JohnR,
no probs. Simply inserted here because it is my sincere feeling that the "job" of LTC is being foisted upon those who are neither well qualified or particularly deserving of it (Hell, in some cases they didn't even ask for it, it was written in their Capt's contact that they would ACCEPT to be LTC after a period of time - 1 yr I think :ugh:)
In Ryanair it is yet another carrot dangled in front of our bright eyed & bushy tailed pilots, many with no previous experience in any other company , and indeed not SO much experience in total. Ask yourself the question, why are so many of the LTC's in RYR guys who have only a year or two of Command experience?
Well, it could be because this group is composed of more contractors than the long-termers who therefore stand to gain more financially, it could also be because the old farts can't be bothered with the hassles & stresses of "attempting" to train in an environment where no allowance is made for training when punctuality figures are scrutinised etc etc. You tell me.
It is not really offered as a criticism of the way Ryanair approach their decision on who to appoint as LTC's, merely as a reminder to those ,who as post holders etc should be mindful, to remember what the position & responsibilities of it can entail. One should never be tempted to bite off more than one can chew. :hmm: Single crew can be great, but it can also be a very lonely place.

Disturbing to read some of the comments -

Powering reducing shouldn't cause a pilot to look for the 'RETARD' on a display, it should cause the pilot to look at what power he currently has and if it's acceptable for the position/energy state the aircraft is in.

A 737 slowing would have been accompanied by the clacking of the trim wheel. Assuming that the trim was operating normally how was that overlooked?

I disagree, all the way through this thread I have been asking myself why a hand was not on the thrust levers. My company SOP is that a hand is on the yoke and thrust levers any time the aircraft is not in the fully clean configuration. It is a good SOP, it is basic airmanship and personally I believe that this accident would not have happened if the Flying Pilots hand was on the thrust levers. Many times in the 737 I give the A/T a little helping hand, particularly during turns onto finals where the airspeed decays a couple of knots.
This accident could have been prevented with better SOP's combined with better training and a better safety culture.....unless of course there is more to it, ie subtle incapacitation of the captain combined with a failure and an inexperienced F/O. We will find out eventually.

@IcePack

The 100 seconds are from the Boeing statement as reported by Flightglobal Cues should alert 737 pilots to altimeter fault: Boeing

Good point. Most jet drivers here would be able to tell you what N1 range they expect to see on finals for a given weight. I have been trained again and again to set the approx N1 and then regularly monitor it all the way down finals and think about how it relates to my current energy state.
That would be standard practice world wide would it not?

in my last airline - General handling is at a critical low across the industry. Too many Flight Ops Directors trying to improve their ratings/bonuses by showing how their crews are having fewer and fewer FDM events such as level busts, unstable approaches etc by mandating lots of autoflight! It is a root cause of poor handling and loss of control.
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I agree with you. The pressure to use automation, and the resulting lack of raw flying skills, is troubling.

Aparently 737-800's fly themselves ?Pilots relying on sophisticated
 

Total Rot and humbug.

I think the last 6 posts contain a fairly useful summing up of lessons that should be learned ( note I haven't included my own wonderful prose there ;) )

Funy, I seem to manage just fine by monitoring, if needs be my hands can be on the controls is a fraction. I don't like the F/O to have their hands perminaantly on the thrust levers while we configure. I find it makes it very awkward for me to see the flap lever. We should be quite capable of knowing what the aircraft is doing regardles of hands on or off the controlls.

Culture?
 

Recent fatal crashes include SpanAir at Madrid, the Airbus accceptance flight off Perpignan with a combined German, New Zealand crew and the Continental/Colgan Q400 at Buffalo.

No culture is immune from screwing up:ouch:

Ballsout

You have got to be kidding . . . .

I agree someone should have their hands on below 1000ft, there is no need most of the time above this, other than for practice, or unuseual circumstances.
I don't see anything in the report that says the F/O didn't have his hands on the controlls. Just lots of macho guys claiming if he had, there wouldn't have been an accident. UNSUBSTANCIATED BULL!

BallsOut, How did get interpretted as
No need to get all het up. It was an opinion as evidenced by the preface of "personally I believe"
I think you have made a fair point that we don't know if there were hands on the thrust levers or not.
If I were you I would do a bit of asking around and see where your technique of not having the hands on the thrust levers fits in with your colleagues. It is a never ending learning curve this game (I am still near the bottom) and habits that invite mishaps are easily developed. Try ten approaches with your hands on the thrust levers and then throw it away if you still don't like it. If I was your F/O you would be finding it awkward to see the flap lever on every approach. It sure would be a terrible inconvenience:ok:

Unsubstanciated Bull!
 

BALLSOUT: Well, if the FO indeed had his hands on the thrust levers at the time the A/T retarded them at 2000', then what do you make of the fact that he apparently didn't consider pushing them back up before the stick shaker activated some 100 secs. later?

Mmm. Even when those transducers are connected to A/P or A/T in an active state?

I would have thought in a modern cockpit, failure flags/notifications were graded by 'in-your-facedness' dependent upon how important that instrument was in the current mode of flight... its only software :rolleyes:

Seems I remember a Turkish airline flying in Eastern turkey about 18 months ago.
Crew cut the corner did not do the full approach, hit the mountain, ignoring all warnings.
Captain and F/O was ex Turkish military.
Turkish media claimed the same thing, Capt was a martyr, when the truth came out they would not accept the findings.
There was a thread about these military pilots from Turkey here on pprune not so long ago, think it was sun express or something.
From what I read here this crew lost all basic airman ship and stalled this airplane.
One word from any of the three pilots,,(airspeed),, would have prevented this, which should have been monitored by all.
To fall behind and allow the airplane to go 40 knots below VREF shows no one was flying the airplane, even the training Captain!
Think everyone has seen the plane getting slow, maybe 3 or 4 knots and was corrected, but 40 knots?
Maybe this is where automation is leading now, all heads down in the boxes and nobody flying the airplane.
Sure hope not.
Turkish airlines bought this one and should accept full blame once the final report is out, not Boeing or there equipment.
More training required? I have never seen anyone get 40 kts below VREF.
Turkish Media trying to say that the failed R/A caused this is the most B/S I have ever read.
How about basic flying monitoring airspeed and altitude ?

KTF, fyi, the flight deck crew are all dead. They all had 5 point harnesses.
The passengers, most of them, survived, they had a lap strap.
The cabin crew have rearward facing seats and it is unclear how badly injured they are.

A note from f40 made me think that the harness had a role to play in the deaths of the flight deck crew.

The passengers in the forward rows were subjected to the same decelleration and downwards vectors but their upper bodies were unrestrained, so flying forwards and down at impact, so absorbing some of the effective energy.
The flight crew were restrained with their five point harnesses and held in the vertical position so the internal organs were subjected to mainly vertical, downwards force, enough to cause sufficient internal damage to kill them.

Sad, however it happened.

Monitoring your speed whilst on final is something you learn right from the beginning of your flying .. pre-solo. It should come naturally when flying the approach. Therefore I tend to think that there is a human factors issue here that will become apparent once the full report is out. What distracted the pilots from doing the basic fundamentals of flying in this critical phase of flight? I'm interested to hear or read the information from the CVR. Anyone know whether this will be made publicly available?

Too many non-relevant comments about the Turkish people/culture/press.

Lets' stick purely to the aviation aspects of corrective actions and not emotional blame games of he said, they said.

Funny, having read the reports of Perpignan and Amsterdam today, I was just thinking that a few hours spent tooling round the pattern in an ancient 172 would have saved quite a few lives. Does kind of look like these guys had forgotten the basics of flying.

n5296s