Whole lotta speculating goin on here. Just curious - how many of you posters here are pilots? And, what type of aircraft do you fly?
I spent 17 years as a Navy Pilot flying the P-3 and three years flight instructing in Pensacola in the T-34c. My ground job for 12 years included being the Naval Aviation Safety Officer at different squadron and also was in charge of ground safety for maintenance. Training included all the Navy safety schools including the five week school at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterrey, CA. After the Navy, I flew for Hawaii Air Ambulance in the C-414 for one year and Aloha Airlines for eight years in the 737-700,800 NG ETOPS operations to the west coast. While at Aloha, I was Chairman of ALPA's Central Air Safety and Training Committee council 80 at Aloha Airlines. I attended all the ALPA safety schools including the five day basic accident investigation school. After Aloha Airlines shut down, I spent about one year flying the 737-800 in Japan for Skymark Airlines. A lot of my Aloha Airline friends took jobs in China, Korea, India, Africa and South America. When I worked in Japan, the Captains I flew with were Expats from all over the world. The First Officers were all from Japan.
I concur that we need to respect what happened here. The pilots flying this aircraft are human too and will have difficulty moving forward with the rest of their life. In one case I know about, the captain committed suicide after he ran a DC-10 off the end of the runway in a heavy rain storm in the south pacific. In this accident there were two deaths and a lot of injured that will suffer as well as the families of the injured and the families of the pilots.
A lot of the things mentioned in this post are contributing factors that the NTSB will state in their report. The ILS glide slope is used as a back up and not needed for a visual approach. Maybe they will recommend things like that get repaired faster. Maybe they will say heavy aircraft are not authorized to shoot an approach without it unless there is no other available runway. The runway has markings for the touchdown zone that the pilots could easily see and the ILS or PAPI was not needed. But, if it had been available and the pilots used it, the aircraft would not have been low on final. A video on TV that I just saw about 6 p.m. EST showed that the plane was low on final for the last segment of the approach. Possibly they were shooting a non precision approach where the aircraft descends to minimum descent altitude like 500 feet after passing the final approach fix (about six miles from touchdown). I am not familiar with approaches to this runway, but if there is a non precision that allows this, being at low altitude for the last few miles is authorized. The pilot is supposed to hold that altitude until he gets close to the runway. However, the news also reported that the aircraft was slow and that engines were at idle. However, just prior to touch down, the pilots were adding power prior to impact, but it happened too late.
There were four pilots on-board, so they should have been rested, but possibly lack of sleep and other human factors might be contributing factors to this mishap. The Navy and the FAA have a program to identify safety concerns. Pilots are supposed to make a report anytime they have an incident that could have caused a mishap or report any hazard they see during the operation of their aircraft. If the pilot makes a mistake and reports it to the FAA through his company, the FAA will not prosecute that pilot for making a mistake. The written reports go to the chief pilot and then the FAA. The purpose of the report is to learn from them and establish new procedures so that the bad situation doesn't happen again. As a part of the safety team, I read all the reports that were submitted in the Navy and at Aloha Airlines. Unsafe things happen way more often than most people realize. Things like near mid air collisions, ground collisions, almost landing at the wrong airport, falling asleep in the cockpit, tail strikes, hard landings, forgetting checklist, etc....
Because of the FAA and FARs, the major carriers in the United States are the safest airlines in the world. Additionally, pilots have to work their way up to get hired at a major. Only the best pilots with the best training work for Delta, United, American, or any of the other big airlines in the USA. I only state this so that the next time someone is thinking about saving $100 on a foreign carrier instead of flying a major carrier, they should know what they are buying.
This mishap was close to being a safety report. It is unfortunate for the pilots, crew, passengers, families and all involved. We can only hope that things change so it doesn't happen again.
