Did you at all consider that these overruns had nothing to do with the airplane type. Research all of them and post again if pilot error was a factor. The recent PIA A320 accident. Why wasn't that caused by the aircraft vs pilots? That's your theory right? Aircraft type causes accidents...

So far the aircraft (737-800) and pilots/training (of Spice Jet and AI Express) has been mentioned.

What about the condition of INDIAN RUNWAYS!!

Post Covid Era Flying
 

The pilots would have been flying on the limits of their FDTL, due to the current restrictions there are no layovers internationally, the flight time from DXB to CCJ is 4 hours as per FR24, they would've departed an airport in India 3-4 hours away from DXB, that morning.
Add to this the lack of job security, the drastic pay cuts, the monsoon, the lack of braking action reporting equipment, the quality of the CCJ runway, the punitive policies by the regulator and airlines. Its is all the slices of cheese aligning together, leading to this unfortunate incident.

I understood that as they went over the cliff, one of the aircrew quickly shut down both donks. Which is easily done with one hand, in one move, on the 737NG. Probably saved a lot of lives, if correct.

To make a fair comparison, you'd need to include the -600, -700, and -900, if you are comparing to all A320 variants built.

Nonetheless, your point stands. the 737's seems to star in many of these overrun headlines (also in somewhat more benign inicidents that end up with just some wheels in the grass/arrester strip and dented ego's). With fleets this big and (assumingly) being operating similarly challenging environments (wet poorly maintained runways) and by similarly gifted/talented aircrews, it is striking how much more often we see 737's going of the edge.

And yes I know human brains (including my own) are particularly useless at interpreting these types of statistics, and we really like seeing patterns that reinforce our own biases...but still...

​​​​​​in gust conditions with speed fluctuations 737 needs to flown to hold flight path. Airbus holds the flight path with ATHR holding the speed it easier to handle. GS mini is better concept than flying a fixed addition which needs to be bled during flare. Besides 737 800 airframe is known to break up in excursions due to manufacturing compromises. There was documentary on this.

If the weather was really bad and there was a thunderstorm over the field .. what were they doing there in the first place?

If I remember correctly, most runways in India are not grooved, making them more prone to hydroplaning.

I have many thousands of hours on the B737-800.
Its not the aircraft.
B737-800 does just fine on a wet runway.
Pre Covid there was a B737 takeoff or landing every 3 seconds somewhere around the world.
Not the airport.
2800 meters with an ILS.
Like thousands of other B737 Pilots I have always had great confidence in the aircraft.
If you’ve got a HUD it’s about as good as it gets in difficult conditions.
No experience numpties should spare us all their no nothing commentary.
Boeing has had the misfortune of selling hundreds of aircraft to operators who don’t know what they are doing.
The never ending story...............

With TS/RA you never know how bad the weather is until you arrive at the MDA. Also it’s very localized and changeable. 5 minutes either way and it might have been an uneventful approach and landing.

And then there’s the elephant in the room, no one ever talks about - the well disguised pressures on crew to not divert because of cost and inconvenience to the company. Careers are made and broken on managements perceptions of a pilot’s propensity to divert.

Always easy to criticise from the comfort of an armchair.

With or without covid, do you really expect the airline to schedule a crew layover instead of return flight 2 sectors by 4 hours each???

lucille

mmmmm, I’m not flying with you then.......

lucille

Really??? At both airlines I worked for.. TS within 10 nm of the field .. no take off or landing allowed.

Landing performance
 

Having asked the question earlier - 'what is the basis of the landing performance (OLD/FOLD, actual) and thus what could be, should have been expected in these conditions', there is no response. Any 737-800 operators on line, or not knowing …

How does the -800 differ from previous variants; adequate performance, but more difficult to be precise in approach and landing speed, touch down point, crosswind. A 'slippery', aircraft, a bit of a handful, better if flown fast; any comments ?

The overrun area, irrespective of length, condition, etc, does not respect rank, status, qualifications, or experience once beyond the end of the runway.

SOPS

You used to fly for EK? I've been to DXB when there was CB's all around. Not often, but it happens. EK did not stop all operations that time. Never seen EK diverting when flying into airports in India either. CB's all around BOM. Ops normal.
India is a nightmare in the monsoon season. What looks like a long runway may have a long underrun. 27 BOM is one example. None of the runways are grooved. They are often very uneven, so you bounce along after landing with the tires hardly in contact with the surface. Add tailwind and a heavy 737-800 with high approach speeds (higher than the A320, I firmly belive this is a big factor in the overrun competition). This is a very challenging situation. You need to put it down exactly where you are supposed to. Or before. -800 has a pitch of 0 degrees on final with FL40. Time and time again I see pilots ending up high on short final because of this. You have to keep the nose down to avoid it. Max brakes, max reverse, FL40.
From 737 captains post higher up, about 2400 m landing distance and 11-13 kts tailwind... This was a bad set up form the moment they started the approach.

I don't think the captain should be praised as a hero just yet. How old was he, BTW?

May I humbly request all to stop questioning the pilots decisions in this case. They had paid with their dear lives. There is absolutely no point saying “they should have done that, they shouldn’t have done that”.

