CROSSAIR CRASH -
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CROSSAIR CRASH -
Careful approach
Changing operational procedures for environmental reasons is valid, but only if risk analysis is applied to the methods proposed
Now is the time for a serious review of precisely how the world - but especially Europe - is going to tamper with aircraft operations in the name of environmental benefits.
This week provides two compelling reasons.
One is a tragic controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) accident that took place when an aircraft was required to use a non-precision approach at night when there was a precision approach available. The other is the formal capitulation of the European Commission (EC) in its efforts to accelerate progress - at least in its own skies - toward phasing out aircraft at the noisy end of the Chapter 3 band.
Taking the second issue first: noisier aircraft will inevitably be subject to environmental sanctions sooner than quieter aircraft. Some of these sanctions will be local or national government rules compelling specific airports to pressurise airlines to use other than the safest approach or departure procedures.
In grudgingly accepting the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) standard on aircraft noise - which dictates that globally agreed noise standards may be challenged only on an airport-by-airport basis (not on a national or regional basis) - the EC has rolled over to the letter of the law and abandoned all attempts to follow its spirit. The sad thing is that ICAO standards and recommended practices (SARPS) are minima. If any nation, region, or bloc wants to go further than the SARPS, it should be able to, and this principle has not been challenged (so far) in respect of aircraft certification or safe operating practices.
The irony is that now in Europe - where people are particularly environmentally conscious - a rule to force them to put up with noisy aircraft is going to have the potential secondary effect of threatening safety.
Two examples of this are Zurich airport and Amsterdam Schiphol airport. The "primary cause" of the recent accident at Zurich is unlikely to be the requirement for the crew to change its approach from a precision to a non-precision procedure, but it will almost certainly be shown to be a causal factor. At Schiphol, the landing or take-off runway in use is determined not by the wind direction, but by which approach affects the fewest local people.
Aviation should not hide behind pretensions of safety to avoid accepting any operational change, but when changes are proposed they should be thought through properly, and risk analysis should be carried out. There may also be ways of changing operations while acting to mitigate or even eliminate any apparent increase in risk. For example, the installation of an instrument landing system (ILS) for Zurich's runway 28 has been under consideration, so the implementation of the new environmentally driven procedures could have waited until the ILS was in place. But they did not.
The Flight Safety Foundation's Approach and Landing Accident Reduction (ALAR) working group has established from a large statistical base that non-precision approaches increase the risk of serious accident by a multiple of between five and seven times. The Swiss and German decision-makers working on the Zurich noise abatement procedures should have known this, but they will plead that no pilot is compelled to fly an approach that he/she deems unwise under the circumstances. That is seriously disingenuous.
The real truth is that no pilot flying in instrument meteorological conditions should even be faced with this decision. It should be out of the question that any consideration justifies the raising of risk to passenger and crew lives by a factor of between five and seven.
It took ICAO a quarter of a century to move from specifying the standards for Chapter 3 to phasing out Chapter 2 aircraft. Europe can see the same thing happening with Chapter 4. The standards have been agreed, but there is no sign that the industry has any intention of specifying a date for phasing out Chapter 3 equipment, even in stages. Meanwhile, as a consequence of this procrastination, more and more local noise rules are going to affect operations in the two most critical phases of flight: early climb and the descent to land. For the genuinely worthy cause of allowing people near airports to sleep soundly, dangerous decisions may be made unless the industry is careful. The decision-makers should ask themselves how soundly they will be able to sleep after they have made decisions that could directly contribute to the death of air travellers and crew. The risk may not only be to travellers, but to those living under the glidepath in whose interest the decision-makers claim to be acting.
Changing operational procedures for environmental reasons is valid, but only if risk analysis is applied to the methods proposed
Now is the time for a serious review of precisely how the world - but especially Europe - is going to tamper with aircraft operations in the name of environmental benefits.
This week provides two compelling reasons.
One is a tragic controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) accident that took place when an aircraft was required to use a non-precision approach at night when there was a precision approach available. The other is the formal capitulation of the European Commission (EC) in its efforts to accelerate progress - at least in its own skies - toward phasing out aircraft at the noisy end of the Chapter 3 band.
Taking the second issue first: noisier aircraft will inevitably be subject to environmental sanctions sooner than quieter aircraft. Some of these sanctions will be local or national government rules compelling specific airports to pressurise airlines to use other than the safest approach or departure procedures.
