Check lists are a good thing, maybe they should try using them.
Reminds me of what Laurence Olivier said to Dustin Hoffmann: “Try acting, dear boy.”
Check lists don’t cover routine autopilot mode changes. In the process of flying an approach and landing the autopilot and auto-throttle modes might change several times, all depending on how the pilot wants to manage the approach. The safety net for autopilot modes is announcing what modes you are engaging, checking that what you think you’ve selected is what you’ve actually got, and the other pilot checking what you have done.
I can understand a mistake like this. Pilots make all kinds of small mistakes that redundant systems allow for. However, you would SEE the approach was all wrong as well as the VASI (visual approach slope indicator) lights desplaying the same information.
For anyone who cares, the Airlines Pilots Association is pissed off by the early release of information. Can’t blame them but we’re all curious about stuff like this.
the pilot says he was blinded by a light. Should be on the voice recorder if that happened.
Yeah, it’s not so much picking up that the approach is wrong, it’s not realising that part of the aeroplane isn’t doing what you think it is doing.
I saw that, and this is from the same news article:
Why would the flight attendants be told to NOT evacuate once the plane came to a stop?
tv news i saw said the pilots didn’t think the situation was bad enough for evacuation. no details more.
OK, I can see and understand that, but if the flight deck crew are so brain dead that they both were under the impression that the autothrottle was engaged when it was only turned on, but not engaged perhaps there should be a procedure AND an item on the checklist. I would be a bit more understanding if it was a regular crew, but when you have an instructor/check pilot who does not verify that the auto throttle is engaged when the other guy says it is, well that approaches felony stupid. Trainees make mistakes. If you don’t have that engraved on your brain AND inscribed on the inside of your glasses, you should not be an instructor/check pilot. Never forget the motto of quality control “Trust everybody, but always cut the cards”
So they are Manfred Mann fans?
Now perhaps they told the NTSB all of this the day of the accident and it is coming out in dribs and drabs, but the way the information is being released reminds me of John Lovitz playing the pathological liar on SNL
NTSB: Why were you so slow on approach?
Pilots: We had the auto throttle engaged, it must have malfunctioned
NTSB: Ah no you didn’t the FDR says it was on, but not engaged
Pilots: Oh, yeah we were blinded by a bright light, yeah, that’s it, that’s the ticket.
NTSB: :rolleyes:
Wait, wait they tore the tail off of the aircraft, ripped the landing gear clean off, both engines were no longer attached to the wings and they didn’t think it was serious enough to evacuate the bird? 
WTF? over
Did these guys take the short bus to flight school?
Yeah they should have just sat there, because maybe a Tsunami would have come along and then they could evacuate because it was an emergency.
These pilots should stop talking, they are looking dumber by the minute.
:::Rick adds Asiana to the short list of airlines he will not fly on:::
“'Tis but a scratch!” – The Black Knight, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Jesus frikin Christ I thought you were joking. The pilots are sitting inside a smoldering pile of former airplane parts and they wanted to wait? Wait for what? A revised checklist? Taxi instructions for a crane? Diplomatic immunity?
3 flight attendants were ejected from the back of the plane and 2 of them were pinned down inside by inflated slides. I’m sorry for saying this with the casualties and all but this truly sounds like a Monty Python episode with people flying everywhere. The only thing it lacks is cows and catapults.
I don’t think it’s silly to question the need to evacuate the plane in a hurry. I think what they were waiting for was a good reason to get out of the plane. As it happened, there was a reason, once the plane caught fire. But if it hadn’t, what’s the rush? There might have been people with injuries that would be aggravated by being moved. There could have been leaking fuel, hydraulic fluid, or sharp pieces of debris near one of the doors. Maybe they just wanted to avoid anybody being trampled in a panic.
I think it’s a good idea to assess the situation and find out if the passengers are in more danger inside the plane or out.
(I’m thinking of movies like Die Hard 2. At the very end, when Holly’s plane lands, it just stops and they pop the emergency slides and everyone is standing around in the snow. Why?)
There is a logic behind waiting to order an evacuation in general but in this instance it is but another failure in the pilot’s judgement.
