Below the GS at SFO again
 

A 777.
From the Pacific Rim into San Francisco.
600 feet at 3.8 miles.
Aircrew only did something about it when the Tower alerted them.

Unbelievable.

Incident: EVA B773 at San Francisco on Jul 23rd 2013, descended below safe height

Yes, definitely unbelievable.

As SLF and a simmer (shoot me down), it is incomprehensible that two qualified pilots allow a normal situation to deteriorate to this point.

All the data they require is in front of them. They drive cars, too, don't they ? Oh wait, cars park themselves these days.

On that note, planes do land themselves too.

Too many similarities between this occurrence and the ill fated flight from Inchoen, perhaps we shall dig deeper to find out why instead of pointing fingers. Well that's my thought anyways.

Indeed it is, and two lots of two even more so? So Silver Spur is right, needs looking at?

Is there still no ILS on 28L at SFO? It's incomprehensible to me that a major airfield can have an ILS outage that long.

Ksfo ils rwy 28l ots due construction until aug 22, 2013.

It is completely comprehensible.

Ils are also routinely shut down or notamed unserviceable due to flight check/calibration and even grass cutting around the critical area(s).

Whist not a major airfield, Rome CIA a few years back was VOR only after the ILS LOC TX was taken out by a biz jet. It remained like this for months and months......still, just take a look at the NOTAMS for Italy these days - nothing ever seems to get fixed.:rolleyes:

Why no RNAV GNSS? Might help out the visual approach fearing crews. Gives you an aircraft 2 reds 2 whites on glide on centreline at under 2 miles to run generally.

I understood that not only was the ILS out but they had taken the PAPIs away at the same time. Are they both still missing ?

What´s incrompensible of an ILS being U/S due construction works? Same is happenig for example in OBBI and no one is flying dustcropping style approaches over there. What is incomprensible is a set of pilots 600ftAGL 3.8nm form touchdown.

Kids nowadays don't know how to fly visual approaches any more without aids.

The issue is not the ILS/PAPI OTS, the issue is the lack of actual flying experience by these jockeys......

Question: If you fly Visual Approach can you choose your own glide path angle? It's only water bellow so you can a bit low if you fly visually. Or can you fly very small angle like 1 degree all the way over the water?
From Air Law side:If you fly visually you avoid obstacles visually. It doesn't matter if it's 777 or Cesna 152? You don't even have to be aligned with runway and can fly any angle airplane is capable of?
Why did controller intervened? Because he was scared and remembered previous accident. As I understand controller is not responsible for obstacle avoidance for aircraft flying in VFR.

Surely SFO isn't the only airport in the world where airlines regularly fly visual approaches? I don't believe in coincidence - someone needs to look at aspects that may be contributory factors.

cldvrv: Agreed, but pax don't need to die in the meantime. Surely set up a precision 0.3/0.5nm (GPS) GNSS approach (or whatever version they do or are called in the USA), at least gives badly trained pilots something to hang their hat on and perhaps prevent a crash. I enjoy a visual as much as the next pilot, but I know it will take years to change pilot culture back to hand flying skills (which are starting to be pushed again).

We are talking a major international airport at SFO. Even my little regional airport base EGBB has arranged RNAV GNSS for the upcoming ILS closure. Flew one today, could have been on an ILS.

Do these two airlines, EVA and Asiana fly visual approaches anywhere else? Are their crews trained or at least exposed/encouraged to fly visual approaches.

I agree it needs looking into, but I would start with these airlines first.

Sorry to say ... being 600 ft below GS 3.5nm out is far beyond visual approach incompetence, it's sheer absolute incompetence. No excuse at all for this. :ugh:

Pilots, Don't Let the Beancounters Dictate Qualifications. Police Yourselves!
 

Maybe what should be looked at is what constitutes a "qualified pilot" these days? In the past, at least here in the US, the airlines had many military trained pilots, who had to meet a high standard, both mentally and physically, to even begin their training, which was vigorous and thorough, especially in the basics of flying. Now, because of demand, and more military pilots staying in the military, instead of getting out to work for the airlines, we may not always get the quality of person, with the quality of training, that we used to get. I notice when this is brought up in forums, the non-military trained pilots (which most or them are for the airlines now, I think) get pretty defensive, but I'm not saying all the non-military trained pilots are bad, or even more than a small percentage. I'm just saying, the likelihood of incompetence has gone up. Luckily, it's offset, by better aircraft and automation, making flying still safer, than it was. I say, make the changes in screening and training that are needed, for airline pilots, and raise the pay accordingly. There's just not enough former military pilots to go around any longer. Whether the industry realized it or not, they were using former military pilots in place of having good, in house training and screening. Maybe the training would be a "Back to Basics" continuing education course or test on basic airmanship, including stall and recovery, cross wind landing, etc. and would only need to use a Piper Cherokee or Cessna 172, so maybe, it wouldn't cost so much, risk passengers or a high dollar aircraft? Many airline pilots are part a union. You have leverage to help dictate your compensation, etc. Why not use it to dictate qualification and training, when contract time comes up?. Otherwise, the bean counters will only spend enough to stay in "legal" compliance on qualification and training.

