Negative Southwest, the pattern is full

[luvflyin]

Though I work in a SWA plurality shop, everybody except the regionals and NK/F9/B6 type outfits are represented in the flight room. I hear all the inside baseball/training department stories, to include some folks associated with certain flights profiled on the media. No, I'm not gonna doxx my coworkers.

BL, it's not just SWA, but it's not "complicated" either. We [those of us who make a living in flight training] all know and understand the dynamic.

I'll refrain from spelling it out, lest the usual suspects start hyperventilating about it again. My only dog in the fight as a revenue pax, is my distaste for the practice of initial OJT with revenue pax on board. Much to say about the nuances behind that practice, but digressing here for brevity.

The good news is that the hiring slowdown theoretically presents the opportunity for these shops to play catch up on the safety, mentoring, and training standards coming out of newhire training. For the sake of the industry and the flying public, let's hope this is successful before they roll snake eyes again and make the Colgan political reactions seem like dress rehearsal.

Whatsa plurality shop?

 

[TCABM]

Whatsa plurality shop?

Most of his co-workers have a day job w/SWA.

 

[texasclouds]

Bunch of Monday morning quarterbacks in here…

LOL

 

[Tarheelpilot]

Most of his co-workers have a day job w/SWA.

Well. That explains a lot. Buncha guard FAIPs trying to buzz the tower. Mystery solved.

/S

lol

 

[Flying Keys]

Bunch of Monday morning quarterbacks in here…

LOL

View attachment 127240

I’m glad we get to gather in a place where we can observe, opine, share experiences regarding a technically extreme activity that will harm everybody involved if things go wrong, much moreso the complacent. The lack of an NTSB factual finding doesn’t change the fact that the things we *can* observe and discuss could keep it fresh on our minds, conceive aspects we hadn’t considered, or even get one of us out of a jam later.

There was no foul on the play, second down.

 

[Tools]

Maybe the ship started turning? It’s happened to me… just sayin.

You’ve never seen L-nav problems until the localizer starts heading away from you at 60 knots… unannounced. Sorta makes your brain hurt.

Break out and see a big old curving wake. Oooooohhhh…. Now I get it.

 

[jayhawk74]

To be fair, it was the F/O that messed up that approach. The Captain took over and made the mistake of trying to salvage the landing. She should have taken over and gone around.

Same thing for this current incident. The mistake was likely that they didn't go-around when the localizer deviation occurred instead of trying to salvage it.

A 737 is not as nimble as a G.A. airplane. It takes longer to fix deviations.

The FO didn't mess up. From what we were told he was a little more than 1/2 dot above the GS on a Visual approach (NTSB said he was 50 ft above GP). The Captain pushed the nose down because she thought he was very high. FO thought that she had taken over the controls so after she pushed the nose down no one was flying. There was a reason she was very high on the FO avoidance list.

 

[Salty]

The FO didn't mess up. From what we were told he was a little more than 1/2 dot above the GS on a Visual approach (NTSB said he was 50 ft above GP). The Captain pushed the nose down because she thought he was very high. FO thought that she had taken over the controls so after she pushed the nose down no one was flying. There was a reason she was very high on the FO avoidance list.

That’s a good story. Wonder if any of it is true. Seriously, I have no idea if it is or not, or how we could possibly know, but it sure sounds good.

 

[hindsight2020]

She intervened inappropriately (late and without proficiency of her own) to a high/long flare, and publicly porked it away of course. NTSB fleshed out the CRM details on the report. She was a pita to fly with according to those I spoke with who flew with her.

The FO was given the token re-training and nothing came of it for him. The firing of the CA was real. The general dislike for her as a CA by the FO crowd is also verified. The only thing I never got validation asking my SWA coworkers, was the whole legend about her burning her logbooks in a rage-quit, then having some change of heart and working for Mesa for a while. I think that one is probably the most probable fiction; the only guy I know hired by said FFD did so well after the incident and never actually worked a day there (made Flag officer and presumably left airline aspirations behind), so I can't confirm.

Closet skeletons rebrand themselves all the time, in plain sight. That hack Kelly Flinn (y or I who knows, she changed her legal name for effect) made it through ASA and eventually UPS, with little obstacles. 'Global' girl Marcinkova (another one who changed her name) never got taken to account in her role in the sex trafficking ring; some clueless dopes even allowed their young daughters to meet and greet her as an aviation mentor. It's a can't save 'em all/not all baby turtles make it to the ocean type of thing, this life. Don't shoot the stenographer.

 

[Joepilotmsp]

No reason to be rude. Why do you post here if you don’t want to have dialogue?

Saying my opinion was excessive and dismissing me without any dialogue as to why struck me as condescending/rude. Maybe I did misunderstand or misinterpreted that track, but I wasn’t serious about ATC jumping from the tower and thought that would be self evident. Had you taken a minute to explain why it really wasn’t as bad as I took it would have been appreciated and a learning experience which I am always grateful for. I don’t fly 737’s, or anything remotely as complex. Class C is about as complex as I fly into or out of and that is not even that often. It just appeared way further off course than I would have been comfortable with in my Skylane. Maybe we misread each other. Bygones?

