Worked with Aisiana F/O , he was 7 years on 747 . He admitted he never made a decision or spoke up to cpt ever .

Cmon...lets try not to sound like the media here......many of us fly into SFO on a daily/weekly basis......for International arrivals coming in from the West/SW,,are cleared for the 28L(visual) arrival,...(some)overshoot 28L AND the 28R Centreline...(ive had several RA,s)(Not all airlines)......desperately manuver back to the 28L centreline......meanwhile,deny they ever got the RA,.........elbows and :mad: to get down and slow down.....then drag it in.....(as Ive seen many times)doing these staggered apps....Ive been witness to Asiana having issues with visual apps to 28L Before......my point??? going into SFO with ldg Rwys to the west,departing Rwys to the Nth..........configuration and speed control are vital.........SFO is well known for its "illusions"....I believe that all the players and pieces are here,it will not be hard to find the "cause"

Press release now up on the ASIANA website.

To be fair - their tame aviation expert also said "1400 feet per second" - and then corrected himself to "feet per minute."

Weird to see everything aft of the pressure bulkhead basically gone, while the rest of the fuselage is substantially intact except for post-crash fire damage.

I think I see what physically happened here - tail got low and clipped the seawall, surgically removing the tailcone and empennage. WHY that happened - exactly - we shall see.

Happy the survival rate seems quite high - so far.

How many of you?
 

Use 300ft per mile on either of a visual or non precision approach, as a profile guide?:confused::ugh:

Eyewitness accounts are often unreliable. So the aircraft lands short and there is a great cloud of dust - in which the entire tail breaks off - out of the cloud of smoke and debris comes the aircraft - and the fin is not sticking up - therefore it must be upside down - it bounces into more smoke and bits start breaking away. Excitable witnesses could assume - no fin upside down big clouds of smoke and debris 'rolling over' 'cartwheeling' etc.

I think the reports are understandable - but the media is taking them all as gospel even when it is blatantly obvious that an aircraft with wings still attached is unlikely to have 'rolled over'.

I heard the same report. The reporter Claudia Cowan said a rate of descent1400 FPM, which is 23 FPS. Also, she was referring to rate of descent, not necessarily at touchdown.

Since manual thrust is just one click away poor airmanship would have to be involved.

Yep, well right of CL. And I suppose that makes sense, in-as-much as it's been established these folks don't have a lick of airmanship if they have to hand fly, so I guess it stands to reason with the winds out of the south (which they were) they can't fly the CL....

Right of Centerline
 

Could it be that the crew was trying to miss the approach lights?

I don't want to have a dig at the controller on frequency or other stations transmitting, its difficult enough when something like this happens so quickly, but its frustrating listening to the RT clip... the poor guy in the burning emergency aircraft can't even get a conversation going for all the other people stepping on him to announce their go-arounds and what-not. Where's the common sense in that? If you're on final in that sort of situation use your ears and try to entertain SOME degree of situational awareness. Your go around will be evident by the fact you are still aviating in the big blue sky and not skidding around on the ground adding to the detritus of the existing crash... there's no need to step on the guy saying "help! I crashed". A bit of "All stations San Francisco is closed maintain radio silence and contact approach on BLAH" may have helped but you still have to respect the fact things sometimes unfold too quickly for that sort of thing and if you MUST report your go-around to someone, get off the emergency frequency and tell approach, you can't expect the emergency aircraft to start cycling frequencies, so let him have his say because he IS more important than you.

Rant over.

Ref, ''lack of approach guidance as primary cause'', .................................contributory possibly

but in CAVOK daylight.................................................... ...................

the correct thrust setting for approach, and a window to judge the correct aiming point,

is all you need........................................................ ...........................

if you know what you are doing!

:cool:

Portvale...that corroborates a witnesses version.

New age pilots
 

Today's airline training teaches pilots everything except HOW TO FLY THE AIRPLANE. Perfect weather , perfect aircraft, only GS u/s CRASH!!!!!! If it is not for those poor people on board it would be funny

The irony here is that some otherwise well-meaning aviation folks are doing precisely what many condemn the media for doing.

When i heard on the car radio some years ago that TWA 800 was down, I turned off the radio because at the very early stage of things the only thing that was factually known was the aircraft was down--everything to follow to fill the air-time was news anchor babble and rampant speculation by a bevy of "experts" they had on to comment. I turned off the radio this time as well. Sure, the video footage shows certain things, and I wonder about the as-yet-to-be-officially-determined crash sequence, but I'll wait for the NTSB folks to get there and start their work.

I would have to agree with dargentw's comment. [Not in all carriers]

If I had to pick the favourite , in this case, pilot error would be the horse I would be betting to win.

Especially if the horse was born and bread in Korea.

just run the evacuation checklist
 

"Help, I crashed?" (Post 221)
Seriously?
The tower cab has really, really big windows. The local controller knew what happened.

Dargentw

You say "perfect aircraft". How can you possibly know that?:ugh:

Indigopete

I quite agree with your point regarding speculation. I'm familiar with SFO and the "slam dunk" although in my experience that's more typical on 28R.

We don't know the: aircraft state, descent rate, ILS/PAPI availability, autothrust status, propulsion system status etc etc.

Remember the midair collision over Austria in which a Russian plane was involved. Obviously the Russian crews' fault said the armchair experts except that wasn't the case at all. Far too difficult to wait for some data, better to spout crap straight away.

Winds
 

I'm not a pilot, just an SFBay sailor. We've had a nuking westerly for the last week. 20kts has been a LIGHT day. The past 40 hours have been blowing like hell. I haven't seen under 20 kts in two days, and I'm 15 miles N. of SFO.