Poorly Flown Approaches

[highspeed]

The decision to hand fly with no FD at 2 am in a black hole is sort of questionable. Wouldn't the 787 give a GPWS Don't Sink aural alert in that case? Wouldn't the altitude alert be going off as well? The best part is they didn't tell anyone. Oops.

The report isn't clear - I'm guessing there were FDs but the FO started the turn with the FDs showing to continue straight ahead.

Not sure if they had the single cue FD or the cross pointer type.

When I flew Boeing the procedures were to turn off the FDs if you were not going to follow them - not sure if this is still the case.

I'm sure they got a GPWS warning - that's probably when the Captain took over.

FDs or not - this should never have happened.

I lost all FD indications right at lift off recently - I just set the appropriate pitch and kept wings level. They came back after 5-6 seconds. A non event.

I really can't recall anything in Boeing literature referring to FD's off if not being used.

I do what the effo did here on a regular basis. While PM is looking for direct to waypoint, I'll commence a turn in the direction of the waypoint. The vertical FD will show me off the intended path but the pitch FD will always command for altitude (in VNAV/LVL CHG). That one i will follow in the turn. I wonder why he did not do the same.

A highly restrictive and punitive environment like QR will dissuade even the best to not turn off any guidance for fear of getting canned. So I'm quite certain the FD's were on. But weirder things have happened.

No one has mentioned fatigue yet. Rosters in this part of the world are brutal to say the least. That has to be a factor at 2am LT.

[EPR]

When flying RNAV approaches, your vertical guidance isn't a glideslope, it's a glidepath.

Garmin calls it "glideslope", Honeywell calls it "glidepath". Looking at TC and FAA documents, it's not very clearly defined what the difference is, and both terms are used interchangably quite a bit.

Re-reading the Garmin PTM from FS, and it confirms I'm correct in stating "RNAV approach vertical guidance is called a glidepath, not a glideslope". Also the presentation is different as a glideslope shows on the display as a green diamond and a glidepath shows on the display as a magenta diamond. I don't think it's wise to use them interchangeably.

[CpnCrunch]

Re-reading the Garmin PTM from FS, and it confirms I'm correct in stating "RNAV approach vertical guidance is called a glidepath, not a glideslope". Also the presentation is different as a glideslope shows on the display as a green diamond and a glidepath shows on the display as a magenta diamond. I don't think it's wise to use them interchangeably.

The G1000 has two different markers for glideslope and glidepath. The GTN 650 / GNS 430/530 use an external CDI, and the manual refers to it as a "glideslope" for LPV approaches, and "glidepath" for LNAV+V. It looks like the correct term for LNAV+V is "Advisory Vertical Guidance" from the 650 manual, although they use "advisory glideslope" on their website. For the CDI I don't think it matters which term you use, but I can see it would cause confusion with the G1000 because they are two completely different things.

[EPR]

Oh..ok..thanks for that clarification..I only know the G1000, NXI and Honeywell.

[Eric Janson]

I really can't recall anything in Boeing literature referring to FD's off if not being used.

It's been a few years since I flew Boeing and maybe things have changed.

I was trained to turn off the FD's if you were not going to follow them for whatever reason.

I was also trained "Manual flight = manual thrust (for approach)" on both the 737 and 757. Autothrust was only used for autoland approaches.