Touchdown Short Of Runway
 

Accident: Windjet A319 at Palermo on Sep 24th 2010, touched down short of runway


Risk Management taken too far.
At minimums without rwy in sight but still " Continue, Continue."

Was this a blatant disregard of minima or was there more to this? fuel?

Hmm. Maybe the captain came from the same school as the skipper of the Costa Concordia ...

So how'd that work out....

I'm not defending the captain for the final result, but you don't keep doing 250 at 15nm in cr@p weather trying to dive off a bit of altitude.

Send the crew up here for some practice on keeping the mind on the task at hand. ;)

Let's all be honest for a moment.

Not visual at minima-go around. There can be no good argument for anything other than that- BUT.....

How many here have worked for companies where there WAS a culture of "Pushing it"?

I've worked for 6 different airlines, and in two of them, there WAS a pervasive attitude of "I know we can get away with this".

How many times had this Captain, or maybe MANY Captains from this Airline done the same and gotten away with it?

The fact he would do so with another pilot in the jumpseat seems to indicate it wasn't anything he thought he needed to hide.

The FO obviously spent his whole career with this airline, was this what his experience told him was "Normal" and "OK"?

When I realised I was working for companies that "Pushed It", what I longed for was for the regulatory authorities to get stuck into them. Admittedly, I could have done the "Whistle Blower" bit and started the action, but, put honestly, didn't have the balls as I needed the job.

There needs to be proactive oversight of standards, and the message needs to be put across to companies that allow a culture of non-complience in a way that hits them where it hurts- the hip pocket!!

The airline ceased operations in August

The Captain should have had his licence removed. As for the FO, a great advertisement for P2F with shady operators who exert zero airmanship or discipline.

Hmm. Maybe the captain came from the same school as the skipper of the Costa Concordia ... I agreeee

-which one was that?

@BOAC, I think he refers to this: Accident: Royal Air Maroc B734 at Amsterdam on Jun 6th 2010, flock of birds, engine fire

Excuse me?
MDH = 677', that is over 2NM before the runway.
2NM = 3600m, but the vis = 4000m, heavy rain, windshear, there are apparently no approach lights,

and the captain deems it "not challenging"?

You can sort of understand (but not condone it, obviously) when people push it a bit below minima on an ILS but off an unstable NPA in mountainous terrain with thunderstorms? I'd love to know what made him continue without any real visual references... :confused:

Most likely did not want to go missed, that would mean flying back up into bad (thunderstorms) weather. Sorta reminds me of Air France in CYYZ.
Looking at the METAR, I cant help but think that these guys should not have been there in the first place.

Very good point. Too often we've seen pilots continue approaches with nasty weather sitting off the far end of the runway, seemingly unconcerned about what could happen should they need to go around for some reason. Much like flying into a box canyon.

With what SEIFR suggested, would in fact not being able to go "missed" also not equate to not making an approach in the first place? Just interested.

HT, in my book, yes. Always have an exit strategy. As JO says, a bit like flying into a box canyon. No exit strategy; don't go there.

Too many pilots just assume they are going to get where they are going. Its easy just to look at ceilings and vis and think it should be no problem landing. Tstorms have a bad habit of changing things in a hurry.

Everything in that accident is all about culture. There was a comment earlier that said, 'You can sort of understand (but not condone it, obviously) when people push it a bit below minima on an ILS...' That comment says everything about culture. If you are in companies like BA, easyJet, Virgin etc there is simply no culture of pushing any limit. I cannot say it has never happened in these companies, but it is the quickest way out of a job you can find. There is an expectation among all FOs that the Captains will stick to the limits and there is no expectation of 'getting the job done' before obeying the rules. If you work for some of the other companies around (and I have done so), there is an expectation of breaking rules 'when it is sensible to do so'. That is again culture - it is either there or it is not. I know that at easyJet, we have sacked people for these 'cultural' breaches - and will continue to do so as and when they occur.

As an aside, to give you a measure of what passed for normality at WindJet, I spoke to one of their former pilots recently, who said that they were always under weight restrictions on their Moscow flights. Apparently it was common to just falsify nominal baggage weights to make the performance fit. Also, when a strike was looming at one stage, during a phone call between the pilot representative and a very senior company Executive, it was mentioned that the pilot representative had a beautiful little daughter who attended such and such a school and would it not be a shame if something terrible happened to her? That folks is the other end of the airline industry and it always ends up with a smoking hole somewhere - a culture of corruption and graft from top to bottom that permeates into the operational practices of the company. You can see from this whole scene that this captain was just doing his normal thing and thereby brought ruin upon his career and nearly killed everyone he was responsible for. Our northern European companies are not great, but in my experience this type of thing is largely absent - long may it continue to be so.

Meerkat,

You seem well informed and I have heard the same stories about threatening the crew or their family members, very soon after the accident took place. Although nothing can EVER justify such threats or blackmailing, I don't think the threat was related to the possibility of making a go-around.

Not stabilized, no visual contact, go-around.

The pushing culture is indeed an unfortunate reality in many places, but I have yet to see anyone being fired because they went around (less than 3 times in a row...:} )

The ego of some captains is such that overconfidence overrides common logic, regardless of how many hours they have.