 

[Tarheelpilot]

Saying my opinion was excessive and dismissing me without any dialogue as to why struck me as condescending/rude. Maybe I did misunderstand or misinterpreted that track, but I wasn’t serious about ATC jumping from the tower and thought that would be self evident. Had you taken a minute to explain why it really wasn’t as bad as I took it would have been appreciated and a learning experience which I am always grateful for. I don’t fly 737’s, or anything remotely as complex. Class C is about as complex as I fly into or out of and that is not even that often. It just appeared way further off course than I would have been comfortable with in my Skylane. Maybe we misread each other. Bygones?

I had no intention of being rude or dismissive in my response to you. The brevity of my response was more time driven than anything else.

In this reply to me you said “It just appeared way further off course than I would have been comfortable with in my Skylane.”

That is a very reasonable statement. Not only reasonable but very accurate. I wholeheartedly agree. They were somewhere they should not have been. I hope we find out how that happened. I figure it’s probably a little more nuanced than they suck as pilots, although it might not be. We may never know but in the absence of knowing all the facts I default to they are competent but somehow deviated significantly.

That overlay is crazy! A ten hour, pre solo, student in a c-150, in a hurricane could fly a better approach after chugging a bottle of Robitussin!(sp?). Surprised they weren’t jumping from the tower!

I find it interesting that you singled out “jumping from the tower” as the “not serious” portion of your post.

I’ll take this opportunity to respond more appropriately.

I don’t think a ten hour pre solo student would do better at all. Much more likely they would have crashed well prior to the approach due to flight in IMC. Saying a presolo student could fly an instrument approach better than current instrument rated pilots is a little excessive.

regarding your “bygones” question. I learned the hard way to keep a very thick skin on POA due to the inherent limitations of social media and the personalities in our group.

Tailwinds

 

[Joepilotmsp]

I had no intention of being rude or dismissive in my response to you. The brevity of my response was more time driven than anything else.

In this reply to me you said “It just appeared way further off course than I would have been comfortable with in my Skylane.”

That is a very reasonable statement. Not only reasonable but very accurate. I wholeheartedly agree. They were somewhere they should not have been. I hope we find out how that happened. I figure it’s probably a little more nuanced than they suck as pilots, although it might not be. We may never know but in the absence of knowing all the facts I default to they are competent but somehow deviated significantly.




I find it interesting that you singled out “jumping from the tower” as the “not serious” portion of your post.

I’ll take this opportunity to respond more appropriately.

I don’t think a ten hour pre solo student would do better at all. Much more likely they would have crashed well prior to the approach due to flight in IMC. Saying a presolo student could fly an instrument approach better than current instrument rated pilots is a little excessive.

regarding your “bygones” question. I learned the hard way to keep a very thick skin on POA due to the inherent limitations of social media and the personalities in our group.

Tailwinds

Well, all righty then! Blue skys…

 

[CaptainDoug]

It happens. 20 to 30 not crosswind, your in the soup, all lined up stable, crab angle correct, needles not drifting, then all of a sudden the wind quits, or more drastically it is from the opposite side. Boom off you go.

Good point. If you're hand flying an approach with a 30 knot crosswind and you haven't hand flown an approach
in a while, it's easy to forget how much crab that you need into the wind to compensate. Yes, you're supposed
to keep that flight director tight, but that's easier said than done in a strong crosswind.

How do I know? I was just coincidently recently hand flying an RNAV approach in VMC for practice - it was at night and
the wind at altitude was almost exactly 30 knots. I saw myself drifting a lot more than I anticipated and correcting
less than I should have. It was just another one of the many learning experiences that we learn in flying if we fly
often enough. The problem is, if you don't fly often enough, you're forced to learn when it really matters - and that's in
tough conditions. And sometimes that's too late to learn.

So, in crosswinds, we forget how much work that autopilot is doing unless we hand fly more often!

 

[tobnpr]

Juan Browne just posted an update. Seems more questions, and no answers...
Irrespective of whether it was some sort of ILS problem, or crew error- the plane was well below minimums and 1,400 feet east of the runway.
Apparently a shift change/controller change just before 147's second approach- and thank God she saw the plane when it broke out and shouted for it to go around.
No warnings from the automated systems in the tower, she may have kept the final hole in the swiss cheese misaligned and prevented an utter catastrophe taking out an airliner AND control tower at a major airport.

 

[Kenny Phillips]

As I said elsewhere here:

This one a bit bothersome because the crew had already tried it once, knew there was windshear and vis was low, yet still continued as the needles just marched off the indicator.

Sounds as if both pilots were looking out, rather than one looking out, one at the panel.