Possibly...especially at the end of the day..

If not already self evident, I am no longer able to tolerate non-professional pilot comments on this forum. Good night.

I can see you're probably not a pilot, apologies for the shop talk.

Some carriers have a policy of turning off a flight director if it wasn't giving pertinent guidance e.g. on a visual approach without navaid path guidance. Others leave the flight director on but use caution because the information displayed may be misleading, especially on older nav systems without GPS or WAAS. I believe I used flight path vector years ago on visuals at a couple of carriers in the A306, but as I said, I've never flown the A320.

Sorry if we confused you, hope this helps explain what we're talking about, have a good night. :ok:

I don't agree with Kal 100% but after rereading the EVA LAX near CFIT incident, I sympathise with non-Western pilots who are almost always painted as incompetent by a broad brush.

:ok: Well said.
Didn't some Delta pilots land on some taxiway in ATL some years ago. Well a China Airlines crew took off from taxiway in ANC before.

So pilots from both hemispheres made mistakes. The only difference you don't see Oriental pilots coming over to Pprune gloating ( with pride about their superiority ) over the mistakes made by westerners.

For every approach put the relevant ILS frequency in the box. Identify said ILS (dits and dars) and fly said ILS as presented by wondrous displays on the panel within 18 inches of one's nose.

This cock up is what happens when children of the Airbus magenta line look out the window and decide to go for it. Wonder where they would have ended up on the Quiet Bridge Visual.

Time to close this one for awhile. It's a rush to admonish pilots to use the ILS or a rant on non western pilots.

Time perhaps to let it run for a while. Even for a visual, input the ILS freq as a matter of standard procedure and common sense. Otherwise it's all too easy to land on the parallel taxiway.

Airbubba, that particular procedure is with waypoints and is AR. The ac would have had to be GPS to get the AR approval to use the procedure

Just how many ac use that procedure every day, yet one ac pooches it, and it is too easy to screw up?!?!

No one asserted pilot incompetence
 

Let's back up. Kal's assertion was made in context of carriers, not individual pilots. Reply I posted likewise was completely in context of carriers, also - not individual pilots.
The facts are pretty easy to discern. Without scorn or racist overtones, and also without accusations of incompetence on the part of any pilot involved in any given incident, the overall system of a good many countries all over the world - not just outside a conventional concept of the West - have deficiencies in their NAS, or pilot qualification or recurrent training, or operational methods. Although it speaks blandly the ICAO USOAP - Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme - provides massive increments of data to this effect in the specific context of safety oversight systems (https://www.icao.int/safety/CMAForum/Pages/default.aspx).
It is not about individual aviators. The Asiana pilots in the SFO incident would have checked out, individually, very highly in the simulator, would they not? But despite their skills and abilities, the system within which they operated left something to be desired. The system deserves to be painted with the brush it has earned.
Traveling out of Tokyo Narita to New York on JAL a couple of years ago, a JAL flight crew were having breakfast near my table at the airport hotel. As crisp, precise, and polished looking crew as I ever have seen. Maybe the Japanese cultural imperatives for respect for seniority and hierarchy, and in general, and a kind of immediacy in response to stimuli, at times can be superior to standard Americana/Brit attitudes?

Are you sure? The FMS Bridge Visual to 28R is an Authorization Required (AR) approach procedure but not, as far as I can see, an AR RNP (Required Navigation Performance) instrument approach.

I believe the FMS Bridge Visual is sometimes described as an RNAV/Visual hybrid approach. You certainly don't always need GPS for RNAV without RNP in my experience.

In fact, in some places with some aircraft you can do an RNP 0.3 approach without GPS using DME/DME when authorized.

From the Jepps:

http://www.jeppesen.com/download/bri...en00-arnav.pdf

except the line in the Airbus isn't magenta...the ILS is irrelevant on this particular approach..

The ILS is irrelevant?
Sure you don't follow it early on during the visual but below 1,000' on final it would be very useful to make sure that you're actually aligned with the correct RUNWAY.....

Not to mention that in a lot of cases you get a DME to the threshold......

The ILS where installed and serviceable is never irrelevant, this cockup should prove that.

well, I'm no "guru" but I did fly the 320 as PICfor 5 years and a bit, vertical guidance is encoded into the database on certain types of FMS approaches...

I don't drive an Airbus and have never been into SFO but in my 30+ years of flying have always stuck with the practice of cross-checking. If I'm flying an RNAV I will have an ILS tuned as well (if available). If I'm flying a visual, especially at night, I will have something set up to confirm the runway centreline (this may be a simple OBS). I will never blindly follow one line, even if this is the one painted out of the window.

To me, the most interesting element of this occurrence is the short conversation about there being obstruction on the 'runway'. I would be intrigued as to why the Airbus crew continued the approach at this point as they clearly had a doubt about the availability of their landing surface.

