Halifax crash report coming Thursday

[Rockie]

I was just curious why you would scoff at calling it something. After all it involves much more than just not seeing stuff on the ground and "black hole approach" seems like a good name for it.

No need to get offended, I wasn't calling into question your instructional ability.

[CpnCrunch]

With regard to the phenomenon of not being able to see things in the dark I called it what it was....not being able to see the ground because it was to dark.

That worked for my students and no one ever questioned my description of the phenomenon.

Except that's not what the black hole effect is. It's an optical illusion where you think you're higher on the approach than you actually are. It might have been useful to your students to explain that.

"The most extensive study was conducted by Boeing scientists Conrad Kraft and Charles Elworth after a series of airline black hole accidents in the 1960’s. Using a flight simulator, experienced Boeing instructor pilots (with more than 10,000 hours each) conducted entirely visual approaches to runways in black hole conditions. The result was that without the aid of altimeter or glide slope information, most pilots flew excessively low approaches and crashed into terrain short of the runway."

[Cat Driver]

It might have been useful to your students to explain that.

Once again crunch you are assuming what I did and did not teach.

I have no idea why you are being so anal about this , but to put your worries to bed I explained in great detail the illusion problem and the necessity of using the proper aids to accurately know your position in relation to the ground.

Now I am going to ignore any further negative comments you make towards me because I truly don't care what you think.

You take care now.

[confusedalot]

aw man.

get the unions to lobby TC, go through the carac process, get rid of the ban (what you will get is the ICAO flavour about not going below 1000 AAE or past the FAF), and everyone is happy.

that will leave zero room to deflect blame elsewhere.............

[goldeneagle]

aw man.

get the unions to lobby TC, go through the carac process, get rid of the ban (what you will get is the ICAO flavour about not going below 1000 AAE or past the FAF), and everyone is happy.

that will leave zero room to deflect blame elsewhere.............

I think that's exactly where Rockie is coming from, it's a union driven push to throw up as much smoke screen as possible and deflect responsibility from where it belongs off to regulations. After all, this airplane was driven by two competent individuals who followed SOP's and regulations to a tee apparently, it's not their fault the airplane hit the ground far short of the runway, it must be a flaw in the regulations etc etc etc. You can hide just about anything behind the 'safety card' and get away with it these days

[Rockie]

While a lot of airline safety today is thanks to unions goldeneagle, it isn't a union driving this. Nice try though.

[pelmet]

While a lot of airline safety today is thanks to unions goldeneagle, it isn't a union driving this. Nice try though.

I believe Rockie is correct. It is a business decision by management to level the economic playing field with their competition that now has a competitive advantage because of the different safety record on the issue.

The quest for rule changes has absolutely nothing to do with interest in safety. Otherwise the case to make regulatory changes and internal procedures would have started long ago before there was an accident.

I wonder where thare are good examples of measurable differences on what airline gets to do an approach versus who doesn't under this new proposal? Just a guess using YTZ as an example. Maybe AC can scoop up some business pax due to their Low Vis Approach advantage in YYZ compared to increased cancellations and diversions from the competition(and their excellent safety record) while at the same time possibly eliminating a rerciprocal disadvantage at a CAT I airport like YOW. Advantageous for AC if it were to be true. And a situation that has no doubt hurt AC for years after their tryng to eliminate YTZ.

[pdw]

Now....back to the Air Canada " Hard landing " conversation.

I was counting on getting some focus on exploring whether the number of turn oscillations involved (given the report's "54kts" showing up at surface were likely not the "error" first thought ... which also means not forseen by the crew/ no warning) would have born an influence on this accident sequence in any way. What IMO may be misleading here is to say "straight" ... so I will challenge that (ie it couldn't have been anything but a meandering approach).

I'd like to get the pilot's perspectives (separately) someday down the road, to get their personal accounts of what went down. They are going to be the one's that can relate it the best for sure, and why not ?

This past November 18th was the 40th anniversary of my own incident, which was the end result of narrowly avoiding the sequence setting-up to an accident that would likely have been fatal for the three of us on board. Funny, that each still have varying accounts of the progression into difficulty etc (the personal accounts are framed so differently), but of course that doesn't bother me anymore because I've come to understand how unimportant it is what uninformed critics have to add.

[Rockie]

I was counting on getting some focus on exploring whether the number of turn oscillations involved (given the report's "54kts" showing up at surface were likely not the "error" first thought ... and thus also unexpected for these pilots) would have born an influence on this accident sequence in any way. What IMO may be misleading here is to say "straight" ... so I will challenge that (ie it couldn't have been anything but a meandering approach).

The Airbus actively tracks the localizer on this type of approach like it does on a full up ILS. The problem was that there was no vertical guidance available which is why they were low. Lateral tracking due to wind changes would not have affected the vertical flight path and was not an issue here.

[confusedalot]

Not trying to be a stick in the mud, there was some form of vertical guidance via the FPA. Did not do as expected, maybe not even as advertised.

Never did Airbus, did end up in an Embraer after mostly boeing time, FPA and the overall NPA procedures were/are the same as I can surmise. You know, the .5 .3. etc thing. Don't know if the embraer was subject to the same wind change external effects though. Did however have GPS.

[AuxBatOn]

There was no vertical guidance because the systems were not tracking on anything. You need a guidance system to call it vertical guidance.

[Rockie]

Not trying to be a stick in the mud, there was some form of vertical guidance via the FPA. Did not do as expected, maybe not even as advertised.

Never did Airbus, did end up in an Embraer after mostly boeing time, FPA and the overall NPA procedures were/are the same as I can surmise. You know, the .5 .3. etc thing. Don't know if the embraer was subject to the same wind change external effects though. Did however have GPS.

