Be careful out there now! You don't know who to trust these days!

[CaptWidgeon]

do these guys have the worst sa in the industry or what?

 

[Deerkiller]

Whaaat?

So...you have no Nav radios in that ship?


I think not.


YKMKR

Like the other guy said...there are no Nav tuning heads. Everything is in the box.

 

[ron burgundy]

Like the other guy said...there are no Nav tuning heads. Everything is in the box.

True. No nav heads. However, entering an ILS freq in the "nav/rad" (or wherever that was) page is the same thing as manually tuning a freq. So I guess there is a way.

 

[boxjockey]

This is the way we fly the 400 at CX. You load the approach in the box and the ILS is auto-tuned. We do however have a check before intercepting the LOC that has to be cross-checked by both pilots. We confirm that we have the correct ID on the LOC as displayed on the PFD and that it is correctly sensing LOC position. You can manually tune the ILS, but it is against our ops, to remove errors.

box

 

[waveflyer]

Doesn't answer for GPWS warnings and the Radar Altimeter- what procedures do you have to crosscheck that the database is correct. What's the back up landing into rvr's?

As for a rejected landing and divert.... i've never declared an emergency for that- so there was something more going on- but I tend to agree with the previous poster. Handling things like this needs to be in your blood. It's what we get paid for.

Too many of us show up with the expectation that everything will be routine - feet up- get back home... Getting point A to point B isn't what we get paid for- Your habits and how you fly shouldn't be determined by the 99% everything goes right-

Good job capt and FO- but a lawsuit and reaction like that seems strange without knowing more. And watching a local media report can hardly be categorized as a way to know anything about this. Especially since everyone's clearly lawyered up.

 

[gutshotdraw]

Wave, on the tape at one point they declared min fuel, then started the approach to 28R a second time before going around again. I think the emergency declaration was for low fuel.

As to the rest.....well, I'm glad we can select old-school ground navaids in the Gulfstream and not rely totally on some programmer in cubicle hell at Honeynotsowell.

 

[strega7]

If you pause the video when they show the documents, it looks like Honeywell mistakenly put the LDA LOC/GS data in where the ILS28R data should have been in the database. When they selected the ILS28R they were actually flying the offset profile for the LDA, usually only used during PRM approaches. You only follow the LDA until 4 DME then slide over to the centerline and land. If they followed the GS down close enough to see water they should have been somewhere just north of taxi way charlie!!!! I wonder if ATC didn't watch them closely on the first attempt, and only then noticed their "north of centerline" error on the second aborted attempt. The LDA approach required 4 miles vis, hate to try and use it on a 1200 RVR day!

 

[bluefin]

do these guys have the worst sa in the industry or what?

Apparently they have the best, they got out of there didn't they? what did they do wrong? apparently Honeywell were the ones that screwed up. Setting up the ILS28R properly in the box but the info for that approach was screwed up in that data base. The only way to have seen that was thru a diagnostic analysis of the info loaded by the manufacturer. Too many arm chair quarter backs.

 

[waveflyer]

No the situation was handled.
It's the PTSD lawsuit that's another story.
Cougar didn't sue- just turned in his wings and let Mav take his slot

 

[Basil]

Apparently they have the best, they got out of there didn't they? what did they do wrong? apparently Honeywell were the ones that screwed up. Setting up the ILS28R properly in the box but the info for that approach was screwed up in that data base. The only way to have seen that was thru a diagnostic analysis of the info loaded by the manufacturer. Too many arm chair quarter backs.

The question on my mind is: Regardless of the fact that the approaches were coded incorrectly, did the Nav Display show waypoints for the LDA/GS 28R or the ILS 28R? Also, did they fail to confirm the FAF/GS intercept altitude? Unless that approach has changed since then, the DME difference to be at 1800' on GS is 7.4 DME vs 6.0 DME. And the identifier I-GWQ vs I-FNP. If they missed all that twice....

Suppose the relief pilots would have been watching all this too?

 

[densoo]

More reliance on technology. Ironic the emphasis towards the end on "situational awareness" when the box sometimes works against it.

