7 approaches , 600lbs fuel left in a 737 of Jet airways in almost VFR
 

Something strange here, look at the weather... hardly below minimums

reported here Incident: Jet Airways B738 at Trivandrum on Aug 18th 2015, landed below required final fuel reserve on 7th approach

A Jet Airways Boeing 737-800, registration VT-JFA performing flight 9W-555 (dep Aug 17th) from Doha (Qatar) to Kochin (India) with 142 passengers and 8 crew, was on approach to Kochin and went around three times due to weather. Following the third go-around the crew declared fuel emergency and diverted to Thiruvananthapuram (in India often also referred to as short "Trivandrum"), located about 95nm south of Kochin, where the aircraft again needed to go around three times before managing a safe landing on the fourth approach.

On Aug 21st 2015 India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) reported the aircraft landed with just 270kg/600lbs of fuel left, where the required minimum fuel reserve would have been around 1500kg/3300lbs. The aircraft had gone around 3 times in Kochin due to bad weather, the crew then decided to divert to Trivandrum, which had poor weather conditions, too, and managed a landing there only on the 4th attempt. Both pilots have been suspended pending investigation. The DGCA reported they are looking into the airline's fueling policy as well as into the weather reports and why the crew diverted to Trivandrum.

Metars Kochin:

VOCI 180100Z 00000KT 1800 BR BKN004 SCT015 24/22 Q1008 NOSIG
VOCI 180030Z 00000KT 2000 BR SCT006 SCT015 24/22 Q1007 TEMPO VIS 1500 BR
VOCI 180000Z 00000KT 3000 BR SCT006 SCT015 24/22 Q1007 TEMPO VIS 2000 BR


Metars Trivandrum:

VOTV 180310Z 25006KT 3000 HZ FEW015 SCT090 27/23 Q1009 NOSIG
VOTV 180140Z 23004KT 2000 BR FEW015 SCT090 26/23 Q1008 NOSIG
VOTV 180040Z 29003KT 3000 HZ FEW015 SCT090 25/23 Q1007 NOSIG

1.8kms of vis, BR and broken 400ft and you say Almost VFR?

Are you a pilot?

Should be well above minimums unless the crew was restricted to high mins.:sad:
Fair enough to go missed if unstable, but with calm winds, it should be a cake walk.

@ Oscar84

I don't know about anywhere else but at least in Chicago, it is considered fair weather...

Yep... and this is a piece of cake as you too should be aware of if you are a practicing pilot...

Ils mins VOCI is 320'(290) and 750m RVR (reduced to 650m with AP or FD to DA)... even adding 100ft and 400m for high mins you should be able to easily make it in under the worst reported Cochin weather .

Seven approaches when the wx was never below CAT1!

More to this story than being told. Indian aviation is a seriously worrying entity.

Quite possibly the METAR was inaccurate. Its also not uncommon for some Towers to just read out the CAVOK METAR, rather than look at the 500m heavy rain out the window.

not in india..they dont deviate here

VOCI is notorious for low clouds on approach just around sunrise. The morning mist rises and forms clouds at around 200-300 feet. Unfortunately this is rarely reported by the Met department - along with the standard tailwind :rolleyes:

As per the ground staff, VOTV had some low clouds on that day. My guess is, they never saw the runway till they busted the minimums on their 7th approach.

From the posts below, you are dealing with intransigent m****rf**king twats!:ok:

Calm winds, nice slow and stabilized?
Go to the minimums, take a good look, then take another good look:
Oops, here is the approach lights, here is the runway lights, and here is the runway. No drama, no 6 missed approaches, no minimum fuel and no emergency.

Amazing. The skygod gets to minimums (DA ) and then looks for this and that! Wow, amazing indeed...the slips are beginning to show!!!:=:=:=


P/s take note of this post and archive it. It ain't gonna last very long over here!

270kg in an 800, WOW!

What kind of approach at VOTV, can you auto land off it?

I'd be getting very nervous with less than 1000kg fuel.

Huh? Been smoking crack today? :sad:

Dog, I think he's trying to tell you that a professional crew don't go below minimums as you appeared to suggest in your earlier post. Doing that will mean a very short career in aviation. A professional crew would never allow this kind of situation to develop in the first place.

I would never advocate busting minimums and you are right, a very short career indeed.
With the kind of viz they had, ground contact could probably be established before minimums, as in Vertical Visibility.
Whatever, 6 go-arounds seems excessive, I have flown quite a bit in India and seen the conditions first hand, hence my comments.

With low fuel they would of course declare an emergency, then go below minimums as needed,
to get on the ground in one piece
I was behind the B-707 that crashed in JFK as he ran out of fuel, it was painful to listen to.
Should have declared an emergency, then followed the ILS to the runway..

The ILS for RWY 32 in TRV is U/S as per NOTAM.

.....dog, you are indeed backtracking. The slip is indeed showing!

There are weather phenomenon whereby the slant visibility can be very different from reporting prevailing visibility.

My only grind, the crew should have buggered off somewhere better after the second go around. If unable and committed to land there, then declare an emergency to ATC to get the ILS all protected and all other services ready for any eventuality and make a " blind autolanding ".:ok:

Yeah, I don't want to leave the impression that I advocate or recommend busting minimums.
In most cases there is no reason to: Alternate airport and reserve fuel, use plan B.
If there is no plan B, declare an emergency and use all resources.

