They absolutely did have it available, the Jepp plate - as Eric pointed out - very much does have published distances and altitudes every mile. As you observed it wasn't much use because they weren't flying the VDA as charted (3.5 degrees vs 3.08 degrees). So yeah, damning.Cliff Jumper wrote: ↑Mon Nov 25, 2019 7:56 am I don't feel like the fact that they didn't have this available was 'damning' to the crew. Or, are you suggesting that they should have pulled out the calculators and created a Alt/Dis crosscheck chart from scratch, using 3.5 degrees?
I get they may have had their reasons to select a higher than charted angle, maybe they thought they had initiated descent late and didn't want to be high - whatever. But if you're going to do that, ie "intercept from above" you better have some other way of knowing if you're high/low/on profile, or trending towards/away from it. Only way to do that on this particular approach is distance versus altitude.
The statement at the bottom of the image kind of blows my mind.
And while I'm pretty sure you were being sarcastic about calculators and creating a chart, perhaps someone can explain how using your own mental math to crosscheck your aircraft position is such a bad idea? On EVERY approach, let alone a NP?
Agreed that ultimately, it was busting MDA without proper visual reference that sealed the deal.