I suppose if 200’ counts as “about 500’”, LL is correct. What’s a few hundred feet here or there during an IFR approach?

You need to keep up with the thread LB and not be so selective. Scroll down a bit further and you will see that I wrote this:

One can tell from your CASA legal background with this comment :

that you have never had to make that call. Must be very comfortable being a private pilot on a government salary. In this instance it was the difference between making a successful landing and ditching it into the ocean.

.. on a precision approach with a 3º slope - yes.

You know that the 3º annotated on the VOR profile is a nominal figure, and that there isn't any slope guidance, right??

On a crappy VOR which isn't aligned with the runway (the VOR is about half a mile to the side of the runway), with terrain (hills, gullys and trees) surrounding the runway (use Google maps 3D to see the area) and the 200' perhaps being 150' - that's a bad statement.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/...5!4d167.954712

I think LB was being facetious.

Quite so, OA.

LL: When you’re in a hole, best to stop digging.

Yes CB I do get it but do you think that this was the first and only time that a crew has arrived at Norfolk with low cloud and no fuel to divert? The 3degree annotation is there to give pilots some idea of the gradient of the slope to the runway. Of course its not a precision approach but if you set up a RoD that equates to 3degrees and you monitor your height v DME scale then you give yourself a reasonable chance of getting to the runway. Having a radio altimeter mitigates that risk to reasonable extent as the crew should have known that the cloud base was at 200' HAA if they were in contact with the Unicom. Would it have been risky, yes, would it have been desperate, very much so. Would it have been impossible, I don't think so and if I was a regular user of NF I would have been practicing this when the weather was good. My impression of what happened during this incident was that the crew arrived at NF with no fuel to go anywhere and no idea on what to do next. As I have been consistent in stating, blasting on in and conducting approaches to a minima that is not going to get you below a known cloud base then going around and doing the same thing again is not a plan.

Many would say (mostly those with non-commercial aviation experience), that if you weren't there on the night then you can't talk about what the crew should have done. Those with experience in GA know that when you operate into airports that have limited options when the weather turns bad, then you would have already worked out your worst case scenario and how you would deal with it.

OA and LB, good to see your bromance is alive and well. If you didn't understand the more technical aspects of what I just wrote thats ok, it was for the benefit of professional pilots.:D

"equates to 3º" ... "monitor height" ... AND ALL THIS ON AN APPROACH A HALF A MILE OR MORE off to the side of the runway OVER UNSUREVEYED TERRAIN. That's not a "reasonable chance of getting to the runway" - that's a reasonable chance of getting to a visual position 50' above a 100' tree half a mile away from the runway.

If you don't understand that - you don't understand the difference between a precision appraoch and a VOR approach.

This is a recipe for a "tin can" aircraft slamming into a tree or house off to the side of a runway.

The ACTUAL, TESTED, decision resulted in all passengers surviving.

Were they?

You are ignoring the RadALT CB. If you don't think it would have made any difference in getting under the cloud base then nothing I say will convince you.


The rescue attempt was to the SE of the island. It was only a stroke of luck that:

that they survived the ditching. No calls to alert anyone where they were going to ditch.

The survivors were very fortunate.

And he just kept on diggin’. You go, girl. :ok:

And still you can make no contribution to the technical aspects of the incident. You even thought that the F/O was able to avoid talking to the ATSB despite the provisions of the TSIAct. No wonder CASA is in such a mess if they had someone like you as a lawyer. Anyway descend into your trite insults, it says more about you than it does about me.:=

This debate has gone on and on. What I see from the earlier CASA report is that (i) there was insufficient fuel to allow for 1EO & Depress, (ii) LTO F/C may not have been updated prior PNR. I also recall reading that this pilot had an almost identical scenario - no fuel, crap weather - approx 6 months prior to this flight but got away with it.

LTO F/C came up every 30 min on the SP VOLMET on the hour and half hour as I recall so it was available. So then, why was he airborne with less than mandatory min fuel? Why did he not have a valid F/C for LTO so he could/would divert if NF came up bad prior ToD? I know that it's easy to be wise after the event but we professional pilots are paid to foresee stuff and apply rules to stay safe.

I look forward to the revised report answering these and many other questions.

The radalt only helps if you are flying over flat terrain at the same elevation as the runway. That's not the case at Norfolk.

It strikes me as strange that with this incident and the two B737 at Mildura in the fog that there hasn't been a move to introduce LPV GNSS approaches.The cost of providing the necessary equipment has got to be a fraction of that to provide an ILS to all the runways currently served with non-precision approaches.

Australia has less ILS equipped runways than Malaysia. Its a disgrace that we don't have more.

Some time ago I tried to get a handle on the cost of installing ILS and my recollection is that in the US they install them for somewhere between 1/5 and 1/10 of what it costs here. I also believe that the main costs here are AsA costs.

I don't know the costs of an ILS in the US nor anywhere else for that matter but I do know they are resource intensive to maintain compared to other nav aids. One reason the US dived down the WAAS (SBAS) path with such gusto was to reduce the number if ILS's thus reducing cost.

What is a disgrace is Australasia has been so slow to adopt SBAS, but that's not part of this discussion.

Actually I think it is. The whole point of an accident report is to learn the lessons from them to ensure it doesn't happen again. I believe the faffing around with non-precision approaches we continue to indulge in Australia is a disgrace when something like WAAS could so easily provide an answer.

I am not holding my breath that there will be any such recommendation in this long-awaited report.

Meanwhile instead of just embracing the standard SBAS system Australia and New Zealand seem intent on having their own unique SBAS setup. Seems destined for failure to me. Perhaps that's what some want to happen.

Folks,
At the risk of thread drift, Australia has NOT been slow the adopt, Australia, some years ago, specifically rejected the opportunity to adopt WAAS, and the satellite already carrying the then equipment was moved to a new Geosynchronous parking spot further east.
At the time, it was unofficially said to be largely because Airservices couldn't find a way to charge for WAAS, the official DoTRS reason was, in short, that it was not justified by Australian conditions.
Tootle Pip!!

The much awaited report of the re-opened investigation will be released tomorrow. It has been a very long time coming.