743", 1075, 156, 211
1505066005, 2017-09-10T17:53:25Z, UAE131, "55.536346, 37.77932", 1275, 157, 221
1505065999, 2017-09-10T17:53:19Z, UAE131, "55.539001, 37.783482", 1450, 157, 221
1505065992, 2017-09-10T17:53:12Z, UAE131, "55.542572, 37.789223", 1675, 155, 222

the lowest altitude 975 ft is hereabout with local elevation ~580 ft

It looks like farm field

For the sake of correctness the link should be this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorki_Leninskiye

Lenin's hills and Sparrow hills are way too far from each other.

I said "approaching", not "overhead".

The dark area in the bottom left of your first GE screenshot, just below the pin in your second, is start of the wooded hill overlooking the Moscow river, which he would have directly overflown had he continued the left turn onto the runway heading.

I agree with that. (elev 580').

As mentioned in another thread, for a flight tracking project I've learned how to position a camera point of view precisely in Google Maps/Earth.

Using the data above, this should simulate the approximate view from the cockpit at the lowest point in the approach (camera positioned at the respective coordinate, 120m AGL, heading 201°) (click on the link, needs a WebGL capable browser)
https://www.google.de/maps/@55.52760.../data=!3m1!1e3

Dave, believe me - it's hardly to call it "hill". I drive there often. It's just a relief drop towards Pakhra river (not Moscow, but it matters little)

FlightAware has this point in its EK 131 dataset which seems to correlate with the FR24 data:

Flight Track Log UAE131 10-Sep-2017 DXB / OMDB - DME / UUDD FlightAware (may require a login to view)

It's simple. Cleared to 900 mts. Dial in 900'. Figure out you're not supposed to be there go around.

Forget all the fancy Airbus gadgets! Don't they teach EK pilots basic pilot stuff. 8 miles out x3 about 2400ft agl.

They are taught to fly with AP all the time and raw data is forbidden... But for some people, that the way it should be...:ugh:

The other reality is that those guys fly like crazy and fatigue might definitely be a factor...

Ok what do you guys make of this ? I can't imagine EK being that sloppy - there seems to be a pattern here !

That is outrareous. In this neck of the woods, the regulator has decided in mutual agreement with the legacy carrier that I fly for, that a raw data approach is part of the type rating exam.
If you can't do it, you don't fly.

Sounds very plausible. I'll put my money on that.

If you fly any commercial airliner and you think 900 ft is a normal initial approach altitude, you should find yourself another job.

So one raw data instrument approach during the type rating in a simulator and that makes you certified competent for the rest of your career? Surely you must be joking except I know you are not. And I bet the autothrottles were engaged. Let's be blunt about this. Airlines pay lip service only to this raw data stuff just to tick a box. A total waste of time.

Ah come on centaurus, negative.
A/P off, Autothrottle off, F/D off, 500' overcast, intercept the ils manually in that configuration, and fly the bloody airplane neatly to land in the touchdown zone. That includes all configuration changes necessary.
It's a bloody shame that this is not part of every pilot's minimum requirement.
Look at yourself in the mirror and ask....

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.

fox niner,

We used to do that every six months in the simulator - manual flying (raw data, no autopilot, no autothrottle), ADF approach, engine out, 500 ft cloud base in a strong cross wind.

Very good exercise, but then that was when pterodatyls ruled the air!!

That same dataset has the aircraft leveled out at 1000m from 17:51:13 to 17:51:33, at the end of the initial descent from FL380.

If I may interject with a silly SLF question, would (hypothetically) GPS spoofing be a possible factor that could lead a crew to descend towards a non-existing runway?

There have reportedly been instances of ships finding themselves far inland based on GPS location, or moving at speeds beyond their capabilities.

Far-fetched, I know, but I would still be interested to know if it could play even a small role in an incident like this.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/blac...hacking-russia

kristofera,

It is not a silly question. All navigation aids must be regarded as aids not gospel. It is always necessary to maintain simple common sense checks like 10,000 feet per 30 Nms. (plus or minus a bit) and at 10Nms from touch-down you should be at or around 3000 feet. These gross error checks work and one needs to use ALL available sources.

And as RAT5 has pointed out, what is the Rad Alt for?

OK - so blame the Russians, and divert the attention from what is an obvious .... well, my command of English is not good enough to write it politely

Couldn't the discussion on QFE QNH TA TL be a bit off if this was a GPS guided approach? Any information on how they did the approach?

It's strange to read about conversion inconvenience for skilled airmen. Just get everything ready for any flight wherever you fly

It's strange to read about conversion inconvenience for skilled airmen. Just get everything ready for any flight wherever you fly

This was a not a short flight. There was time to discuss TEM items and IMHO FL - feet - metres should have been included in that discussion. EK Flt Ops would know about this threat. Perhaps they have an airfield brief covering that topic? Was this the crews' first visit?

There was AC A320 at SFO. We don't know, but speculate, that TEM items were not considered before approach: in that case the closure of a // runway at night.

What is disturbing, in both cases, is that 2 pilots allowed a mistake to happen. A/C are designed with nearly every system having a back-up. One fails and the other takes over. There are 2 pilots for a similar reason, as well as others. PM is supposed to think independently and monitor what PF is doing. They will have discussed the operation phase by phase, agreed on a course of action, and then executed it. If PM sees things that don't seem sensible, or differ from the briefing in an unsafe way, they should speak up. If not then the back-up system doesn't work. Not ideal. I didn't think EK has cadets, so one can assume both plots are reasonably experienced. Who was PF? That could be significant. Are EK F/O's encouraged to speak up?
Either way, we are seeing quite a few events where the error can be seen as a CREW error; i.e. PF made a mistake and PM left them do it. Not good. And I don't mean some cowboy manually flown approach, but an A/P FMC or MCP manipulated profile where the sequence of events are very conspicuous and with plenty of time to see what has been selected and what is happening over a couple of minutes. There is no startle factor for PM.

well thats funny, because on my DME yesterday they were using height/QFE below transition level.

As far as I know the only airport in Russia using QNH and feet below TL is ULLI.

All the others are still using QFE and meters below Transition.

had instructions in meter and qfe by atc in UUDD two weeks ago when we approached