Yep, its also the most intuitive way to reason about it when you look at the data. Unfortunately, a bad call. I'm sure many of us would have made the same mistake.
Yep, its also the most intuitive way to reason about it when you look at the data. Unfortunately, a bad call. I'm sure many of us would have made the same mistake.
> I'm sure many of us would have made the same mistake.
From the reporting and commenting on this incident, that is not the impression I'm getting. This wasn't one bad call after getting half way down the runway, this was a continuous stream of bad decision making for the entire approach, with the copilot suggesting the pilot go around too.
Also: this kind of incident is very rare, so obviously, the vast majority of pilots don't make this mistake.
Private pilot here. No, I'm quite sure very few of you here would have made the same mistake as evidenced by the fact that literally hundreds of thousands of aircraft land successfully every day, many of them under much more adverse conditions. This is not a oh-it-could-have-happened-to-anyone kind of screwup, this is a did-this-guy-really-go-through-basic-pilot-training kind of screwup.
I’m not a manned pilot, but have my part 107 and have spent a few thousand hours flying combat flight sims - ~150kts in a cargo aircraft, four seconds from departing the runway, seems like the worst possible time to abort a touch-and-go. Then consider the numerous automated audio warnings and the copilot suggesting a go-around, and it seems pretty ridiculous to me.
Don’t get me wrong - if I had to land that plane, I’d likely have overrun the runway too. I’m not saying it’s easy, only that it appears to me that they were operating well outside the documented parameters that are the pilot’s responsibility to know.
I just looked it up, and a 767’s Vref is 122-165kts, with Vref at max weight at 144kts. They touched down at 158kts, nose down. The approach was ~35kts over speed, they were above the glide slope, and not bleeding speed fast enough to sink - so they dropped the nose.
From what I can see, they were screwed the moment they touched down - the last moment they had a reasonable opportunity to abort was when they decided to drop the nose and commit instead.
They could have “aborted” at almost any time prior to when they did. And even that may have been fine if they had stuck with it.
A decent rule of thumb in aviation (and life…) is that you’re allowed to change your mind once. Waffling kills more people than switching to a bad decision does.
I have a strong hunch there a deeper more human/emotional component involved. Like Pilot A was not in the right mental headspace. A bad breakup? Some other kind of personal loss? Or an urgency of a personal kind?
Those are a few situations when a trained individual could make a series of bad decisions. More so if they were forced into the situation (flying) despite raising objections. It has happened to other 21 Air pilots in the past - when they objected to flying but were forced, so who knows?
Absolutely does not absolve this individual of the incident. It’s a burden they’ll have to bear for the rest of their lives. But it could help explain why?
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They made a series of at least ten (and that's kind of charitable) this-must-never-happen mistakes that likely rise to the level of extraordinary criminal negligence, including ignoring checklists, alarms, configuring the plane for landing in general, and basically everything related to safety.
You don't have to extend sympathy, just as you don't have to extend sympathy to drunk drivers who kill people.
I am not a pilot and I don't know anything about flying. I can go along with the idea that the pilot / crew made mistakes. So the next obvious question is how do we make sure this does not happen again?
Is there anything that can be done at all here?
The NTSB report will detail what can be done, and they will have full access to every bit of information involved in the incident.
They have a well deserved reputation for the quality and accuracy of their incident reports, and they don't pull their punches.
Maybe ATC could be expected to revoke landing clearance on extremely obviously unstable approaches? I wonder why that didn't happen.
You can't be serious.
And yet I am! Care to elaborate?
I am not a pilot nor do I know aviation but I sincerely doubt the air traffic controller on duty has the mental capacity to babysit each and every plane that is departing and arriving second guessing each and every decision they make. I don't know if they even have access to all the data the pilots have and even if they did I don't know if they can make decisions on time. I mean the way I see it the ATC will coordinate with grounds crew to make sure a plane can land/crash land as safely as possible even if it has no engines, wheels, or even flaps. I don't know how but I know they will try their best to coordinate everyone the best they can.
It could be literally automated. And I'm talking about while they were still minutes away on approach, not during final landing.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/sympathy-empathy-compassion...
I don't have sympathy. I also do know of drunk drivers that have been arrested, who are, good people. Shit happens. I'm not going to judge.
People who voluntarily choose to get behind the wheel of a motor vehicle while intoxicated are not, in fact, good people.
I mean, complete ethical nihilism is one way to try to avoid losing this particular argument, but I don't think you'll get many people to agree with you on it.
You're being downvoted because actual qualified aviators are telling you how egregious of a mistake this looks to be, and you're quibbling with them without any professional credibility on the subject.
Sincerely, A former military aviator
In any aviation incident, it’s generally a good idea to wait for the full NTSB report before drawing any firm conclusions.
That said, it is exceedingly difficult to find any explanation for what happened in this case that doesn’t boil down to incompetence or gross negligence.
There were so many opportunities to avoid this accident. The crew seemingly more or less single-handedly punched a hole straight through the entire Swiss cheese model. It’s so bad it’s hard to imagine they weren’t drunk at the controls.
> In any aviation incident, it’s generally a good idea to wait for the full NTSB report before drawing any firm conclusions.
It's also pretty rare for the NTSB to release this much information ahead of their full report. I wonder why.
This is honestly one of the few cases where it looks so blatantly and obviously negligent that I'm comfortable commenting ahead of the investigation results.
Even in a case where someone has drilled themselves into a mountainside, there's value in trying to see things like "were they distracted? Was there mechanical failure? Did they have a freak medical emergency and get incapacitated? Did unexpected weather crop up?" And in other cases, it's a "but for the grace of God go I" moment where you understand how they could have made the wrong decision in good faith. Even years out of the cockpit, I'm willing to give most aviators the benefit of the doubt, because God knows I screwed up enough in my day.
But the only thing I can think of that compares to this level of negligence was the F/A-18 pilot 20 or so years ago who lost his wings after booming his non-towered hometown airport at over 500 knots and below 500 feet with absolutely zero pre-authorization or waiver from the FAA for that kind of thing.
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