Published technical data are flight tests figures done in a certain condition. In my 30 years of real life commercial jet flying, there is no two sets of conditions that are the same. No two runways are the same, the same runway is also not the same with different depth of water/contaminant. Let’s not forget water/ contaminant in real life is not uniform. A B777 or A330 stopping performance is better than a B737.

Here are some questions. Did you notice some tires have more grooves than others on the same aircraft? Does this impact the stopping performance? Which type of tires your airline chose to use and did they made that decision purely based on economics instead of functionality? Did the manufacturer specify standing water depth limit for landing? Are these tires suitable for a place with over 3000mm of annual rainfall? Does the airport report standing water depth?(not common).

Every incident gives some valuable lessons to the industry. Let’s just focus in learning’em.

Understand the logistics of a Repatriation flight, its not just one sector, a ground time of 30-40 mins and push back. They board 10-15 passengers at a time, the passengers wear their personal protective equipment the airline provided on on the jet way. After landing you have to wait in the airplane for an hour if someone landed before you and there is rush at the immigration, to avoid over crowding the airport.
Its not the 8 hours of flying that matters, its the duty period.

For a country with heavy air traffic and annual monsoons, one would have assumed that India would have invested in grooved runways and ground weather radar at all major airports. Sadly, India remains a very weak nation in terms of quality of its aviation infrastructure.

MissChief

Perhaps their investment in Space should be diverted into aviation?

flightleader

Doing this is a one step plan to one day repeating any mistakes they made.

To suggest that we don't learn from their mistakes out of respect/grief is ridiculous.

I hope this view isn't a common way of thinking in the airline culture of that region..

parkfell

Amazing how you've managed to resolve the priorities of a fairly complex nation in one sentence. You might as well say remove Donald Trump to reverse global warming. Please let's stick to inputs on the topic at hand and leave such comments/conversations to Twitter.

flightleader

You are contradicting yourself. First, you don't want pilot decisions questioned in this case. Then, you conclude that valuable lessons can be learned from this accident. Well, that requires a complete examination of the facts, an analysis of those facts, and conclusions.

TT, et al, lest we make the same mistake.

Learning involves being able to identify contributing factors, context, relevance, influences on human behaviour, and then applying these to other situations.

Starting from the statement '… learn from their mistakes …' assumes too much, akin to allocating blame.

Better to consider that the crew were attempting to do their best in the circumstances, as they understood it at the time, and from this, learn.

We can only truly learn from our own mistakes. Viewing the mistakes of others with hindsight, only constructs situations as we now see them.

flightleader #57 :ok:

https://www.ergonomics.org.uk/common...rse-Events.pdf

https://hbr.org/2011/04/strategies-f...g-from-failure

https://safetydifferently.com/a-shor...learning-teams

https://facultyeportfolioresource.we...ingchapter.pdf

P.S. re tyres https://www.futuresky-safety.eu/wp-c..._D3.3_v2.0.pdf
Also see references by Horne, NASA.

Or you could take the view that you need to learn from other people’s mistakes as you won’t live long enough to make them all yourself.
There is no doubt that the crew were “attempting to do their best in the circumstances” but unfortunately the options narrowed and they eventually “painted themselves into a corner”.

The salient aspects of the CVR transcript, if ever published, will be a valuable source of material for the CRMIs.

One Q yet to be answered : was the Command gradient a significant factor?

Still wondering how a deadly lethal hull loss of a completely operational airplane can make anyone a hero … 🤔

Sorry, this reads like ignorance and ugly prejudice.
India's airports are crap like most of the rest of its infrastructure, true.
Factually, most of India's wasted resources which could help remedy the infrastructure are spent on government mismanagement of funds, not on space, which has an allocation of 1.8 bil. Out of a 460 bil total budget some 60 bil is spent on defence, 90 bil on debt servicing, 40 bil on various subsidies.
These other areas are more legitimate targets for pointing out where reductions could be made (if one ignores the basic issue that a poor legal and regulatory framework means that diverting more funds into a new area will not necessarily mean proportionately better results).
​​​​​One might as well say, the US should shut down NASA and divert the money to stockpiling ventilators, PPE, better roads and bridges, water systems in Flint, etc.. But that would be stupid and counterproductive, because NASA has disproportionate value to the US technological edge and is not such a large part of overall spending.
The same is actually true of India, if one is actually interested in looking at the facts rather than in spewing frankly quite ugly and disgusting prejudice.

"Perhaps their investment in Space should be diverted into aviation?" (parkfell)

But investment by India in ISRO allows the country, and its cadres in air and space law salons, to say it has become a "space-faring" state. There is no equivalent glamour in asserting status as a "sky-faring" or "high-fidelity aviation" state. (Whether the latter type of technical and managerial finesse is a prerequisite for the former, can be an interesting question.)

I read in the one of the daily rags that there were two captains at the controls. That's always been a bad ingredient in the accident recipe!

So much so that VABB 27 was oft described as landing on a potato field and I would agree wholeheartedly with that!