PS. My day job is flying calibration aircraft where our Differential GPS tells me where we are to within 20mm; company SOPS are that we shall have a secondary means of navigation to cross-check before descent below safety altitude and during all approaches.

ACA759 was a very early A320 (msn 265, built 1991).

Its contemporaries, with AF and LH, for example, were certainly GPS-less.

GPS equipped because of Halifax?
 

Yes it’s an early ac. And, according to FlightAware, leased to them. In a recent media release responding to the TSB report on the Halifax crash, AC said they are in a GPS upgrade program for their Airbus narrow bodies that will be completed by the end of the year. By the way, can they direct that their leased ac be upgraded too? Presumably at AC’s expense?

I agree with using all available resources when flying a visual, and it would be appropriate to tune the ils if you're planning on flying a 3 degree approach on the centreline. It may not always be appropriate as an offset approach combined with PBN vertical profile could trigger a spurious and distracting glideslope warning. Also on a Boeing it can be distracting having both Lnav/vnav pointers and ils ghost pointers on the same deviation display.

Having just checked the plates the quiet visual is not a PBN approach so is visual and no GPS required. The approach is designed for both 28L and R but has a box with "vertical guidance navaid and angle : IGWQ LOC (GS 3 degrees)". This is the 28R ILS so they should have had it tuned in this case. However if you were landing on the left you would have the incorrect ILS tuned - another hole in the cheese in SFO?

I don't agree with banning visual approaches at night. Sometimes you have no choice for a start! I don't believe in the mantra that if someone gets a manoeuvre wrong then we should ban everyone else from doing them. That's partly what's led to our current de-skilling and contributed to the Asiana crash where they were incapable of flying a visual approach. Think far better to train crews how to effectively brief and fly night visuals so they are aware and brief the traps and how they are going to fly it successfully. As professional pilots it's a skill we need to have.

If the runway I am landing on has an ILS, the ILS is relevant and will be on at least one tracking display, even if it is the standby HSI.

A few thoughts from someone who, as a helicopter pilot (ex-fixed wing) flies to very poorly lit sites by night (in the past I sometimes had to land at totally unlit sites). For people doing this job, a lit runway or any sort of approach aid is a luxury.

I've flown to airfields where the runway lights are set far dimmer than the taxiway lighting...not a good idea. Over bright lighting on a taxiway can easily hide large objects, even lit ones e.g. the lights of very large aircraft sitting thereon. I'm not saying this happened on this occasion, but it can happen.

When approaching visually by night, it's of paramount importance to keep an open mind. What you're "seeing" might not be what you ought to be looking at. When approaching a night landing site, do NOT commit yourself to "having found it" because lighting can give you a false impression of what you're looking at. Once that mindset is there, other cues, even very obvious ones, might be totally missed, or ignored. This is why the requirement exists to dial the ILS on a visual approach. The ILS is generally less likely to be "tricked" by false cues. The earlier the false visual cues are picked up, the less likely it is that a pilot will be able to give them up and correct the mistake.

One story about false visual "cues" that always sticks in my mind is that of an RAF Wessex carrying out night flying training on Salisbury Plain, at a field location. Although the weather had earlier been very suitable for night flying training, fog suddenly came in at the base field (RAF Upavon, no navaids, no tarmac runway only a NATO 'T' of lights to land at on the grass field). The aircraft were recalled. The last aircraft back had to recover the training underslung load (a couple of barrels of water in a net). They were both experienced pilots and possibly a little over confident. They came in from the east, saw what they took to be the NATO T on the airfield and made an approach to it, obviously with the underslung load dangling below the Wessex.

When they got to the hover at what should have been the middle of the airfield, they realised the lights they had made an approach to was the "Welcome to RAF Upavon" sign outside the camp gates. They were hovering over the main road and had flown between two tall hangars, which they hadn't seen, to get there. The NATO T lights on the airfield were still on, but they had "locked on " to the incorrect visual cues because they were brighter and were seen first.

but they had "locked on " to the incorrect visual cues because they were brighter and were seen first.

very likely scenario in this instance

"ACMS"

Many times when you are flying a Visual approach, there is a reason for this, generally it is that the ILS is unserviceable.

If the the ILS not working, or you are told to NOT use this NavAid, and make a visual approach, you would most certainly NOT tune in the ILS for any kind of reference, as it would be unreliable.

This is BASIC stuff.

And for "ratpackgreenslug" - The Airbus have NO MAGENTA LINE.

There are certain tools that could have been used, example extended centre line and various fixes, to establish current position for the approach to assist with SA.

@ShyTorque - I think alot can be taken away from that and I suspect you are very close to the truth.