Here is the approach for KSFO 28L
 

KSFO RNAV (GPS) RWY 28L (IAP) ? FlightAware

:ugh:

Let's see:

They were low, waved off, came back around, and landed safely.

In a generic sense, they did what was needed. Perhaps the "29.97" alert from the controller put a finger on what was wrong; perhaps they needed a 'poke' to get back into the game, perhaps something else was going on.

As it works out, what should have happened did: low on approach, wave off, come back and do it right.

That's why there are so many pieces to the puzzle: planes, pilots, lights, navaids, radios, controllers, etc. Extra slices of cheese block the holes from lining up, so to speak.

If the controller saved the day, a tip of the cap to him.

He may have made the call about when the crew realized "this is AFU, let's go around" ... hard to say without input from the crew on what they saw.

How one gets that low on approach that close in is another question.

Because the ILS approach would be in the FMC database and this could be used for guidance on a visual approach.

Good you pointed that out. At least they did the right thing by going around. There may be to many pilots, who think they'll get demerits for going around. I say we shouldn't try to discourage "do-overs". This wouldn't have made news, if there wasn't an "Asian" association, so soon after the Asiana 214 incident. Why, "going around" may be a pilots only opportunity for repetitive practice, in the modern, bean counter run, airline!

"it is incomprehensible that two qualified pilots allow a normal situation to deteriorate to this point."

I have flown for 4 different airlines in Asia and to me it is TOTALLY comprehensible that this has occurred again.

The training is not good and the adherence to any standard is non existent.

The only amazement I have is that some of these airlines manage to avoid crashing more often.

We are supposed to be the safest industry in the world. From what I'm reading from you flyboys and flygirls, alot more training needs to be given on handflying, fair enough. But we need to cater for the weakest links too, and to have no ILS and no PAPIs for that length of time is unacceptable. More handflying training and tighter regulation on how long you can have the landing aids o/o/s are needed IMO. Surely they could have found a way of installing the new ILS without having to take the old one out? Or use 28L for departures only and 28R for arrivals until the new ILS is up and running?

The issue of PAPIs was thoroughly aired on the Asiana thread. For the Asiana approach the PAPIs were serviceable.

Are you saying they the PAPIs were not serviceable for this approach?

So say the people, who use automation as a crutch! Don't know if this idealized, best of both worlds, solution will ever be successful. It's likely what has been tried, or assumed to work before.

This happened around 9 PM local. If the PAPI was indeed O/S, this guy was essentially flying a black hole visual to the runway lights with some skylight above. Not the total piece of cake some of the comments here suggest.

Without getting too deep into the age-old Mil/Civ debate, Coagie actually makes some sound points.

Too few pilots have any real handling skills these days and that includes a great many training Captains. How many pilots have actually shut down engines on anything bigger than a light twin ? How many have any time in
practice or simulated asymmetric flight. How many have made approaches using restricted airfield lighting in either an aircraft of simulator ? How many take the opportunity to make a visual approach when the situation arises albeit with instrument back-up.........................etcetc

Ah, If the PAPI's were in service for the AAR then I stand corrected, last time I dipped into that thread they were described as O/O/S.

But I stand by my point that you shouldn't be allowed take out your ILS for that amount of time without having to restrict use of that runway for arrivals, especially if there is a parrallel runway.

Only if it wasn't intentional. Nothing technically wrong with a low flat approach provided it is managed correctly. Granted not that efficient though.

I take it the GS is still u/s though so how were they below it?

Many of the KAL crashes were at the hands of the 'Military trained pilots'


Having flown with plenty of them over the years my experience is they can be just as good or bad as their civilian trained counterparts.


Some of the ex fighter type's can be a real liability with their lack of crew skills.

incompetence
 

This whole thing reeks of total inexperience, lack of traing and poor airmanship. Good gosh, any experienced pilot flying this machine should be expected to manually input a visual centerline and fix for any runway. It is in the database. At 3 miles, the aircraft should be at 1000 feet. It doesn't stop there.

The flight director system has a 'Flight Path Vector' which is a function of the ADIRU. IF.....IF the crew were trained properly or just had interest in observing this aid during normal flight, they would know that keeping the vertical tail just slightly on the horizon, would provide a near 3 degree slope. The -200 and -300 FPV placement differ somewhat.

When I am training my candidates I make sure that those whom I teach, have a thorough understanding of how the system works.

As for black-hole syndrome, I disagree. There is enough peripheral lighting at KSFO and if the flight crew had properly set their systems to give decent situational awareness, things could have been different.

The problem will only continue to get worse as carriers grapple to find pilots to fill the hardware that is on order. Operators who rely on 'cadets' to fill seats can only expect the risk factor within their operations to increase. Yet, it is those carriers who invite well experienced and highly qualified personnel to interviews, only to tell them that they aren't wanted..no reasons given, in favor of taking some of the 250 hour wonders and turning them through the pilot mill.

