Thanks I must have missed the plan while reading the report... At least they took some steps to correct the situation.

Also just a reminder that in the tropics, even one cute-looking puffy Cu can dump enough rain to ruin your whole day, without much warning from the weather folks. And be gone 5 minutes later. Be prepared...

What surprises me is that the TSB made no comment about WestJet deciding that this was a non-reportable incident.

Many are judgement calls as/until more data and interviews are conducted. If no intent to deceive was noted the government will let it go.

I've been involved in some where I came in a couple of days late and then rang up the phones. Th aircraft was back in service and the recorders were still with it.

Is it just me or do we have a trend here with Canadian operators continuing approaches below DA/MDA without sufficient visual references? First AC at Halifax, now this...

I agree with A4, very interesting safety culture WestJet seems to have.

Ours keep the regulatory minimum of 25 hrs. I have a hunch the limit may have changed to 120 hours for the newer units.
An empty QAR would normally have the capacity to hold 4 weeks of flying.

Flying directly towards a white hotel, that they mistook for the runway...
Brings a whole new meaning to 'You have reached your Destination.'
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Total loss of Vertical Situational Awareness .
 

Wow!
In 2017 this is still possible!
Were to begin?
Someone pointed out here is lots of point we can learn from!
Like what?
At DP or Minima , You have to have the Runway or associated light in sight, Old news!!
Ground contact, hills or Shoreline does not count!! As per Rules and OPS manual!
They were told 2000m vis , but claim they did not hear.
What the dickens were they doing below say 200 feet without the threshold and runway infront of them.
Simple, they had lost the plot, the lateral to a certain extent and concentrating on that , the vertical totally.
This can NEVER happen on a non-precision approach. That is part of basic training, never mind a 150 kt 737-800.
Without the EGPWS they would have hit the water. 100% for sure.
Super scary.
To be continued.

What surprises me is that the TSB made no comment about WestJet deciding that this was a non-reportable incident.

Is an Airmiss a reportable incident in Canada? SFO was similar to an airmiss, albeit one target was on the ground. This was a severe groundmiss, again one target was not airborne, but you get my drift. If a 1nm airmiss is reportable, but a 40-60' near crash is not, that sounds confusing double standards.

Regarding the continuous descent after MDA & MAP; at the worst, if no immediate GA due no visual reference, is a level off at MDA. It also smacks of 2 heard outside searching for the target and no-one minding the office. That is a MCC training culture and company technique. In my airlines, even if they might have been SOP nannies, they had very strict crew duties during NAP's, even all approaches. No confusion and IMHO were excellent. Never 2 heads out or in.

Also the main reason for getting low was disconnection AP, lowering the nose, AT still engaged and as speed increased AT reducing thrust in Level Change ( speed mode).
Before putting AT in ARM. This is contradictory to Boeing recommendation.

This is the most rubbish report I have read in some time considering how close they got. It sounds like TSB are making excuses with regards to the light setting and the information about the present WX state and specifically the vis.
As anyone with two hrs of IFR knows visibility in rain showers are transient and hard to judge. No mater: No runway, no lights, GO AROUND F15, SET GA THRUST!!
They were given the 2000 meters at one point , but did not acknowledge, so why are the Tower transcript not included , considering the CVR does not exist.

Take the Airbus crash, this one and the Taxiway C lowpass and it must be allowed to ask ; WTF are the airlines up to, and were are TSB and MOT in Canada!

My slow connection only downloaded the coverpage... Is there a "Near Collision with Terrain" category? How lower than them you'd need to go to for it? :ugh:

Given that some of the approaches used by WestJet require a rate of descent of 1000 fpm or more, the FDM program is set to capture only rates of descent that exceed 1300 fpm for more than 2 seconds

The majority of WestJet’s 1596 unstable approaches in 2016 were characterized by rate-of descent exceedances, and during 609 of them the aircraft exceeded 1300 fpm for more than 2 seconds during descent between 1000 feet AGL and 500 feet AGL.

WoooHoooo!

Go around...wait for it, wait for it...jeezus, why did the ac not respond to thrust increase? No other actions other than driving it faster downward?

Similar close shave incident to a Nauru Airlines B737-400 attempting night NDB approach into Kosrae, Micronesia, Central Pacific region. In that incident, the crew forgot to set correct QRH and got to 370 feet over the water 4 miles out. They initially disregarded GPWS warnings. During subsequent go-around the pilot allowed the aircraft to descend at minus 2 degrees body angle before pulling up. Potentially deadly.
See report: https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications...r/ao-2015-066/

In the case of the St Maartin incident, why did the crew use RNAV for the approach rather than use the VOR approach which is more accurate. Boeing FCTM recommends switching the autothrottle to OFF during manually flown approaches because leaving it in ARM can have has undesirable consequences. Judging by what happened, the Boeing recommendation was certainly valid

In the case of the St Maartin incident, why did the crew use RNAV for the approach rather than use the VOR approach which is more accurate.

Is that true? I left the fleet before RNAV was introduced as a standard type of approach, and so missed the training. However, I understand that the EU operator, given the choice, opts for the RNAV automatics flown approach when both are available. To be corrected, of course.

Maybe they didn't have RNAV approval or possibly the pre flight raim check wasn't satisfactory?

Checking the plates:
VOR Z Rwy 10 has a MDA of 500'
RNAV (GNSS) Rwy 10 has a MDA of 700'

Both have only LNAV minima.

The VOR is 2x the runway width to the right of the runway 10 threshold.
Both approaches are on track 96 degrees like the runway.

When GPS works properly you could basically use it to much lower minimums and be fine. But the integrity without augmentation system is not guaranteed and therefore the minimums are quite high (that's how i understand it).

So choosing or not choosing the RNAV is irrelevant here as they would've been required to fly visually even sooner. I doubt that lateral guidance would have helped much either. In the youtube video on avherald you can see they are more or less aligned with the runway but that didn't help.
If they kept the appropriate descent rate or somehow programmed themselves VNAV guidance maybe they would've even made the landing. Would still have been illegal to continue as far past the missed approach point as they did.

The role played by the weather conditions was not mentioned in the report. As any glider pilot will tell you, the area surrounding a CB has downdrafts of several hundreds of Ft/min. When you add this to their -700 ft/min glide-path, this should explain why they had an increased rate of descent prior to them taking their avoiding action.
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A VOR is not "more accurate". Lateral tracking on a LNAV is more accurate; it puts you on the CL (as the boys at Mildura found; they would have died had they done a VOR). It is true that in this case the VOR had a lower MDA, but as the report says, they only loaded the LNAV "just in case"; the ATIS indicated, and they briefed for, a visual approach. So good on them for that.

Interesting that following this near-miss, Westjet created (or had created) an RNP (AR). Now they're getting serious. :D

I think the TSB got this bit wrong. Even though the chart depicts a Visual Segment, 700ft/2nm is basically on a 3° profile, so no different to any other NPA flown as a CDFA. With a vis limit of 3600m, the runway should have been visible almost immediately.

Some posters are fond of saying we should wait for the report before commenting on an incident. On this thread there were 234 posts before the report, and 25 after it was published. Seems many have lost interest by the time the report comes out.