The logic behind not evacuating an airliner in general is that it is dangerous. Putting passengers outside the airplane runs all sorts of risks. There is the danger of people getting hurt on the slides or trampled in the process. There is the danger of them getting run over by responding emergency vehicles. If you had a fire on one side of the aircraft and not the other you would also want to make sure your evacuation orders were specific to get people out on the side without fire.
That said, after what happened with that airplane a pilot should know that the aircraft could catch on fire at any second even if they were unaware that it already was on fire. None of the reasons not to evacuate could possibly be more dangerous than leaving the passengers on the plane and is just another failure in judgement by this flight crew.
If I had my druthers, I’d druther be outside a plane than inside it, all things considered. With leaking fuel, fumes, the possibility of being suffocated, trampled, exploded, fire imminent and fire trucks about to dowse the whole thing with foam, I don’t think I’d be waiting long to escape. The only precaution I might take is to look out a window for external fire or other hazards first. If I’m close to an emergency exit, that sucker is going to be opened. Just try and stop me.
I’ve seen too many crash investigations that concluded that the passengers survived the crash only to be fatally burned because they couldn’t get out in time. I’ll take my chances on the ground.
You might find this informative. I don’t know how accurate the data from FlightAware is, but the difference in descent profiles between Asiana 214 and a 777 that landed without incident 10 minutes earlier is striking.
Putting the auto-throttles on a checklist probably is not an effective way to handle the issue here as how they are used is technique and not procedure.
Now, monitoring your airspeed on final regardless if you are working the throttles yourself or you have auto-throttles controlling the airspeed is ingrained in pilots from the day they start flying. The NTSB will sort it all out, but my educated guess is they will find that the pilot(s) got task saturated and dropped the airspeed out of their instrument crosscheck.
I have seen this scenario or put myself into this situation hundreds of times. Allow me to clarify that a little. In my military days I was both an undergraduate pilot training instructor and a pilot instructor training IP. Early in a pilot’s training they ARE going to make these mistakes. As an instructor you have to let them do that so they earn but you never ever allow them to put you in a position where you cannot fix the situation. When training instructors we would purposely drop out part of the instrument crosscheck so the instructors in training could learn how to deal with it. Again, you never went so far that you couldn’t recover from it.
How much room you give a student to make mistakes varies though and how much you allow a student to screw up changes a LOT when you have passengers on board. The simulator is a great place to train pilots where the actual limits are and you can allow them to crash the thing and learn from that. The minute you have passengers on board though, how much you allow a new pilot to deviate from a stabilized approach should be very very little. The pilot should know what he/she is doing from all the training before they are allowed to fly with passengers. They have had certifications and check-rides prior to this.
Another thing that will probably come up is a hesitation to execute a go around. At some point prior to the call being made the pilots could have executed a perfectly safe go around. The question will be why they didn’t do this before the aircraft was in an unrecoverable position.
To be fair, immediately upon stop of motion the people in the cockpit don’t necessarily know all that. They’re probably saying “Holy &^%$# we’re still here. OK, checklist for after crash landing, please…”
In this particular instance I would be right behind you.
That said, most situations that might call for an evacuation are not quite as cut and dry and really will put you in more danger out of the aircraft.
First, if there is smoke in the cabin at all GET OUT! But, lets say there was an engine fire in flight but it was extinguished and there is no immediate danger to the cabin area. Lets even say this is at night. Getting hit by a responding fire truck is a very real possibility and for that matter if you are running away and run across an active runway getting hit by a landing plane is also possible.
I had a high speed abort once above V1 and above Vr which the other pilots will tell you you should never ever do. In this case the aircraft was unflyable and we simply had no choice. That creates a situation where the brakes get extremely hot and can catch fire or explode but that usually takes fifteen minutes before the heat builds up. By that time the firefighters had arrived and where ready for that. We can also monitor the temps from the cockpit so we can still evacuate the aircraft if the brakes approach a temp that a fire may break out and we can do it well before that happens. In a case like that, it is far more dangerous having passengers outside the aircraft than within the cabin.
You know how when the plane lands but is still taxiing, and they announce over the PA to keep your seatbelts buckled, but everyone starts unfastening them anyway? Same here, I’m out of the plane pronto.