Exactly! Aviate, Aviate, Aviate!

Not to mention the other crew members it would seem.

What is so very frustrating is that, having finally recognised the situation they were in and initiated a “recovery” (did the FO initiate a go-around or simply initiate an attempt to recover speed? – who knows at this stage), it seems it was a further 6 seconds between the Captain taking over and the second application of power. Six wasted seconds that changed everything really.

BUT...
accoording to the turkish people they were hero´s.........

RadAlts
 

As someone with no first hand experience of airliner systems, (I'm just a light Heli pilot), I am AMAZED that two pieces of kit, in this case Rad Alt units, can operate independently and feed DIFFERENT parts of the A/P system. Surely at least the two radalts should be constantly compared and if the difference in outputs becomes more than x% they are both flagged as U/S and disregarded by any piece of equipment on the aircraft that relies on them. Otherwise why bother having two?

Clearly abnormal conditions occured which should have been noticed by the crew, but due to the split feeds of the two Radalts, the effects would have been strange and confusing to them. A simple alarm should have been raised "Rad Alt Failure" and A/T A/P etc disconnected.

It's so true that the more automation there is the more off guard the pilot (or any operator of a machine) will gradually become as he sinks into the false sense of security that comes after countless hours of flying without fault. And then when it all goes wrong....

James

Loving the use of UPPER CASE in all those posts stating the obvious... CAPTAIN... NOT paying attention.. BASIC instruments..... AVIATE... NAVIGATE..etc.

Still, an experienced training captain, and experienced FO, and FO on jump seat somehow fail to spot it. We can either all claim to be GREAT aviators who would NEVER do such thing. Or we could try and learn something from it. Something distracted that crew. Possibly the gear GPWS warning. Hopefully the CVR will give some clues...

P

Out of interest on a normal configured approach N1 is at plus or minus 50% for the approach - to be at flight idle from 1950ft on GP I would have expected the ac to stall much earlier unless the aircaft was high energy. If that were the case they may well have needed to be at idle to reduce to bug speed but stabilised criteria require engines to be spooled up at 500ft so it should still have been picked up.
Yes I agree as flight crew we are paid to do it right, however, we will never overcome the human factors element; their integration into the operation is as vital to a safe operation as design and SOPs. The repetative nature of our job can often lull us into a false sense of security as 99% of the time things work as advertised. The other 1% is when most accidents happen ie when something non-normal has been introduced into the equation. No pilot deliberately stalls their aircaft into the ground - to have 3 experience aviators do it is difficult to understand but rest assured there will be many other factors combined which culminated in this tragedy.

In fact auto retardation of thrust on the basis of RA alone sounds more and more like bull!!!! the more I think about it. Think about a GPWS scenario with gear down and landing flaps. You initiate the recovery and clear a mountain at 27ft RA. What are we saying here, that the throttle goes to idle???

Please could someone find the relevant FCOM section and state clearly for all too see.

Thanks

Cloudbase 700', Approach should therefore have been stabilised by 1000'

From JAR/EU-OPS

The approach should be considered to be fully stabilised when the aeroplane is:
a) tracking on the required approach path and profile; and Appears so
b) in the required configuration and attitude; and Maybe
c) flying with the required rate of descent and speed; and Getting more doubtful
d) flying with the appropriate power and trim. No

Should have thrown it away and never got to stickshake at 450' and the consequences thereafter.

Mmm!

Speed can "wash Off" very very quickly in landing config. I have lots of sympathy for those Pilots, especially if the rumours are true about a bit of wake as well. Could be very difficult to recover if you weren't expecting it.:hmm:

Topslide, I agree with everything you've written. What on earth is all this b/s about the radalt affecting the basic flying of the a/c. Good grief...the world's press, particularly over here in US, are running stories of 'altimeter caused accident'...instead of 'fly the damned airplane'...
Sorry to be so blunt, folks...
(Current 800 pilot...)

...........speed wash off...........

It took 100 secs, quickly???????

Ice Pack
 

you hit the nail on the head...not expecting it

a good pilot expects everything...ready for a dual engine flameout on short final... or a myriad of problems...hopefully never seen.

THE ONLY automation I really want is something to do the paperwork for me

you see, I actually like hand flying a landing

IcePack: Wake turbulence has been ruled out by the investigators :hmm:

I'm inclined to go with Fireflybob on this one.

The blame culture of he/they should have done this, should have done that is obvious after the accident investigation and does not help in trying to improve aviation safety.

WHY did they do one action and not the other correct action?
WHY did they miss that certain crucial alert?
WHY did they do a multude of other things that resulted in an aircraft crash?

Those are the types of questions that the aviation industry should be asking.
Facts are relatively easy to acquire with CVR/FDR plus other reporting data. The dynamics going on in the minds of the men in the cockpit at the time, is one of the keys to helping prevent it happening again.

Dysag -
It's NOT an Airbus vs Boeing thing: it's an automation thing where crews become dependent on it to "take care" of them without them looking after the obvious.....airspeed and altitude. It's all situational awareness and basic flying we're talking about here, not FBW vs cable or anything else.

isolated incident or not?
 

1. How many left RA fail at approximately 2000 ft on a 737 each year?

2. How many crews are there in the world who tent to forget to fly the airplane?

3. What is the chance for a match?

In my opinion this accident is symptomatic for a much bigger problem.

The answer on question number 2 is the issue here.

It does not help to pick on the crew. Future accidents are not prevented by doing that.

I agree with this quote:

Rgds
emjanssen

P.S. With 12 years 737 experience, I learned something today. During single AP approaches I have always thought that the AT was coupled to the RA for the AP in use. I was wrong. I am very curious about the design philosophy for that........?

Thanks to the press, the fearful flying public are now going to think that a faulty altimeter is capable of causing a 737 to crash. Oh dear...

Wake turbulence? Quite a few thought it was a double engine failure.

and then there were some who thought it's just an AT system forgotten left in idle... - how could they think of such a stupid theory :ugh:

NOTE TO MODS - you are removing so many posts that many of the remaining ones don't make any sense, BTW my sympathies with the amount of cr@p that you do actually have to remove. . . . . however,

There is no way that a A/T deciding to select RETARD ( & really I have had enough Rad Alt problems to doubt this, the learned Dutch investigators summary notwithstanding ) can be seen as an excuse for total lack of attention on the part of 3 experienced pilots (15000/3000/2000 hr respectively) to monitor what keeps 60 odd tons of Boeing in the sky. . . . lift. . . . produced by the flow of air = AIRSPEED over an aerofoil section.
Jesus Christ 40kts less than Vref and nobody hears sees or feels (and to answer a previous poster YES blindfold me & I will still tell you the difference ) something is SO wrong . Jeezuz this was a loooong way out of shape, it truly horrifies me that things can get this bad & no-one notices.
As an aside, someone should really give this report to Michael O'Leary and ask him to ask Ray Conway if he is really OK about having Capt's with 4500hr total time & 1year experience as Capt operating as Line Trainers. . .:hmm:

Feckin shabby if you ask me . . . to both the above points.