Also in the helicopter world, I've been 'plugged in' in the back listening to the discussion in the front about the crew deciding if they had the right visuals for a Nato T, listening to this I decided to to turn around and see what was going on poking my head through to the cockpit, both crew totally fixated on the lights outside, no one monitoring the instruments, airspeed washing off rapidly and rate of decent rapidly increasing, neither crew aware, I called the go around. The crew were getting confused with brighter lights nearby which were much clearer than the Nato T.

Slightly different scenario but I think it goes to highlight the night environment can catch you out very quickly as you become fixated.

Never said it was an RNP AR approach. It is a tailored approach to approved operators, hence the AR. It is the same approach as the visual quiet bridge, but adds ARCHI, and F101D, which doglegs it back to extended centerline, and adds the stepdown fixes as named waypoints for the database. (UAL also is approved for this procedure, I dont know who else)

The FMS Bridge Visual Approach 28R is a version of the Quiet Bridge Visual Approach 28R which is coded with GPS coordinates and can be included in an FMS database for approved operators. This allows the procedure to be used when the SFO VOR is out of service, and also gives ATC additional flexibility by allowing them to clear pilots direct to any of the fixes without needing to intercept the radial on the standard arrival.

the visual approach they were flying is an FMC approach, therefore it is in the database, and when selected provides all the information you need to fly..the autopilot system does a very nice job on these approaches...some here seem to think they were eyeballing seat of the pants approach flying, not the case, or wasn't supposed to be anyway..

I hadn't previously heard the term "FMS Approach" but I am familiar with "RNAV Visual Approach," which are issued only to air carriers. Business aviation cannot have access to them, not even the high-end jets.

Technically, these RNAV visual approaches are not "AR' in the sense that RNAV RNP AR or CAT II or III ILS approaches are. Everyone has the charts for those AR approaches, but in the case of RNP AR they won't be in the FMS database unless qualified.

With these RNAV visuals neither the chart nor the database procedure are available publicly. But, nowhere on the chart does it state "authorization required," per se. At least it doesn't on the SFO charts for one major carrier that I have seen.

Interestingly, the "FMS Bridge Visual Rwy 28R" has an IFR missed approach procedure, which is contrary to the usual FAA policy for visual approaches.

In the A320 the display of ILS GS and LOC symbology on the PFD is incompatible with using the autoflight system to fly a non-precison approach. The ILS may be hard-tuned but the crew will not see the data unless they select the LS pushbutton or switch the Nav Display over to ROSE LS mode. If they do press the LS pushbutton after loading an approach with vertical guidance, they will get a flashing amber V/DEV message on the PFD to highlight the incompatible selection. I do not have experience of any 'FMS coded' visual approaches (RNAV visuals in other parlance?) but I expect that the FMGS behaviour is the same.

In the case of a classic visual approach, with just the runway selected in the FMGS, the ILS will have auto-tuned (the FMGS will know that it is an ILS runway) and the data can be displayed on the PFD without any advisory messages; the selections are compatible. However, by coding the visual approach trajectory into the FMGS it has effectively been transformed into a non-precison approach, and the selection of supporting ILS information is not as straightforward.

Bearing in mind the above information, just try writing a procedure to turn what may sometimes be a valid technique into a SOP. You would have to decide at what point it would be safe for the crew to start making fundamental changes to their EFIS set-up in order to discard the FMGS guidance and switch to ILS data. You would also need to consider if your procedure is robust enough to cope with the different cases of a non-ILS runway, ILS not available and a full-up ILS.

I also think it is worth pointing-out that hard-tuning the ILS requires manual entry of data from a different approach and introduces the chance of incorrect data entry. What if the FMS Quiet Bridge approach to 28R had been selected, but going to a different plate to obtain the ILS ident resulted in the tuning of the ILS for 28L? The technique is valid, but it is not a completely threat/error free.

Perhaps this particular occurence has found the flaw in FMS coded visual approaches? Rather than just censure the crew, the industry needs to look at what lessons we can all learn from this. Would the inclusion of runway lighting configuration on the ATIS at airports with close parallel runways be worthwhile?

It does remind me of the current RNAV visual approach procedures, but the AR is due to the 'tailored' approach part of the adventure.
The waypoints are at setpdown fix locations, with at/abv designators, which appears to add a quasi vnav to the RNAV approach.

With RNAV visuals, the FMS auto computes a straignt line VNAV path. I think that the legs may too short and outside of the FMS ability, especially the dogleg at ALPHI for the FMS to keep up with a VNAV solution. Perhaps this is why it is considered a tailored approach requiring approval to use?

I have also encountered differences in the ac/FMS performance with AT/ABV altitudes on waypoints on final. Another good reason for the tailored designation on the procedure.