In grudgingly accepting the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) standard on aircraft noise - which dictates that globally agreed noise standards may be challenged only on an airport-by-airport basis (not on a national or regional basis) - the EC has rolled over to the letter of the law and abandoned all attempts to follow its spirit. The sad thing is that ICAO standards and recommended practices (SARPS) are minima. If any nation, region, or bloc wants to go further than the SARPS, it should be able to, and this principle has not been challenged (so far) in respect of aircraft certification or safe operating practices.
The irony is that now in Europe - where people are particularly environmentally conscious - a rule to force them to put up with noisy aircraft is going to have the potential secondary effect of threatening safety.
Two examples of this are Zurich airport and Amsterdam Schiphol airport. The "primary cause" of the recent accident at Zurich is unlikely to be the requirement for the crew to change its approach from a precision to a non-precision procedure, but it will almost certainly be shown to be a causal factor. At Schiphol, the landing or take-off runway in use is determined not by the wind direction, but by which approach affects the fewest local people.
Aviation should not hide behind pretensions of safety to avoid accepting any operational change, but when changes are proposed they should be thought through properly, and risk analysis should be carried out. There may also be ways of changing operations while acting to mitigate or even eliminate any apparent increase in risk. For example, the installation of an instrument landing system (ILS) for Zurich's runway 28 has been under consideration, so the implementation of the new environmentally driven procedures could have waited until the ILS was in place. But they did not.
The Flight Safety Foundation's Approach and Landing Accident Reduction (ALAR) working group has established from a large statistical base that non-precision approaches increase the risk of serious accident by a multiple of between five and seven times. The Swiss and German decision-makers working on the Zurich noise abatement procedures should have known this, but they will plead that no pilot is compelled to fly an approach that he/she deems unwise under the circumstances. That is seriously disingenuous.
The real truth is that no pilot flying in instrument meteorological conditions should even be faced with this decision. It should be out of the question that any consideration justifies the raising of risk to passenger and crew lives by a factor of between five and seven.
It took ICAO a quarter of a century to move from specifying the standards for Chapter 3 to phasing out Chapter 2 aircraft. Europe can see the same thing happening with Chapter 4. The standards have been agreed, but there is no sign that the industry has any intention of specifying a date for phasing out Chapter 3 equipment, even in stages. Meanwhile, as a consequence of this procrastination, more and more local noise rules are going to affect operations in the two most critical phases of flight: early climb and the descent to land. For the genuinely worthy cause of allowing people near airports to sleep soundly, dangerous decisions may be made unless the industry is careful. The decision-makers should ask themselves how soundly they will be able to sleep after they have made decisions that could directly contribute to the death of air travellers and crew. The risk may not only be to travellers, but to those living under the glidepath in whose interest the decision-makers claim to be acting.
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FOCAL
It's naive to think "in Europe - where people are particularly environmentally conscious" is saying much, for it doesn't really MEAN much. And let's face it, Europeans are no more environmentally conscious than others on the planet racing round to save the earth.
But that doesn't mean they, like others in this world, aren't capable of signing into law, 'stupidity'. I find most airport noise abatement standards are finally catching up the the B707, DC8 era. A little high for most Fan engines zipping in and out of the major centres round the world. Try living by a rail line. Aren't we talking about noise. When was the last time the rail was protested against and legislated to a new location???
They (regs) are perhaps 'selective' in what gets the GREEN touch for the fact remains, the number of 'smokers' and amount of 'smoking' remains virtually unchanged.
In my country, the smokers have been legislated outside. Where it is more environmentally friendly?
Je n'est comprende pas!
Your commentary is spot on and well informed IMHO.
I see it many times during sim, when a crew is assigned a non-precision approach, they smugly ask for an ILS instead. Which they know they aren't going to get. It may be time to, in the real world, insist on that precision approach.
Unlike an instruction, a clearance can be rejected. If this crew was unhappy with that clearance then they should have insisted on the ILS. They didn't. Would I have insisted on an ILS? Probably not.
I can't, for the life of me, imagine how something as QUIET on takeoff and approach as the BAe146 could be subjected to such simplistic environmental requirements.
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OK, but the bottom line is that with at least three altimeters, including an MDA/DH alert light on the Radar Altimeter, there is no excuse for going below IMC minimums and flying an airplane into the ground, no matter what type approach is flown.