Vertical guidance in this context means a radio based or calculated geometric path through space that the aircraft can detect their dispacement from and correct to. An FPA is just a selected flight path angle that is not referenced to anything and doesn't display guidance to 50 over the threshold like true vertical guidance does.

The Embraer, in fact any aircraft that uses FPA or V/S as their descent method is subject to the same wind effects or any other external disruption to the selected flight path angle. Once the disruption is over the aircraft simply resumes the selected FPA but displaced in space from the original path. That's why the procedure in both aircraft is to be fully configured and at VAPP before starting down. Flap selections cause the aircraft to balloon up, and decelerating can disrupt the FPA as well.

The reason you start down on the selected FPA at .3 nm from the descent point is to be established in the descent at the FAF giving you a known starting point. As the descent on the LOC 05 in YHZ is initiated at a DME fix, having a GPS wouldn't have increased accuracy at all because the procedure is the same in both, and in this case the DME is effectively as accurate as the GPS.

[confusedalot]

I give up. looks like being 58 is the same as being 5 years old. I got it, cannot understand nuthin......alzheimers I guess.

Good luck guys, yer pushing an agenda, as i said before, round up your resources and get the rules changed.

As other posters have indicated, how come this is not a recurring situation?

I don't know the meaning of vertical guidance, yeah, right.

[crazyaviator]

There was good horizontal guidance the AP was following a vertical profile so far so good. The problem came when INSUFFICIENT approach and runway clues failed to manifest They continued with a continuation bias. This was likely reinforced by too many successful full ILS approaches. This leads to over reliance on automatics!

[Cat Driver]

Well obviously they did not know where they were and the airplane flew them into the ground before the runway.

[pdw]

The 05 TDZE is apparently somewhat higher than "before the runway". The last kilometer first ducks out of a very strong component, but then the sustained component would even be reduced/reducing down there behind the obstruction wouldn't it, .. possibly a progressed airspeed bleed aready at the point of pull up, late as it was ? Be nice to have some more data on this rather than the steep graph that looks like a 45

[GyvAir]

The 05 TDZE is apparently somewhat higher than "before the runway". The last kilometer first ducks out of a very strong component, but then the sustained component would even be reduced/reducing down there behind the obstruction wouldn't it, .. possibly a progressed airspeed bleed aready at the point of pull up, late as it was ? Be nice to have some more data on this rather than the steep graph that looks like a 45

You've still got it, pdw!

[pdw]

I don't know about "got" GyvAir. Yes, could've been above "54kts" up at the start of that km and then gets into where component drops even below the lower/sustained "19kt" number lee of the airport area at low-enough level "before the runway". No doubt real bleed potential along there and at the tip of a trough into a warm system south of HZ.

I noticed in searching, that surrounding area airports/wx-stations show mostly lower component 10-20kts, hence likely not suspecting such strength from the HZ station, perhaps why passed-off as error in the 0100 METAR (see "error"/ TSB report) ?

[rookiepilot]

I don't know about "got" GyvAir. Yes, could've been above "54kts" up at the start of that km and then gets into where component drops even below the lower/sustained "19kt" number lee of the airport area at low-enough level "before the runway". No doubt real bleed potential along there and at the tip of a trough into a warm system south of HZ.

I noticed in searching, that surrounding area airports/wx-stations show mostly lower component 10-20kts, hence likely not suspecting such strength from the HZ station, perhaps why passed-off as error in the 0100 METAR (see "error"/ TSB report) ?

[confusedalot]

I buy it. Tends to happen from time to time.

[AuxBatOn]

pdw,

In your mind, is every accident caused by winds?

[confusedalot]

pdw,

In your mind, is every accident caused by winds?

Don't know about you, but I have at times experienced reducing winds coupled with downdrafts on short final, with teh resulting effects on speed and flight path, but maybe i missed something in 39 years of flying.

The crew had their hands full, could have been a factor.

[pdw]

pdw,

In your mind, is every accident caused by winds?

No, except that resulting components are always part of flying. In my mind it's all contributing factors that are involved, and makes sense that in accident investigations they always include their representation. Often meaningless as might seem here, sometimes only as one smaller factor. These pages/discusions so far have been an education for interpreting some of the pertinent ones that might be useful in advancing aviation safety.

The Dec11 tragedy north of Superior (was a local kid) in the same year is one to explore for partly "caused by winds", a very strong SSE-flow across/onto the 6degC water from the north / troughing across the YPL area (similarly located in a winter system about where AC624 was situated in its system at the time) to a LO at the Sault. There it was possible to do an accurate surface analysis over the water and compare with the HZ scenario which had the better component values over land.

There are always more wx related ones that I'd work on .. but as far as "every accident" ? No way, ... 100% causal could be less than 1%

[AuxBatOn]

Many things can be a contributing factors. You could probably say that what the AC ate than night had an effect. But it comes down to two things:

1- conciseness
2-relevancy

If you bury the important parts of a report into things that while may have had a slight effect on outcome, but are a couple of degrees removed from the outcome (relevancy), it will make for a report that is is too verbose (conciseness), and you will lose things that truly need to be addressed in the noise.

IMO, while winds may have had an effect, they are certainly not the cause nor a significant contributing factor to the accident.

[pdw]

IMO, while winds may have had an effect, they are certainly not the cause nor a significant contributing factor to the accident.

They dictate the component, and that's all there's to work with in these speed calculations .. is the +/- component along that stretch. My main interest was the METAR of 19@54kts true or false. That side/speed of the trough following from west showed as the extra gust-strength just after the landing/accident. This statement is OK with me, as long as that fact didn't go unnoticed altogether.