I seem to remember in AUS, the international crews are/were not authorized to use the RNAV visuals.

well said, should clear it up for some here...

Absolutely! I'm confident the NTSB and their Canadian counterpart will be looking looking quite closely at all aspect of these database FMS "visual" procedures.

Thinking about your comment, perhaps Air Canada wasn't authorized the FMS Visual. If so, seems like they would have been flying the plain vanilla Quiet Bridge 28R Visual.

Didn't the ATC recording include a clearance to TRDOW and the FMS Bridge visual for AC 759?

I only looked at the tower transcript. If they were cleared for the FMS Visual, in some ways that deepens the mystery.

I listened to the recording, they specifically asked for FMS Bridge vsual 28R, and were cleared to land.

Interesting, when you listen (to the recording in post #4 of this thread) you hear different requests coming in.
at 1430 you have a delta request 28R visual;
at 1705 someone requests FMS 28R, bridge visual;
at 1942, a delta asks for RNAV bridge visual 28R;
at 2110, you have air canada 759 request FMS bridge visual 28R.

True for the US on public procedures, but as a tailored approach, it makes sense to have that in the design? That may be another reason that this is a special, because you would have to include VFR and IFR waypoints in both of the databases.

TLV and BOD have published missed approaches on their RNAV visuals.

both are the FMGS database

From ICAO guidance:

An RNAV Visual Approach is comprised of a flight path requiring an FMS and use of ground based, space based or onboard navigation aids, followed by a visual track to landing.
These are very specific procedures which require the operator to obtain Civil Aviation Authority approval before its pilots can fly an RNAV Visual.

■Your airline is required to be CAA approved for RNAV Visual approaches. Note that it is possible for an airline to be authorized to fly RNAV approaches, but not authorized to fly RNAV Visual approaches.
■ If your airline is not approved, you should not have the RNAV Visual charts, however, reports indicate that some crews have had these approaches included in their onboard chart library even though neither they nor their airline was authorized.

From FAA:

In 2010 the FAA issued Order 8260.55 allowing the development of RNAV Visual Flight Procedures (RVFPs) that capitalize on the capabilities of RNAV systems to provide repeatable flight paths, reduce pilot-controller communications and enhance safety through the use of vertical guidance during visual approaches. These RVFPs are not “Public” procedures. Instead, they are approved by a process similar to “Special” IFPs and are only available to part 121 and part 135 operators through OpSpec approval.

https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/...er/8260.55.pdf


Yes, it does deepen the mystery...

Yes, they may be. As noted, an airline can be approved, but the crew must also be appoved to use them.

terpster, a few years ago, the FAA was looking at RNP AR to visual approach procedure concepts with Naverus. Are you aware if they were working on this concept with anyone else? Naverus was looking at this to get below the 250 HAT.

But I still don't believe the AR necessarily means that GPS is required. You certainly don't need GPS to fly a procedure with waypoints in all cases.

As the FAA document Special Area Navigation Visual Flight Procedures you cited in your previous post says:

After the release of the YHZ accident report, Air Canada has committed to upgrading their narrowbody fleet with GPS by the end of this year but there is a good chance that C-FKCK had not yet been upgraded. If didn't have GPS it might have made a difference in matching the picture on the screen with the view out the window when they were lining up on final.

You might want to listen to that recording again. ;) I don't think any of these folks are requesting the FMS Bridge Visual 28R from the tower controller on the link posted by that smart feller in post #4. They are reporting their assigned approach procedure to the tower. You probably do that when you switch to tower, don't you?

They were already cleared for that approach by the previous controller.

As I posted earlier:

Yep, I agree, their clearance for the FMS Bridge Visual RWY 28R is in the approach control clip linked again above. And there still is no runway 28C...

Thank you Brian Potter! We have a crazy policy recomendation to de-tune the ILS for an RNP approach when the runway is equiped with an ILS, why? Because of occasional GPWS glideslope alerts if the ILS is tuned! The GPWS is valid, but because some approaches are 2.8 degree (due hot weather), if it is cold and with enough barometric error you are actually low on path compared to the ILS. Better to turn the noise off than acknowledge the issues. Reminds me of "Shut up Gringo".

It goes against all instincts to deliberately hide a piece of potentially extremely valuable information, especially at night or in marginal weather.

I haven't heard of that. If could still be in-house though. That would require some changes to criteria.

MITRE has been looking at RNP AR to LPV. That's been going on for several years.

Naverus is no more, they were bought out a few years ago by General Electric, Flight Effeciency services is the new name under GE.

MITRE for lack of a better term has licensing authority over FAA software called TARGETS that is the basis for building RVFPS. This is often issued to airlines who build them for their needs, SWA being one of the more aggressive ones.