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some thing that depresses me about airport noise and campaigns against it, is that invariably airports are built in green field sites ..... as soon as they become significant, lots of houses are built as close to the field as possible and then the owners spend the rest of there lives bitching about the noise ...... I live ten miles out from a Concorde training airport .... a couple of months ago a mature lady from our local village phoned the local radio station and complained that "Alpha Fox" was so low she could see the pilots faces ..... remember, this is ten miles from touch down!!!! ..... more recently the local airport authority has been in the news for objecting to every house planning application in close proximity to the airport(on safety grounds) ..... the concensus from local land owners is that they should be able to build houses as close to the airport as they wish ......
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soddit
I must have missed something in your remarks...
"Perhaps you should read the book 'Risk Assessment made Simple'"
I believe the post has to do with the crash of a Crossair BAe146 and not the merits of the legal system on either side of the Atlantic.
...perhaps you should read a decent Flight Instrument manual and ask yourself 'how did the aircraft get almost 300 feet below MDA???'
That's where this debate begins AND ends.
As for Glue Ball's comment, it's clear, concise, and to the point.
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Willie:::
Could you level the wings on your A.I.
I get vertigo trying to read your posts.
Thanks::::
..............
The hardest thing about flying is knowing when to say no.
Could you level the wings on your A.I.
I get vertigo trying to read your posts.
Thanks::::
..............
The hardest thing about flying is knowing when to say no.
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Perhaps there should have been a vote....
'Ladies and gentlemen, your Captain speaking. Either we can make a landing at our destination, though environmental considerations mean that the approach will carry about five times the risk of our normal approach procedure, or if you're not happy with that, we can divert to another airport and you may make your travel arrangements from there. Please press the buttons on your in-flight entertainment console now'.
NO! The noise lobby are to blame for this accident, and I hope that they realise this, and feel appropriate shame.
Aviation is too keen to hold the truth about safety out of the public's grasp, and in these 'enlightened' times, that is not on!
Suggesting that refusing the clearance is an option is niaive in the extreme. Many airports operate unsafely every day, and mostly the aircraft don't crash. This time one did, and it hardly made the news.
Tragic incompetence, on the part of those with the power to recognise risk and take action to eliminate it.
'Ladies and gentlemen, your Captain speaking. Either we can make a landing at our destination, though environmental considerations mean that the approach will carry about five times the risk of our normal approach procedure, or if you're not happy with that, we can divert to another airport and you may make your travel arrangements from there. Please press the buttons on your in-flight entertainment console now'.
NO! The noise lobby are to blame for this accident, and I hope that they realise this, and feel appropriate shame.
Aviation is too keen to hold the truth about safety out of the public's grasp, and in these 'enlightened' times, that is not on!
Suggesting that refusing the clearance is an option is niaive in the extreme. Many airports operate unsafely every day, and mostly the aircraft don't crash. This time one did, and it hardly made the news.
Tragic incompetence, on the part of those with the power to recognise risk and take action to eliminate it.
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PinPusher: I can't see how it COULD have happened if they'd been using EGPWS. All that red/yellow should have told them something was wrong in time to react. Unless, of course, something else was amiss that we don't know about yet.
/ft
/ft
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no one will publish an accident finding that blames the noise restrictions. the noise restrictions create an operational difficulty - the way a crew operates will determine how the airplane arrives at its destination.
of the facts we have in the public arena, none relate to what the pilots actually saw out the front - and thats the bluddy key.
of the facts we have in the public arena, none relate to what the pilots actually saw out the front - and thats the bluddy key.
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JUST A QUESTION :
According to the accident report it seems that this CRX Avro flew coupled through the MDA, I do believe that the altitude selector was set to something else than this MDA...
Wouldn't you think that a good idea in such an approach (mainly with such a bad weather that night), is to select the minimum descent altitude so that the autopilot will capture it no matter is the workload in the cockpit.
SOPs are something, EGPWS is something else but common sense is the main point...
Condolesences to those who are affected by this accident...
According to the accident report it seems that this CRX Avro flew coupled through the MDA, I do believe that the altitude selector was set to something else than this MDA...
Wouldn't you think that a good idea in such an approach (mainly with such a bad weather that night), is to select the minimum descent altitude so that the autopilot will capture it no matter is the workload in the cockpit.
SOPs are something, EGPWS is something else but common sense is the main point...
