I had forgotten that you have WAAS, we don’t. Even so, a WAAS enabled GPS still is not as reliably accurate as an ILS and can’t be used for approaches with no decision altitude. It is better than a non precision approach but not as good as a CatIII ILS (one you can auto land off).
For non WAAS GPS units, altitude information comes from pressure altitude just like the aircraft altimeter does. This is more reliably accurate than pure GPS altitude and also means fewer satellites are required for a position solution so you are less likely to have a position warning during an approach.
One thing I noticed in the pictures, but haven’t heard mentioned yet, is that the runway has a displaced threshold. Pictures of the tail pieces show white arrows painted on the concrete (asphalt?). Here’s the link rocking chair provided earlier:
Scroll down to the last picture. The arrows lead to a thick white line; that’s where the runway begins. It’s not a case of the pilot coming down just a little bit short and hitting the sea wall. At the absolute minimum he should have been aiming his touchdown beyond that line.
A couple questions for those in the know:
I’ve seen displaced thresholds when there are power lines or other obstructions that might be an issue on approach. Do they use them beyond a sea wall as well, to discourage the pilot from trying to cut it too close?
When I was looking for a picture, I found this from Google maps. The threshold is not displaced, or at least, not as much. Does anyone know when that change was made, and why?
The pavement actually starts at the seawall, with a blast pad (a no-go area), as indicated by yellow chevrons, with the displaced section (can use for takeoffs and taxiing but not landings), as indicated by white arrows, after that. A blast pad typically is there because the pavement is broken or weak, while a displaced threshold reflects an obstruction of some kind in the approach. In this case, it may be to provide a little margin for a below-glideslope landing without hitting the seawall, while it might have been there if there were flat, open ground in front of the runway. There does seem to be evidence that the threshold was displaced only recently, as the former touchdown zone stripes seem to have been painted over in black.
In fact, he should have been planning to land in the designated touchdown zone, between the parallel-striped lines.
At some point the pilot in this accident put himself (or was placed) in a position he could not recover from. Where that point of no return was will be found in the investigation.
As Richard said, most aircraft will produce a nose up pitch when power is applied. I am going to expand on that a bit though as it is more pronounced on some aircraft designs. When specifically talking about airliners this pitch up is most notable in aircraft with wing mounted engines. Airliners with tail mounted engines generally do not have as much if any pitch up when power is rapidly applied. (Think DC9/MD80s/B717s and similar aircraft here.)
Now, an experienced pilot should be quite ready for that and simply pushes forward on the yoke to counteract that pitch up. It may not seem intuitive but on a go-around a pilot will usually push forward on the controls as he/she is starting to climb out.
That should be second nature to the point it is subconscious by the time you are in the left seat of a 777 but with 43 hours in the aircraft it may not have been second nature yet with this pilot.
Richard is right that the 777 is fly by wire, which along with the 787 is unique among Boings. All the other Boing aircraft fly via pully and cable. I don’t know if Boing’s fly-by-wire system automatically accounts for pitching motion when power is applied.
Another issue here is the time it takes a high bypass turbo fan to spool up. It usually takes a few seconds before any usable trust is being produced. When you are a second and a half from impact there probably just isn’t time to execute a go around.
Would it have been better to just let it go at that point? That is hard to say because if they hadn’t added power and attempted the go-around they might have hit the water then gone nose first into the seawall. Had that happened there would have been far more fatalities.
When an approach is designed they have to account for any obstacles that exist or “might” exist on final. By might exist I mean things like highways, railroads and shipping lanes that might have traffic on them. They have to account for any truck that might be on the highway, any train that might be on the tracks and any ship that might be in the water on approach. Both highways and railroad tracks have standard numbers that the approach builder uses. (Or did back when I used to teach a class on this so my info is only current as of 1999.) The shipping lane part of the equation took more research as they had to account for the tallest ship that might normally be transitioning the water below the approach.
The displaced threshold here may have been moved do to a change in the type of watercraft that are typically in the waters around the airport.
While this is speculation on my part, it might also have been adjusted for the new A380 aircraft which required a redesign of many airports before it could land or deplane at them. Since it is on a whole new level when it comes to aircraft size I can envision a possible change for this reason though it is pure speculation on my part.
The news is reporting that 7 seconds out someone in the cockpit said they were too slow with a stall indication and again someone saying they should go around. Sounds like they knew about it with no indication of mechanical. Don’t know who said what but this looks like pilot error.
I just want to thank all the pilots who’ve been adding to this thread. I know absolutely nothing about this area, so watching you guys discuss and explain the possibilities is fascinating.
Yes, BBC is now using the term “may have been.” I’m certain they were reporting it definitively before. But they’re still saying the girl’s injuries were consistent with someone who was run over.
I guess the question is then was she run over before or after death?
Given the chaos associated with something like this I can conceive of an unintentional run-over, particularly if a person wasn’t moving or was under some sort of debris.
The radio this morning said that the coroner will determine this. But one of the casualties died without being run over, so it isn’t a sure thing. I’ve heard of no other people who were ejected, let alone ejected and survived. Given the way the tail came off, it is rather amazing that only two were ejected.
So the PIC was in training on the 777. Only 44 hours actually flying a 777. (I wonder if that includes the flight time of this flight) First time landing a 777 at San Fransisco.
If the situation was as I suspect then the PiC was actually the pilot in the right seat acting as the first officer.
Educated speculation: It sounds as though the pilot in the left hand seat was a captain under training. He has a lot of experience in the airline and has commands on other passenger jets. Because of his seniority within the company he can transfer directly to another type such as the B777 as a captain without having to spend any time as a first officer. This is not uncommon at all in the airline world. He would have undergone simulator training that would cover off all of the emergency handling of the aircraft, engine failures, instrument approaches with failures, flapless landings, emergency descents etc. Once that training is complete he would then fly the line on regular passenger flights as a captain under the supervision of a training captain until he’d completed the required “line training”. He would then fly a check flight or series of flights with a check captain.
So it seems that he has just started the line training phase of this process. He sits in the left seat and acts as though he is captain while the training captain sits in the right seat and acts as the first officer. The training captain is ultimately in command though.
This is a simple enough process in reality but it can get really confusing when the roles are filtered through the media. The pilot sitting in the left seat has 44 hours on the aircraft and is acting as the captain but is not legally the pilot in command because he is not qualified yet. The pilot in the right seat is training the pilot in the left seat but also carrying out the normal first officer duties. Although sitting in the right seat he is legally in command of the flight.
You then compound the issue with who was actually flying the aircraft that sector. It sounds like the flying pilot was the pilot in the left seat and the training captain was the non-flying pilot, but with all of the different terminology being filtered through the layman’s media, it is impossible to get a clear picture. The language barrier probably doesn’t help either.
So when the media refer to the “pilot” and the “copilot” you have no idea who they are actually talking about and what role they played in the approach.
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That raises an interesting question; how does a pilot log the time for a flight that crashes? What if the Hobbs meter doesn’t survive the crash?
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:dubious: Hobbs meter? Airliners have weight on wheels switches that will record flight time but for log book time (off blocks to on blocks, or chock to chock time) we normally just use a watch or the brakes off and on times might be recorded automatically. They will have recorded their off blocks time on departure one way or another and the time they stopped flying is now a matter of public record.