More from another guy who's BTDT w/T-shirt
From:
Sent: Tuesday, July 09, 2013 8:51 AM
To:
Subject: FW: B-777 Accident summary
Dave was my maintenance officer in VA 146. Naval Test Pilot grad and instructed at the AF Test Pilot School at Edwards. Did the spin test on the A-7. Thought you'd enjoy. Another friend indicated that the 777 was at 103 kts at impact.
Dear Admiral Jim,
I am sending this reply to you . . . please feel free to distribute it to members of your address list as you see fit. For starters . . . the “accident” at SFO was, in a word, inexcusable! Utterly inexcusable! In fact to call it an “accident” is a stretch. It smelled bad from the start, and the more information that leaks out . . . the worse it gets. The First Officer was the “Pilot Flying” (PF) in FAA parlance. The Captain was the “Pilot Monitoring” (PM) in FAA parlance. In the FAA world, the Captain would have to have been a certified “Line Check Airman” (LCA). A LCA is a company pilot who is screened, first by his or her corporation and then by the FAA, who then receives considerable additional training both in ground school and the flight simulator as well as being supervised in the cockpit through a qualification check. LCAs have two normal functions . . . they administer “Route Checks” to each flight crew . . . actually, to each Captain on a yearly basis. The other primary function of an LCA is to administer “Initial Operating Experience” or “IOE” to new Captains who are upgrading to the Captains position or to new First Officers who are just learning the aircraft. IOE has a very specific syllabus, both ground school and inflight training, and specific grading criteria that a pilot moving into either seat must accomplish successfully before being released to fly as a part of an unrestricted flight crew. The normal time to complete the syllabus is 25 flight (Block) hours and a certain minimum number of landings . . . at FedEx the landing requirement was six if my memory serves me correctly. Additional flight time can be assigned if the ‘student’ is considered weak or not proficient/comfortable in any part of the syllabus. “Students” can ‘fail’ IOE and at FedEx failures were required to return to their previous seat position and pass a check ride for that seat to remain employed. Some companies handle the ‘failure’ situation differently. During my twenty-three years with FedEx, I was a Captain Line Check Airman for over fifteen of those years and have performed IOE with literally a couple hundred pilots who were moving into the B-727. When I got hired in 1987 I was the 743 pilot on the seniority list . . . when I retired the Company had over 4,100 pilots.
As to the accident . . . first of all, every airline that I am aware of requires that the aircraft be “stable” at a specific point (referred to as the Stable Gate at FedEx) in any approach. The term “stable” has very specific criteria attached. The aircraft must be fully configured to land . . . landing flaps down and locked and the landing gear down and locked, airspeed must be plus five to minus zero from Bug . . . the Reference Approach speed. Engines must be spooled up . . . normal approach power setting for the flap configuration . . . and the Before Landing Checklist must have been completed. During VFR conditions when using a Visual Approach, all of this had to be completed prior to 500 feet AGL or a Missed Approach (Go Around) was MANDATORY. If the aircraft was in IMC conditions and instruments approaches were being used . . . the “stable” call had to be made prior to 1,000 feet AGL . . . or a Missed Approach was MANDATORY. I would be stunned if Ariana Airlines did not have a very similar policy. Virtually all major carriers use some form of this procedure. Second . . . the decision was made a long time ago that safety would be enhanced by incorporating technology into the cockpit to ‘ease’ the pilot workload. For the most part this has been a blessing . . . but, the unintended consequence has been that real pilot stick and rudder flying skills are permitted to atrophy . . . and . . . with enough ‘technology’ you can hide very weak flying skills. Believe me . . . there are plenty of pilots who worship at the altar of “automation”. We had plenty of very senior First Officers (Co-Pilots) at FedEx that were in the DC-10, A-300 or MD-11 . . . all highly automated aircraft, who would not even try to upgrade to Captain in the B-727 because . . . you had to know how to fly to operate a B-727. We have destroyed nine widebody aircraft at FedEx in the past fifteen or sixteen years . . . all . . . every one . . . due to poor flying skills. In fact, we crashed a DC-10 at Memphis several years ago with a LCA in the Captain’s seat and a ‘problem pilot’ in the right seat . . . on a beautiful day . . . not a cloud in the sky . . . with a fifteen knot cross wind (the aircraft limit is 30 knots on the beam). They landed in a skid, collapsed the right main gear . . . punctured the left main fuel tank . . . slid down the runway and burned . . . and lived to tell about it.
The first real red flag for the SFO accident was that IOE was in progress and the ILS was NOTAMED out of service. This was reportedly the First Officer’s first attempt at landing the real aircraft . . . not the simulator. Everyone needs to see and memorize the correct “on glideslope” picture from the cockpit when learning to fly a new aircraft . . . everyone. So this ‘student’ should not have been performing this landing unless he had demonstrated proficiency landing the aircraft previously. (As a by the way, it is not at all uncommon in situations like this where there is a parallel runway whose ILS is operating . . . to tune it and use the glide path indicator as a ‘reference’ for the approach. As long as the touchdown zones are close to each other, it works fine.) The second red flag was the huge airspeed deviation. All FAR Part-25 Certified aircraft (as the B-777 is) are certified to land at 1.3 Vstall . . . or 130% of the aircraft’s stall speed in that configuration at the approach gross weight. The Stick Shaker activates at around 1.1 Vstall . . . so this aircraft was probably over twenty knots below the Bug speed for its gross weight . . . a HUGE deviation! HUGE! The next red flag was the reported 1400 fpm descent rate during the approach. The wind was out of the Southwest at eight knots and they were attempting to land on 29 Left . . . so they had a three or four knot headwind component . . . their average descent rate should have been in the neighborhood of 700 fpm at that approach speed. The need for 1400 fpm suggest that the First Officer, lacking an ILS glideslope or Middle Marker . . . did not recognize the correct sight picture to commence his descent and started down late . . . sorta the ‘High coming down all the way” approach at the ship. Now . . . the next comment is pure speculation . . . but I will buy you dinner if I am wrong. The First Officer was using “Auto-Throttles”. We, at FedEx have banged up a couple of big airplanes because auto-throttles virtually encourage the pilot to remove airspeed from his scan . . . even from his consciousness. With landing flaps selected and 1400 fpm descent rate . . . the auto-throttles in all likelihood had both engines at flight idle and when it was obvious that there was a problem . . . the throttles already should have been pushed up to break the descent rate. I’m just guessing . . . but I have that ‘hair standing up on your neck’ feeling that neither the LCA (Captain) or the First Officer had looked at airspeed until the stick shaker/aural warning sounded. My last comment is that the Captain of that flight should be fired . . . anyone who lets a ‘student’ deviate that far . . . for that long . . . and lives to tell about it . . . should start looking for another line of work. Utterly incompetent! The lack of professionalism of this Captain is astounding in so many respects. I have long since lost count of the number of times that I have had to “take” the airplane from a new pilot to the B-727 because they got overwhelmed by the circumstances. It can be a wonderful ‘teaching moment’ if it is handled correctly.
So . . . the next time you strap yourself into one of these technological marvels . . . ask yourself if the two clowns up front can do anything but type sixty words a minute into a Flight Management System.
Cheers,
Dave