June 7, 2010

A New Twist in Talking the Plane Down

By JOE SHARKEY

MESA, Ariz.
THE private jet approached the runway over the dusty hills of the central Arizona desert. It was not in ideal landing configuration.
“Too high! Too high!” a recorded female voice called out in the cockpit.
The pilot, Markus A. Johnson, nodded. This was actually the reaction he had been seeking from the warning system.
Pulling up, the airplane surfed over the runway at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, now used mostly for business jets and other general aviation. At noon, with the temperature already pushing past 100 degrees, the airport looked sleepy.
Mr. Johnson and the co-pilot, Steven T. Kilbourne, climbed to 1,600 feet. “We’ll go around, because I didn’t fly it bad enough this time,” Mr. Johnson said with a chuckle.
The airplane, a vintage Sabreliner NA265 twin-engine business jet, made a big sweep around the airport and again approached the long, empty runway. In the right seat, Mr. Kilbourne deliberately set the flaps wrong.
“Flaps! Unstable!” the recorded voice called out as the runway loomed.
Again the airplane pulled up. From the jump seat in the cockpit, I saw the skyline of Phoenix shimmering in the distance.
In a few minutes, we had made a normal landing and were taxiing around the airport while Mr. Kilbourne studied a taxiway chart and spoke with controllers in the tower. As we trundled along, the recorded voice, urgency gone, called out locations of intersecting runways. “Approaching 1-2 center,” it said. “Approaching 3-0 left.”
Mr. Johnson and Mr. Kilbourne are both test pilots for Honeywell, which has an aerospace headquarters in Phoenix. They were demonstrating a new Honeywell technology that provides aural alerts to pilots as they approach runways and as they land and roll through the maze of taxiways.
Being reminded where you are when approaching the runway is crucial because pilots have leeway on where to put the plane down. Last month, an Air India Express flight crashed in Mangalore, killing 158 on board, and investigators are trying to determine whether the accident was caused by a pilot miscalculation on the approach to the runway.
In general, pilots need to pay close attention to a wide variety of visual signals, beyond cockpit instruments, when landing an airplane or moving around the airport. They look out the window, study maps, peer at signs. Occasionally they make mistakes and their planes wander into one another’s paths, sometimes with disastrous results.
Skill and acute awareness are required to land a plane safely, whether it’s a midsize business jet like the Sabreliner, or a lumbering giant crammed with hundreds of passengers like a 747. But far more than most passengers realize, pilots have options on their approach, among them, just where to slide that plane down on that vast and fast-looming concrete runway.
Within overall safety guidelines, airlines set what they call correct landing procedures for pilots. But airports, weather, terrain and other factors vary, as do company procedures. In general, airlines like pilots to strive for soft landings, gliding the aircraft gently onto the runway, rather than hard landings, in which the plane comes down with a thump or a bang that alarms passengers.
Hard landings are jarring, but not necessarily unsafe. On the other hand, if the pilots are not fully aware of exactly how much runway they have in front of them on approach, a soft landing can be unsafe. Last week, for example, a directive by aviation regulators in India warned airlines about overemphasizing soft landings.
“A good landing is not one that the passengers perceive as a soft landing, but one that is made at the correct point on the runway, with correct flight parameters,” the directive said. It was issued after the Air India Express accident. The question is whether the pilots, in calculating their runway position, decided incorrectly that they had enough room for a full soft landing.
“Situational awareness” are the two most important words that pilots know, even before “when’s lunch?”
Honeywell’s new product, called SmartLanding, augments the company’s Runway Awareness and Advisory System, introduced almost a decade ago to remind pilots exactly where they were on the ground. SmartLanding “has more to do with approaching the runway,” Mr. Johnson said.
As we rolled to a stop on an airport apron last week, Mr. Johnson said that adding to pilots’ situational awareness was invaluable — even if it required an audible nag from a disembodied voice amid all the other distractions of a cockpit.
“It’s easy to trigger a warning announcement,” he said as the engines shut down. “The tricky thing is to not trigger one.”

E-mail: [email protected]


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/business/08road.html?scp=2&sq=new twist&st=cse