"As for the slip is indeed showing"..:rolleyes:

Whats interesting is there were other aircraft landing at these airports too... only one did 6 misses.

Jet Airways................

Why am I not surprised? My first line training sector was out of Delhi. LTC arrives late, rushes to the aircraft, works both pushback and ground on VHF1, and gets annoyed when I tell him after pushback to slow down and repeat all checklists from preflight.

He was astounded that anyone would question his authority. Idiot. I was the Captain. He was merely the line trainer. He was a local. I was merely an expat.

Similar tale with a line check out of Chennai. Indian aviation and the caste system are intertwined. Whole mentality needs changing before real advances can be made.

Anytime Goyal wants to send my bonus payment is fine by me.

soft target
 

as always, pilots are the soft targets whenever something like this happens. there seems to be no accountability on flight safety who continued to advise that approach in the said airport should be continued and diversion avoided or despatch who did not report the correct weather and neither was the acars updated. the assumption here is that the pilots acted solely at their own discretion, which is incorrect. They were making decisions based on inputs given to them, garbage in-garbage out. Do not condone what the pilots did, but it is a larger base that needs to take the blame, not just the pilots.

But aren't the Pilots flying this machine this day holding the ultimate responsibility... I don't know how you can blame people on the ground, outside of the cockpit for the errors and judgement calls of the crew and near fatal accident that happened in all seriousness.

Boeing 7xx, congratulations for confirming the impression the civilised world has concerning Indian aviation.

I hope, for the sake of the travelling public, your licence is restricted to tuk-tuks.

thank you
 

silverhawk, thankfully there are more capable people judging my ability to hold the license than mob justice that you seem to want to dish out.

My point remains that pilots do not operate in isolation, there's a system, SOP, minima amongst other things which you'd be aware of unless you're flying the bush.

Again, I do not condone the actions of the crew, but i think it is time to take a relook at the whole system and circumstances that lead to such situations. treat the disease not the symptom.

@ Boeing7xx

I understand what you mean by external pressures like DGCA, Flt safety dept, Weather reporting etc etc..

But I am still trying my level best to understand how any of these could be a factor in decision making in any case in general & in this case in particular.

Weather was not bad at all, with broken & scattered layers, calm winds, no CB & TS reported, no Wind Shear, 11000 ft runway..

They make 1st approach, things don't go well, stuff happens, they get unstable, go around, that's normal.

But Before anyone goes for a 2nd shot, they need to take a hard look why they went around the 1st time..

Was it weather or was it unstable approach..??
Did they see the runway at MDA/ DA ??
Were they just unstable..??
Were the winds not what was being reported..??
Did they get any windshear or loss of airspeed..??

They come back for 2nd shot & go around 2nd time again for SOME reason...

WHY even attempt a 3rd approach at that point....?????

Then they HOLD for 30 mins... WHY....????

Then proceed to alternate...

Then 3 more approaches at the alternate....

Tell me which training, which culture, which SOP, which common sense teaches that...???

May be they were having a mechanical issue & they try to trouble shoot the problem. Were they dealing with multiple issues..??

If the crew was dealing with multiple failures, then those guys are Heroes But I don't see anywhere they declared emergency due to mechanical issues..

Did the company or dispatch push them to NOT divert & try one more time..??
Very unlikely but if that was the case, then where was PIC authority..??

I would really like to know what was happening in the flight deck. We all would like to know..

But the fact is TRUTH will most likely NEVER come out..

Pilots will never speak the truth, they know DGCA will interpret the truth in different way. They will cover their back..
The company doesn't care about the crew, they care about the company.. Maintenance will try to protect themselves.

Only hope is CVR & FDR data, that will give some insight to what was actually happening on that day.
Now I don't know that in India, if they make the CVR transcripts available to the public or not..

NTSB usually gives preliminary findings about what happened so others can learn from the incident.

But DGCA will sit on the facts for years, during which, many deals will be made on what goes on the report..
The DGCA report will be most likely be hushed UP, depending on who's got how much PULL, the inquiry can be anything from an eye wash to penalizing the crew..

pilotbaba
 

:ok:
finally a balanced and sensible post on this pilotbaba.
There are some glaring :ugh::ugh: in this incident and just hope that we get to read an unbiased report and learn from it .
The media reports on aviation incidents in India are comical and usually filled with errors , look at this report to see the awareness among our media and travelling public
http://http://zeenews.india.com/news...s_1650558.html

A vast majority of the people I know at 9W are good operators and I wouldn't brush the whole community as being sub standard or dangerous "tuk tuk" pilots as one of our professional friends had alluded to in a previous post.

Fly safe all and masalama :ok:

I'd be getting very nervous below 2000kg if my options started disappearing.

I only alluded to one poster, Boeing 7xx, to being best suited to tuk-tuks after his painfully naive attempt to avert blame from this crew.
Many of my friends and colleagues at 9W were perfectly competent, well trained and trusted.
The culture in Indian aviation in general is far below the standard expected in the First World. Why else would this crew behave in such a way?
I hope that explains my stance on this event.
Now if Gopal wants to pay my bonus?................

pilot decision is final, in air
 

a pilot is the best person to decide at that moment. safety is paramount and every approach is an attempt. do all pilots land every time perfectly as per text books?
have faith in others . investigation can get the facts.