Not Stabilised - Mandatory Go-round?
 

Several Air Crash Investigation programmes I've seen recently miss the point that the aircraft was clearly not stabilised at 1000/500 feet.

For major airlines, can the first officer force a go-round if the plane is not stabilised? Is he/she obliged to do so by company procedures?

Yes, they can.

Yes, they are.

Physically making it happen is a different thing, I've done it many years ago with a Captain pushing on beyond the limits, he didn't go around until he saw the F.E. and myself go for the controls.

Unstabilised Approach
Although unstable approaches are not common in **** due to our robust SOP’s and NO BLAME policy for go-arounds, throughout the industry an unstabilised approach is the biggest single cause of tail strike. Flight crews should stabilize all approach variables - on centerline, on approach path, on speed, and in the final landing configuration - by the time the airplane descends through 1,000 feet AFE. This is not always possible. Under normal conditions, if the airplane descends through 1,000 feet AFE (IMC), or 500 feet AFE (VMC), with these approach variables not stabilized, a go-around should be considered. Flight recorder data shows that flight crews who continue with an unstabilised condition below 500 feet seldom stabilize the approach. When the airplane arrives in the flare, it often has either excessive or insufficient airspeed. The result is a tendency toward large thrust and pitch corrections in the flare, often culminating in a vigorous pitch change at touchdown resulting in tail strike shortly thereafter. If the pitch is increased rapidly when touchdown occurs as ground spoilers deploy, the spoilers add additional nose up pitch force, reducing pitch authority, which increases the possibility of a tail strike. Conversely, if the airplane is slow, increasing the pitch attitude in the flare does not effectively reduce the sink rate; and in some cases, may increase it. A firm touchdown on the main gear is often preferable to a soft touchdown with the nose rising rapidly. In this case, the momentary addition of thrust may aid in preventing the tail strike. In addition, unstabilised approaches can result in landing long or a runway over run.

I saw an Air Crash Investigation last night about the Garuda overrun in 2007. This is the famous 220kt/flap 5 B737 approach onto a 2200m runway which ended up as 220kt/flap 5 approaches onto 2200m runways tend to!

During the latter stages of the approach the Captain ignored 10 warning calls and two orders from the FO to go-around. The last call to go-around was met with "Landing checklist complete" before he went on to kill 21 people.

The real travesty of this is that this individual is not locked-up.

There are a lot of accidentss that are caused by an unfortunate sequence of events (the holes in the cheese lining up) but not this one. Reading about it is one thing but watching the reconstruction really was sobering.

Also Asiana 214 B777 at SFO. No sign of stability check. That was a visual approach - no ILS. In those circumstances should you use PAPI for the glidescope criterion?

Don't think that the SFO runway had PAPI installed - however the real issue was the decay of speed on that approach which remained unchecked for an incredible 32 seconds before impact.

You "need to comply with the VGSI, if available" according to FAA Advisory Circular AC No. 120-108, Subject: Continuous Descent Final Approach (CDFA), Date: 1/20/11.

The Aircraft Investigation re-enactment was showing PAPIs quite a bit so I assume they were on and working at SFO.

For your airline, at 500 feet, is there a check that includes "PAPI Two White Two Red"?

It was not totally clear when they got slow and under the glidepath but there was no evidence they made any check for stabilised approach.

I ask this because several accidents (eg Garuda) should have featured a very specific point where the operating procedures were flouted like "Captain we are not stabilised. We should go round". "No, stuff that - I am carrying on (without explaining the reason or plan)"

Instead these programmes tend to give a human explanation - like 'fixation'. They seem to prefer this angle rather than someone deliberately ignoring their operating procedures.

No specific call out ref VGSI that I'm aware of.

Just checked Google Earth - there are in fact PAPIs on both the 28s. My apologies.