Only time will tell

Would there be any warnings/alarms on the flight deck descending through 600ft? Please tell me yes!

They are hired for their ability to pay, not for their ability to fly. There have been countless threads here on pprune highlighting the dangers of these 250 hour kids, but they get all swarmed by the wannabees and the training providers to lead to any form of meaningful discussion.

I have been going on about this for a long time, all we really need is a few smoking holes in the country side and we will see the same changes here in Europe and in Asia as the FAA has now gotten through.

You cannot make up for experience, no matter how much money you bring.

Our flight department has strict rules for positioning flights, we will not use any of these training airlines, and neither will the parent company with thousands of employees worldwide. I know of a few German multinationals that will not use them either for their employee flights. There are more and more companies in the Far East and on the sub continent with those restrictions now. I would like to see more people take that stand, but too many expect their 29 euro flight to the sun and don't care what cost get cut to give them that low cost flight.

A380 first cleared visual on 28L later ISL on 28R
 

At very beginning Pilot (PIC) seems to throw his hands in the air when given
a visual clearance on 28L but did something get edited out as they later
get ILS clearance on 28R, They still did a manual landing it appears
after auto thrust disable and auto pilot disable.

Critique please, it seemed very professional to me an SLF except for the
first exasperated keyboard slam.

A380 first landing at SFO
This is pretty interesting to watch.
The pilots sit away from everything, no yoke, etc. Captain pulls up a keyboard once in a while to enter info but the plane does most of the work.....
The humongous A380 makes its first landing at San Francisco airport. It seems extensively automated. The air traffic controller gives them heading, altitude and speed, and they dial it in. Pretty interesting.
For best results go "full screen" on your monitor. It will seem like you are in the cockpit.

Pilot's View: Airbus A380 approach and landing at San Francisco. [VIDEO]

Well both easyJet and Ryanair have been doing it for almost 20 years now and I don't see them making too many smoking holes...

I always find this "cadet bashing" that occurs after pretty much every accident (regardless of whether cadets were involved or not) a bit bizarre.

Everyone was a 250 hour pilot once and speaking from a European perspective if you have 250hrs and have been through the integrated flight training system the chances are that you will be flying an A320 pretty soon after that. There does not seem to be an inherent problem with this from a safety point of view.

Outside of the USA the question of the experience is also rapidly changing. In most of the world it is no longer realistic to expect many new first officers to have significant flying experience before airline flying. Air forces are getting smaller and GA operations that low houred pilots might once have done have largely disappeared. It is also not always desirable for instructing to become a hour building process either because it often leads to poor instruction and the blind leading the blind so to speak.

One way or another airlines have to face up to the fact that more of their pilots will be low experience. This has to be dealt with by rigorous training and experience development within the airline environment. That is possibly where the Asian carriers are going wrong.

What also strikes me is that a lot of the pilots involved in these handling accidents, loss of control, CFIT etc are actually usually very experienced, they are not usually cadets. In fact I can't think of a major accident in which a 'cadet' was to blame. Incompetence among experienced crews seems much more common. Often probably experienced pilots who have become 'magenta line' sinners themselves after years of routine that rarely changes are the victim of sudden challenges which cause them to lose the plot.

Airline recurrent training is almost certainly not dealing with this issue well enough at the moment - this far more important than whether the pilot started out as a cadet or with a thousand hours GA or whatever five or ten years down the line.

@eaglespar:

I know this video. Look closely, and you'll see that it was the First Officer who was the PF for this approach - his hand is on the sidestick from start to finish. I don't think there's an edit - I suspect SFO approach control decided to switch them to an ILS on 28R of their own volition. The Captain as PNF was calling up the procedures for visual approach, then when the reassignment to ILS was given, he throws up his hands (though not aggressively) and puts the keyboard away.

I have some difficulty with some of the xenophobia here. There seems to be a lot of criticism of Asian piloting skills and how they can't even handle a simple visual approach. At the same time, we appear to have an occurrence where a 100% American airline (and one can assume pilot) manages to stuff a 737 in nose first with the following discussion being remarkably 'light'.

Now, I'm not into a willy-wave about us and them. All I am saying that none of us are perfect and we should be learning each others' lessons.

Isn't that the problem with this industry that's apparently supposed :confused:

Raise the bar, don't lower it.

And who said anybody is perfect?
But there are some inescapable facts - Asia-Pacific airlines still fall short in the air safety compared to other continents, of course they are still much better than Africa or Russia but North America remains the safest place on Earth to fly, even safer than Europe. And since Korean's pilots training was in the spotlight years ago and for a good reason current comments should be no surprise...

Not necessarily disagreeing. But it is equally true that North America could be safer. Stuffing the nose wheel through the front of an aircraft is the sort of thing you expect from the occasional PPL student in a 172. The lack of 'pilotage skill' is on a par with someone who can't manage the aircraft's energy properly at 2-3 miles.

Of course most of us are, at best, making educated guesses about a number of issues.

Yep USA may be safer, but it could do better. I've been in aviation long enough to know that 'good enough' isn't good enough.