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I don't know how Air Canada does it, but at my airline we set the FPA .4 before the FAF. At the FAF we pull the knob and we start down at that preset angle.
If you are late, as you said, you can adjust the FPA to recover to the "doughnut" which is the vertical guidance path indicator. Withing a few hundred feet you should be stabilized at the correct FPA. There is an article in the FAA IFR magazine from last year that talks about the lack of terrain clearance guarantee on a non precision approach after the MDA down to touchdown. I will try to post it here when I get back off this trip and I can get on my computer. My iPad skills do not allow me to copy and past a long article. The Birmingham Alabama UPS crash is a result of a flight crew assuming they had adequate terrain clearance after acquiring the runway at the MDA. Unfortunately, at night they didn't have sight of obstacles in that final approach path and they continued on their descent path into terrain. As I said above, I will be very interested in the final outcome of this incident. We may all learn a valuable lesson from the cause of this accident. Thankfully the only lasting damage was to the jet. |
The Birmingham Alabama UPS crash is a result of a flight crew assuming they had adequate terrain clearance after acquiring the runway at the MDA. The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the flight crew's continuation of an unstabilized approach and their failure to monitor the aircraft's altitude during the approach, which led to an inadvertent descent below the minimum approach altitude and subsequently into terrain. Contributing to the accident were (1) the flight crew's failure to properly configure and verify the flight management computer for the profile approach; (2) the captain's failure to communicate his intentions to the first officer once it became apparent the vertical profile was not captured; (3) the flight crew's expectation that they would break out of the clouds at 1,000 feet above ground level due to incomplete weather information; (4) the first officer's failure to make the required minimums callouts; (5) the captain's performance deficiencies likely due to factors including, but not limited to, fatigue, distraction, or confusion, consistent with performance deficiencies exhibited during training; and (6) the first officer's fatigue due to acute sleep loss resulting from her ineffective off-duty time management and circadian factors. |
How do you get the DME from IHZ when you're tuned to IGX?
The only way to do that on the A-320 would be to use the abnormal procedure for loss of both MCDUs and select Back Up tuning on the Radio Management Panel. (The A-320 displays each ILS on the respective PFD and the other ILS on the ND.) One should not have to revert to an abnormal procedure to do a published approach. After looking at the approach plate (displayed on a previous post by another person) I think I would be better off doing the NDB approach in those conditions because I wouldn't have to deal with the abnormal radio tuning procedure and I would benefit from a higher MDA in the crappy weather. Too bad if I don't get in. I always try to put it into perspective. You will hardly ever do any diversions in a normal career and it's always preferable for all concerned to have a few diversions and no crashes than vice-versa. Two things I will say about flying the A-320 in gusty conditions, you better add a few knots to that Vapp and you better know how to handle that sidestick. You don't get any feedback from it like you do from an airplane that you have to trim yourself. I was joking with a friend of mine the other day that you can't blame Airbus because a lot of pilots don't seem to know how to fly these days (NOT talking about this crash!) but then I realized what I just said. :O :) (But I still prefer Airbus over Boeing cuz I can cross my legs and eat off a table in cruise.) |
How do you get the DME from IHZ when you're tuned to IGX? The only way to do that on the A-320 would be to use the abnormal procedure for loss of both MCDUs and select Back Up tuning on the Radio Management Panel. |
A couple of times in my career so far I’ve gone-around from below decision altitude/height due to inadequate references, having acquired them before that.
I have to say they were difficult decisions to make, especially off a CAT I or NPA. I remember on one approach I could still see lights and things (enough to technically continue) but I was becoming more and more uncertain about exactly where I was, especially on the vertical profile. As I went around, the tower reported the RVR as 200m and decreasing (the minimum was 800m). I think what finally made me throw it away was the lack of a definite aiming point and the question: “how am I going to land this thing if I can’t see much in front?” which had popped up in my mind. The years of doing standard IRR/LPC/OPC hadn’t helped much as they were all of the standard yes/no at (M)DA. 05 at YHZ appears to have a significant terrain upslope in the latter stages of the approach, which sets up a possible undershoot from the ‘too high’ visual illusion. Also, the rad. alt. calls won’t give a clue until too late. At least in this case the investigators have two people to talk to in order to find out what they saw and how it all went wrong. Should be an interesting report... |
cactusbusdrvr
If you are late, as you said, you can adjust the FPA to recover to the "doughnut" which is the vertical guidance path indicator. Withing a few hundred feet you should be stabilized at the correct FPA. As Capn Bloggs says: IMO, far better to set up the 3.08° further back and clip the FAF/2000ft on a steady descent path with minor FPA adjustments to go down the charted Altitude/Distance profile |
Would their Radio Altimeter have been calling out the height above the approach lights instead of the runway, which is on a 40ft higher plateau?
Looking at the damage to the last approach light, it looks as if they just clipped the light-bulb part, and not the mast on which it was located. |
Originally Posted by Ultra Glide
(Post 8928485)
How do you get the DME from IHZ when you're tuned to IGX?