Condolesences to those who are affected by this accident...
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By selecting MDA on the ALT SEL as you go down the approach IF you select GO AROUND using the GA buttons on the throttle face,with A/P & A/T engaged, then the throttles will close and the aircraft will descend.
You need to set the ALT SEL to a higher level than the one you are at, preferably Go Around level off altitude which is detailed in the procedure (I think it is 6000 feet at ZRH). Then you can descend with the glideslope safe in the knowledge that a GO AROUND command will result in the A/C going UP not DOWN.
RJ logic.
Harry
You need to set the ALT SEL to a higher level than the one you are at, preferably Go Around level off altitude which is detailed in the procedure (I think it is 6000 feet at ZRH). Then you can descend with the glideslope safe in the knowledge that a GO AROUND command will result in the A/C going UP not DOWN.
RJ logic.
Harry
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Harry
just a question, as I don't fly the 146.
Would you not set MDA in the ALT SEL prior to leaving 4,000' in ALT HOLD and at ALTS CAP (2,390') set the missed approach altitude (6,000') for the GO AROUND? Difficult to say without a look into Crossair SOPs.
If this aircraft has any tendancy to sink through mins on a go, would they not be aware of it?
If so, how did the aircraft descend a further 606 feet???
Perhaps the reason might be more apparent on the CVR.
just a question, as I don't fly the 146.
Would you not set MDA in the ALT SEL prior to leaving 4,000' in ALT HOLD and at ALTS CAP (2,390') set the missed approach altitude (6,000') for the GO AROUND? Difficult to say without a look into Crossair SOPs.
If this aircraft has any tendancy to sink through mins on a go, would they not be aware of it?
If so, how did the aircraft descend a further 606 feet???
Perhaps the reason might be more apparent on the CVR.
Don't know about RJ but on 146 200 (without autothrottle) Go Around just commanded a nose up to I think 10 degrees and prompt to shove throttles forward to GA thrust from Thrust Mode Selector panel.Presumably RJ with autothottle would go to goaround thrust until commanded otherwise. Provided Alt selector above MDA then AC would capture. If Alt Selector set for MDA, ac would go up until Alt hold or other mode selected. GA is not same as Flight Level Change or open climb/descent so if MDA below altitude at which GA selected should not make any difference-as I remember.
Could not agree more with some of other topics touched on here. Approach into Nice absolute nightmare in non map equiped ac with something like 4 VOR changes in quick succession and all so we do not fly over rich peoples houses. The same rich people who want the airport close enough to be able to hop on a plane.
Also I reckon any one who lives within five miles of Heathrow and has been living there less then twenty five to thirty years should be banned from any debate re noise or T5. They bought a house knowing it was next to an airport which gave them close by employment and had less quiet aircraft then than now (Tridents VC10s 707 etc)and yet they do nothing but complain.What is more some of them were not even members of our society thirty years ago.
The emergence of more and more business at our regional airprots suggests that people want these airports for the convenience they offer and yet the biggest complainers who seem to contribute most to us being given ridiculous departures and arrivals are the more affluent people who are in turn the most likely users of those airports. Departures off 24L and R at MAN to avoid overflying Wilmslow etc. Makes my blood boil.
I shall now dismount my soap box!
Could not agree more with some of other topics touched on here. Approach into Nice absolute nightmare in non map equiped ac with something like 4 VOR changes in quick succession and all so we do not fly over rich peoples houses. The same rich people who want the airport close enough to be able to hop on a plane.
Also I reckon any one who lives within five miles of Heathrow and has been living there less then twenty five to thirty years should be banned from any debate re noise or T5. They bought a house knowing it was next to an airport which gave them close by employment and had less quiet aircraft then than now (Tridents VC10s 707 etc)and yet they do nothing but complain.What is more some of them were not even members of our society thirty years ago.
The emergence of more and more business at our regional airprots suggests that people want these airports for the convenience they offer and yet the biggest complainers who seem to contribute most to us being given ridiculous departures and arrivals are the more affluent people who are in turn the most likely users of those airports. Departures off 24L and R at MAN to avoid overflying Wilmslow etc. Makes my blood boil.
I shall now dismount my soap box!
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just one amendment to harry and soddit, the RJ does not even have the so called ARM button. The altitude selected is the altitude armed..and yes, the system is very much the same as in the B737-300