It's automated when your flying an approach that is designed to be flown automated. San Fran is one of those airports, where ATC will leave you high and fast and expect you to slam dunk it right to the ground. This leaves you in an unstabilized situation, hand bombing the thing to the ground. Pair this up with crews who aren't able to cope with a situation outside the norm, and bam. You've got yourself an interesting situation. Obviously i'm speculating, but this is a situation that could easily happen. We will have to wait and see what happened here.

EDIT: Apparently the ILS (Instrument Landing System), which is required for your so called "Autoland" was offline. Meaning this was flown as a Non precision approach, and knowing San Fran on a nice day, a visual approach with no vertical guidance. Taking it back to the old school, where we Canadians can be happy a high majority of our pilots have flown years and years in the middle of buck $uck no where flying without any guidance at all.

The news still shows 2 dead. Hope the rest who were injured make it through a-ok!

Anyone read the book 'Outliers'? In it, Malcolm Gladwell puts together a pretty convincing case that the cultural nuances of asians will lead to higher incidences of plane crashes because of 'respect' to authority.

"Mr. Gladwell similarly raises the notion that cultural traditions may play a role in plane crashes, that the 1990 crash of Avianca Flight 52 over Long Island might have had something to do with the pilots’ being Colombian. He quotes Suren Ratwatte, a veteran pilot involved in “human factors” research, saying that “no American pilot would put up with” being held up by Air Traffic Control several times on its way to New York for more than an hour if he or she were running short of fuel. And drawing on the work of the psychologist Robert Helmreich, Mr. Gladwell argues that the pilots came from a culture with “a deep and abiding respect for authority” — which suggests that the first officer was reluctant to speak up when the exhausted captain failed to do so, and that both men failed to talk forcefully to the air traffic controllers, who were tough New Yorkers, unaccustomed to the pilots’ polite language."

Anyway, just food for thought.

Which airline/flight forums are you guys following?

I'm just curious what people think happened.

From this thread it seems like it is difficult to land at SFO?

^nope, 28s are easier to land than the 10s

28s are coming in to sfo from san franciso bay while the 10s require you to fly through this valley which may be touchy during windy conditions

Asiana Airlines president reveals engine defect was 'probably not' behind San Francisco crash | Mail Online There are some rendered images of what may have happened.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/...98_634x286.jpg
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/...88_634x316.jpg
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/...62_634x326.jpg
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/...64_634x319.jpg
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/...16_634x319.jpg

Video of the crash


Looks as though the aircraft was coming in way to low and slow. They didn't realize this until couple seconds before the crash and by that time they were doomed.

Can't see shit captain
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omg is the white version of snackbars.

Front row seats for the United 744 holding short..Yikes!

Just out of curiosity, if it's deemed pilot error (and seeing 2 people have died)? Does it usually mean that criminal charges are warranted?


I asked just because I've seen this quite a bit in the media ie. The BC Ferries sinking, The Italian cruise ship, etc.

It's not that 28 is hard to land on. It's a big concrete chunk of land with minimal obstacles. A big hunk of real estate. The reason SFO is tough is due to the controlling. They leave you high on approach, and you are required to dive back down to intercept a normal glidepath. Easy to do in a small plane, a lot harder in one of the largest jets in the world. Take it from a pilot... A heavy jet pilot... one who has flown in SFO many times.

Wow, just watched the video. Low and slow. Yikes.

It depends if they were negligent or not. People make mistakes. The reason the cruise ship captains etc are held accountable is due to his actions post incident, rather then the incident itself. Unless of course the incident was due to neglect entirely.

From the news, IIRC
-plane was coming in too slow
-stick shaker was activated
-attempt of a go around(go back into the air) was speculated 1-2secs before impact
-1 dead chinese girl who sat at the very back was found near the site of impact where the tail broke off
-the other dead chinese girl was found near the exit slide (speculation that she was hit by a emergency respond vehicle)

Yikes, if she was hit by an emergency vehicle, that would be a tragedy
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Was just thinking about this as it was koreans, and in the book, Gladwell was explaining about how korean airlines had much more x the airplane accidents as other countries.

that is one career ending move.

it looks like he should have pulled up and did a missed approach way earlier. but... maybe they wanted to get the plane down and was clouded/ absent minded that they forgot to pull up add that with inexperience.

a mistake waiting to happen

didn't know there was a thread on RS for this... I would have responded a lot earlier...
if anyone still interested here's my input

Simply - TOO DARN SLOW, from what I hear the pilot flying had most of his hours on an A320, which has an approach speed (or more appropriately, VRef) far lower than that of a 777. And for whatever reason, the pilot monitoring did not realize this until 10 seconds before impact, and did not give the command to execute a go-around/botched approach until it was too late (power increase is not instantaneous on a big plane like this, it could take AT LEAST 8-10 seconds just for the engines to spool up and generate max thrust, depending on where the throttles were set initially, and then another couple seconds to clean the aircraft up and establish it in a climb)

Aircraft was stalled close to the ground, zero chance of recovery. Thankfully they were in that grey area where they could still make a hard landing; the only problem is that they tail hit the seawall, ultimately splitting the aft section.

First landing on type could be stressful, especially jumping from an Airbus to a Boeing, and with such a size difference, so the very basic unsaid rule of flying of "never raise the nose without adding power" was probably forgotten somewhere down the approach.

And for those with a bit more technical knowledge:
For those reports who state that the ILS had something to do with it - IMO this is absolute bullshit. It was a VMC day, they would have called visual before the IAF, or at least been asked by ATC to report visual. Even if they did not report visual, it's not like they were flying under a training hood - they WOULD have seen the outside, they WOULD have been able to see the PAPIs for visual reference, and because the ILS G/S was out of service, they would have gotten flags for it, or not been flying down the glideslope to begin with - THEY WERE VISUAL, else they would not be on short final on what appears to be on a proper approach slope. Even IF they were on the ILS, they would be visual already since the DA is at 213ft (or 200... sorry, not familiar with FAA plates).

TL;DR: ILS had nothing to do with it. I have no idea why some news outlets are reporting this as a "possible cause", but there is no way that this is a cause unless those were absolutely incompetent pilots

Totally agree! :pokerface:

I figured that 28 they would make your life a little bit easier since you're coming in over the water? I know that 10 you have to come down over that building and it makes the approach a bitch.

Yes, Gladwell also says they've fixed that problem for the past 20 years and are among the best airlines to fly now.

People are seriously going to blame Korean culture for bringing down this plane? Fucking ridiculous.

The fallacy of blaming Korean ?culture? for Asiana crash - Bob King and Adam Snider - POLITICO.com

Read Outliers? I guess you're airplane crash expert.

Apparently Korean pilots are poorly trained

operation nyclab: Asiana 214 777 crash - a perspective on Korean airline standards

LOL!

I don't know how the newsreader not burst out laughing!

Holy shit.......

I hate myself for laughing, but jesus......if someone told me that was the pilots name. I'd cancel my ticket.

goin 2 hell...