The only way to do that on the A-320 would be to use the abnormal procedure for loss of both MCDUs and select Back Up tuning on the Radio Management Panel. (The A-320 displays each ILS on the respective PFD and the other ILS on the ND.)... If it is not possible to read the raw DME from IHZ while tuned to the IGX localizer, could the (1.7 nm) bias in the FMS distance to the RW05 waypoint make more difficult the use of the VDA altitude ribbon just above the profile view? |
cactusbusdrvr wrote
"I don't know how Air Canada does it, but at my airline we set the FPA .4 before the FAF. At the FAF we pull the knob and we start down at that preset angle. If you are late, as you said, you can adjust the FPA to recover to the "doughnut" which is the vertical guidance path indicator. Withing a few hundred feet you should be stabilized at the correct FPA. " Air Canada procedure,so I was told is (or was when I flew the A320) to descend to FAF crossing altitude. Once you have ALT capture select FPA at zero. .3 nm before the FAF select desired FPA value in the window. If you crossed the FAF a little high, you can increase the FPA. |
A problem has been identified with the Thales FMGC where if an ILS frequency is entered into the VOR fields the FMGC will instead tune108.0 rather than was has been hard tuned.
I am not saying that is what happened here, I am merely posting to make other posters aware of this issue. |
Originally Posted by Retired DC9 driver
(Post 8928901)
Air Canada procedure is (or was when I flew the A320) to descend to FAF crossing altitude. Once you have ALT capture select FPA at zero. .3 nm before the FAF select desired FPA value in the window. If you crossed the FAF a little high, you can increase the FPA.
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And would the MDA be treated as a DA… i.e., no level off, no loitering... just bounce the airplane off of the minimum altitude and fly the missed if the required visual references were not available? |
Originally Posted by stefan_777
A few things I gathered from an archived ATC recording:
Ok, sorry, disregard the question, just saw that : http://www.pprune.org/8924867-post70.html |
The pilot also warned passengers he was thinking of diverting to Moncton, New Brunswick before he decided to land in Halifax.
Might have been a good idea. |
Might have been a good idea.
Might have been. We are unsure of the reasons for the crash at this point. They had the required vis to shoot the approach, other than a stiff cross wind coupled with a runway that was contaminated there were no other huge red flags. Poor conditions? Yes, but not breaking any of the rules flying that approach. Regardless they ended up short of the runway, it would appear right on centreline. You add 50 feet to your MDA gives you about 320 AGL. There would be time to decide you have no runway insight and go around. If at 320 feet AGL you break out right at minimums (on path) I doubt you'd have enough room to dive it down to where they hit the ground. If you broke out a little earlier with the "lights only" you would thing the vis good enough (I know it was fluctuating) to see that the path the airplane was on was not working. Perhaps there was an illusion with the road? Perhaps parked cars looking like runway edge marking? When looking at this accident my biggest concern coming in would have been the runway surface condition and frankly that was never an issue because they didn't make the runway. You shoot the approach to legal minimums and if you don't have anything it's off to YQM. While everything seems to have been done legally here the shame is that there was no ILS onto 32 and it being open/plowed. Both 32 and 05 don't have a precision approach and frankly while that may be okay in the prairies where weather patterns are such that if an ILS is required you know where the winds are coming from, in YHZ the weather patterns can vary so much it would make sense to have at least a cat 1 to all runways. |
In SEP 1999
The Airbus A320, C-FKCO, operating as Air Canada flight 630, was on a scheduled flight from Toronto, Ontario, to St. John=s, Newfoundland. During the night localizer approach to runway 29, which had a relocated threshold, strong gusty winds were encountered. The aircraft touched down approximately 250 feet short of the relocated threshold, striking sawhorse-type construction barriers. The aircraft sustained damage to two brake lines and one brake temperature sensor. There were no injuries to any of the occupants. The aircraft touched down at 0053 Newfoundland daylight time. |
Don't know about Air Canada, but we would not be doing a 30+KT crosswind to a contaminated runway.
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13kt cross wind component, nothing wrong here.
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SPECI CYHZ 290414Z 34024G33KT 3/4SM R14/P6000FT/U -SN DRSN BKN010
OVC018 M06/M07 A2965 RMK SF7SC1 SLP046= CYHZ 290400Z 34019G54KT 3/4SM R14/5000VP6000FT/D -SN DRSN BKN007 OVC010 M06/M07 A2964 RMK SF7SC1 SLP045= SPECI CYHZ 290313Z 35020G26KT 1/2SM R14/3500V4500FT/N SN DRSN VV003 M06/M07 A2963 RMK SN8 SLP040= CYHZ 290300Z 34019G25KT 1/8SM R14/P6000VM0300FT/N +SN DRSN VV003 M06/M07 A2962 RMK SN8 /S09/ SLP038= Not sure how you only get 13KTS out of these reports. 60 degrees of would get you 90% of those values as a crosswind. |
When the tower controller cleared AC624 to land, he reported winds 010 20G30. Nothing out of the ordinary for CYHZ. The visibility was probably the dominant weather factor, 1/2sm or less due to the blowing snow |
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