From a human resources perspective, I don't think the FO was too inexperienced -although not much time either- but very probably the combination of a very high timer on the left seat and baby pilot on the right may not always make sense, the authority gradient could be naturally steep, left aside the possible contributing factors of italian displays of their testosterone level, thus preventing direct bi-directional inputs when deviations occur.

The family threats are entertaining, and Italy is a passionate country, but I don't believe them.

I am more thinking about subtle incapacitation due to fatigue...

Except in Easyjet it pushes the limit every day by dispatching its aircraft with barely experienced disenfranchised contract f/o's.

This airline was well known to have had close links with a certain Sicilian syndicate.

From another Forum:

Person A
Answer of person B
Maybe a joke, maybe not.....

Well the captain said we'll be landing shortly. :E

Perhaps, but a wrong is a wrong if a 500 hour copilot does it or if it is a 15000 hour captain doing it. There is a steep authority gradient to meet by the copilot, I agree, but if the chap knows his business and what he is supposed to do, he will make sure the captain knows there's a deviation occurring. And even more, if he has any sense of self preservation he will take over command from the captain if he sees no corrective action being taken, no matter how hard the latter screams back at him after doing so.

It's called being a first officer in a commercial airliner.

Perhaps, but a wrong is a wrong if a 500 hour copilot does it or if it is a 15000 hour captain doing it. There is a steep authority gradient to meet by the copilot, I agree, but if the chap knows his business and what he is supposed to do, he will make sure the captain knows there's a deviation occurring. And even more, if he has any sense of self preservation he will take over command from the captain if he sees no corrective action being taken, no matter how hard the latter screams back at him after doing so.

It's called being a first officer in a commercial airliner.

^^ Here Here to that

I've had the FO correct me several times during my career. Input always gratefully received, and usually right. As I used to point out, the FO is the guy without the pressures that are on the captain, therefore often able to make the more balanced judgement and break up the captain's mindset.

But he can't launch legal action to get his job back like Schettino....

Costa Concordia captain wants his job back - Telegraph

All very fine in theory, but it is most unlikely the captain will happily relinqish his command authority to the first officer without a physical altercation in the cockpit. Few operation manuals ever publish exactly how a first officer will physically take control from the captain whose hands are already on the controls.

Well on the 'Bus if the AP is in and the FO pushes the levers forward it's going to go-around which would be difficult to recover from and continue an approach so best to just go with it (the go-around). Again on the 'Bus the FO can hit the takeover PB on his sidestick and lockout the Capts inputs and initiate a go-around.

In both cases, at least the aircraft is now climbing away from potential disaster - then it's down to the Capt and FO to "discuss" the next course of action...... :ouch:

"Captain, you MUST go-around!" - if no reaction INTERVENE.

:) Knew you worked for easyjet before I read another word. :ok:

In this day & age there is a great exchange of information and much of it is about the cause of crashes. This could be mechanical or procedural in which case things are redesigned or changed to prevent a reoccurrence. The same is true about human factor errors. Here on prune, and hopefully via the more official channels of flight safety dissemination, we've heard about many such instances, e.g. the B737 in india that continued an approach and ran off the end of a cliff. It was asked by everybody why the F/O was not more forceful in his self-preservation. Still unanswered. Lots of questions about culture differences and experience gradients etc. It was a well reported and discussed event; quite recently. I'm amazed therefore that in the EU, so soon afterwards, there is another similar accident. It is staggering that we as a pilot community seemed to have learnt so little, and that those apprentices in the RHS have not been schooled in these previous events and told with no uncertainty that they are often the last safety net underneath an arrogant/nervous/compulsive/ignorant/non-SOP/ or other kind of captain who is trying to kill you. In most previous cases it was the captain who was PF with get home-itis, but here it was he F/O, and that makes it more curious for the inter-play going on at the time.
Many questions and not perhaps so many answers. I wonder if the captain even knows/remembers/understands what he did and why.

I agree, but one only needs to "pull" a bit further to the other side to try and get a change, i.e., high rate of descent because of being high? Then:

Attaboy

It is a really hard concept and also a really hard thing to do as a young first officer against an experienced captain. But as I said, a wrong is a wrong, no matter who makes it.

There was no risk to manage here :ugh:. The issue is black and white. no runway in sight at minimums, you go around ! Talking about culture is all fine and dandy but the Commander of this flight utterly failed to act in a professional and competent manner.

Like everything else in life you get what you pay for which is why there is a significant number of airlines I will never fly with.........

From the report I think FO was PF until minima and then the Capt. did take over.

So may be the captain did see the runway and said continue.

This section is as far as I see not written.

But another thing I want to emphasize is four reds on the final.

Sometimes I see pilots (both CPTs and FOs) who are trying to be a bit below glide to make a gentle touchdown.

As we all see 3 red must be the limit. You have to immediately correct for 2 red.

4 red you are dead !

4 Greens, even deader.

It looks like they were using RA instead of MDA :ugh:

Maybe, but somehow I don't agree with a change of PF JUST at minima under those conditions.

But still, being a NPA, the FO had a bit of time to make his discomfort known to the captain. If he never saw the runway or thought they were low or even better, to call a missed approach due to an unstabilised approach (+1000ft/min), he never did it, despite having enough time to do so.

Reading the title of this thread, this comes to mind:

Happened last week, the Transall was on its last flight to a museum at Ballenstedt.


Just saying...

Yeah, opened a topic about it and the mod deleted it.