That was however, thirty five years ago and we'd like to believe that CRM, Human Factors, Performance Calculations, Sim Training, WX Info and so on may have improved a little.

Legitimate question, do those above whom are suggesting that we "let them be" and don't delve into their actions, happen to either be or have Indian heritage?

-I can't remember the last time I saw multiple posts on here arguing for no investigation/learnings after a deadly crash which clearly had factors that could and almost certainly should have been mitigated..
If an State aviation body took that attitude it would be criminal negligence

WillowRun 6-3

I had already come to that conclusion a few years ago. Perhaps the politicians need to press the reset button and think again.......chances probably remote

CRM, monitoring, yes, but they only work until they don't
 

parkfell, #65 :ok: ( - 800 per manual ?)

But what will we learn, individually or collectively; how, why, apply …
I doubt that your 'no doubt' can be proven; individual opinion, judgement, interpretation of CVR etc.
Also we cannot tell what options the crew had, what they saw or believed; as above a drift into 'error', 'blame' is very difficult to avoid - because we are human.

A skill in aviation is to avoid the corner points; go around, diversion. What we might see as a corner position now, could have been a landing opportunity to the crew at the time, but with hindsight it wasn't.

White Knight, TT,
CRM, HF, etc. It is difficult to define these terms, thus they can mean different things to different people - cultures, context.

Nowadays investigators and regulators (mis)use these terms as an alternative for 'error', and accident reports are overwhelmed with 'failures' in CRM, HF, monitoring. What is overlooked is to ask why.
It is difficult to prove that CRM, etc, are a benefit; whether or not, we dare not consider otherwise, thus why are these factors reported in accidents; - an inability to explain human performance.

The weakness, the issue to be learnt, is that the regulations and accident reports expect these safety initiatives to work all of the time. People are surprised that crews don't behave as excepted, that humans are human and occasionally behave contrary to expectation, thus 'blame' the crew.

CRM, monitoring, yes, but they only work until they don't, then, unfortunately we seek to 'blame' someone.

https://avinashchikte.com/2020/08/08...bXJxEGUgbfR2mc

Opinion and insight about the pilot from one of his personal friends.

FLCH

Thank you for a very timely post. I hope others who post here read the account in the link and think before they post.

A little more on the crew from a press conference (mostly in English, parts in Hindi and Malayalam) held today by Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri.

The captain was 59 years old, joined Air India Express in 2013. He had 10830 hours of flight time, 6662 in command and 4244 in command of the 737.

He had landed at Calicut 27 times.

The first officer had 1073 hours total time.

Minister Singh Puri (wearing the blue dastar) visits the accident site:

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....9b6d9bde8d.jpg
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....d50d91387c.jpg

The captain has always done well before this accident will always remain. If anything is found wanting then it's only human but will help prevent recurrence. I remember NTSB Chairman in 2000 James Hall saying"I am a history major. I believe past is prologue. But all accidents are not acts of God. We take what we learn so it doesn't happen again. But that ain't gonna happen if nobody says anything". So investigation will have look into everything.

It is my understanding, gleaned from 737-800/900 pilots on these forums, that the higher likelihood of a tailstrike (due to the stretched tail) means those aircraft approach and land in a slightly flatter trajectory, at higher speeds (to compensate for lower AoA as well as weight).

Came up particularly in reference to the AA/Jamaica overrun, and also one at O'Hare (runway 9R, snow/ice, can't recall the carrier - maybe United 1977, Dec. 30, 2015).

And thus it can be harder to nail the perfect speed and flare and avoid a long touchdown or a float in those conditions - less tolerance for small errors. Which can be made even tighter with a slick or compromised runway and/or a tailwind or a Vref additive for gusts.

Nothing to do with deceleration hardware engineering - just that there is more speed to get rid of.

And not necessarily accidents - sometimes just embarrassing "incidents" into the overrun, EMAS, or grass.

Can't comment on the -900, but tail strike worries on the -800 relate mostly to take offs. On landing you fly at the most with a 3 degres nose up, nowhere near tailstrike. The only time you float is when you hold the nose up more and more during flare, or you carry too much speed. At FL40 you don't need much nose up at all. Where pilots go wrong on the -800 is they go high at the very end, like below 100-200 ft, then try to correct and may end up with a last minute speed increase and float because of this. I've seen this many times, and if you add tailwind it gets worse.

We are only as good as our last landing. What we did 30 years ago matters very little. And being a nice guy doesn't mean you are a good pilot.

FMS82

Indeed. But I'm not conscious of the other recent variants of the 737 having anything like this record of serious overruns. And it seems it's all round the world, including US operators. The 737 (with or without these other subtypes) is not a majority of aviation, but the records are there. It would be good to analyse, objectively, and indeed without some of the fanboy/skygod approach we see above, just why it is such an outlier in runway overruns. It must surely reflect in hull loss insurance premiums.

I'm sure there were those who described the MD-11 as "amazing" etc, notwithstanding its record.

The -800 is a very different beast than the -700. Not so much on paper, but you can feel this when you operate on shorter, contaminated runways. The short field version of the -800 is a much better aircraft than the standard -800 in runway limited situastions.