Scudrunners

[quote]German investigators say a runway excursion by Boeing 777 that was on autoland was the fault of the pilots. The unusual incident happened in November of 2011 at Munich Airport but the report from the German BRU was just released this week. The BRU found the Singapore Airlines crew initiated the chain of events that led to the autopilot putting the aircraft on the grass. It was reported by Aerossurance on Monday. The flight was arriving from Manchester in the U.K. and was just about to touch down when an RJ85 taking off farther down the runway momentarily blocked the signal from the localizer at the opposite end. For a few seconds, nothing and no one was in control of the aircraft, which was less than 50 feet above the runway.

The widebody banked left before landing on the left main gear and veering left off the runway, even though the captain hit the go-around button on the throttle lever. The pilots were only able to gain manual control when they kicked right rudder, sending the big jet back across the runway where it finally stopped in the grass on the right side. There were no injuries and the plane wasn’t damaged. The investigation concluded the aircraft performed as designed and blamed the pilots.

The crew’s mistake occurred when they got their final weather report for the destination airport. As per their company’s procedures, the captain took over from the first officer as pilot flying because of the low visibility (1.25 NM) and ceiling (300 feet). Even though the conditions didn’t require it (they were CAT I), [u]the captain decided to let the plane autoland but he didn’t tell controllers[/u]. The controllers were operating under CAT I procedures, which allowed them to clear the regional for takeoff ahead of the approaching 777. Had the controllers known the 777 was autolanding, the investigators said the controllers would have held the RJ85.

The timing of the events proved critical to the eventual outcome. The localizer signal was interrupted just as the 777 was about to touch down. When it banked left, [u]the captain hit the automatic go around but not before the gear touched and caused the aircraft to reject that command. It instead went into the roll-out mode[/u]. The pilots were, however, able to manually retract the spoilers in anticipation of the go around and that likely contributed to their wild ride on the ground. The BRU recommended that flight crews be brushed up on the regs and do more sim training for localizer deviations. The mishap was caught on video.[/quote]

Years ago when I was an ACP, I would ding the crews if they elected to conduct an auto land in weather that didn’t require it, without advising ATC. I think the recommended weather was 800/2, not to do an auto land but to advise ATC if doing one.
BTW, at least on a Boeing, they are quite something to witness. The rudder comes in to smoothly ease off the drift while the wing gets gently lowered into the wind...

Wow!  That's quite a video; you don\t often see a plane depart BOTH sides of the same runway on a single landing.  Their story doesn't hold water either; when you are conducting a CAT II or higher landinng, the pilot flying looks like a hawk with his talons poised over the controls to take control if the black boxes decide to try to kill you.  The localiser in Zagreb used to take a dirty dart off the left side every so often and we never got more than 10' off the center line at the worst of times.

I get the feeling it causes some people great physical pain
to touch the flight controls, and hand-fly the mother.

Fuck.  You should have seen our landing yesterday.  No
one else in the goddamned state was flying, it seemed.

My take on this is it was 100% pilot error. A simple radio call and it never would have occurred.

And proper monitoring of everything might have mitigated even that error.

Yes, they could hand fly every approved approach,,,humans are lazy.

They screwed up. Plain and simple.  And the holes in the cheese lined up that day.

But lets be honest here.  Thousands and thousands of successful flights every day.  In all types of weather. At some very challenging airports that go off without a hitch.  To use this or even a handful of similar examples does not, in my opinion, reflect as a common characteristic of the tens of thousands of pilots who do their job professionally every day.

It is the kind of generalization I would  expect from a sensaltionist news organization..I am fairly certain though, that most of the posters here are dedicated in their aviation activities and won’t make the jump to,the conclusion that all four bars are unable to fly.

Modern airliners are complex.  And the more we automate them , the more the challange becomes to keeping the crew up to 100% efficiency, and in the loop.  It is easy to let the automation do the work.  And understandable to those who do it for a living, that someone might be tired or not feeling 100% and decide to let the automation do some extra work..

As to the left right excursion.. No biggie.  I have never done it but I am fairly confudent I could touch both edges of a runway on rollout, even without some extra special instructor teaching me how.

[quote]They screwed up[/quote]

I was thinking a one year licence suspension would give them time to think about it.

That sanction was not chosen randomly.

[quote]all four bars are unable to fly[/quote]

The percentage of incompetent pilots is rising alarmingly.  Just as this winner
was afraid to hand fly, so was the four bar of Asiana 214, in perfect wx.

When pilots can't take over when the automation fucks up, it's time for them
to stay home.

I tell people flying in those crowd killers to hope for good wx and that nothing
goes wrong, because the kids up front sure as hell can't deal with it.

[quote]Data from the jetliner that crashed into the Java Sea last month shows the pilots fought to save the plane almost from the moment it took off, as the Boeing 737’s nose was repeatedly forced down, apparently by an automatic system receiving incorrect sensor readings.

The pilots managed to pull the nose back up over and over until finally losing control, leaving the plane, Lion Air Flight 610, to plummet into the ocean at 450 miles per hour, killing all 189 people on board.

Boeing has said that the proper steps for pulling out of an incorrect activation of the system were already in flight manuals[/quote]

[quote author=Blakey link=topic=9429.msg26210#msg26210 date=1546038692]
Wow!  That's quite a video; you don\t often see a plane depart BOTH sides of the same runway on a single landing.  Their story doesn't hold water either; when you are conducting a CAT II or higher landinng, the pilot flying looks like a hawk with his talons poised over the controls to take control if the black boxes decide to try to kill you.  The localiser in Zagreb used to take a dirty dart off the left side every so often and we never got more than 10' off the center line at the worst of times.
[/quote]

You're dealing with an Asian Airline with an Asian mentality....

Cat 2/3 is a complete mystery and people are lost outside the books - that's from personal experience.

Example:- For Cat 2 the procedure was to [b]always[/b] set 100' as DH (people had no understanding about the concept of DH).