Plane crash at SFO (working, streaming, system)

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by mayorhaggar

Not sure why the Times is making a deal out of this. Whenever you fly into SFO you come in pretty low over the water, and it seems like right at the last second before you touch the water the airstrip comes out of nowhere and you land.

That's what I thought. The passenger's description, posted farther up, describes a routine approach. I think the Times interviewed the wrong guy, or the interviewer had no familiarity with SF airport.

[BayAreaHillbilly]

I scanned the thread and here are some things to note.

The captain actually has nearly 20 years of commercial experience, starting out back in the "old days" before everything was computerized. He had previously landed some of those bucking old beasts at SFO, likely in far worse conditions. That said, he was new to the 777. But again, the 777 is not one of those bucking old beasts.

It now appears there was some sort of inexplicable issue with the approach control and altitude. They were too high when they hit Coyote Pt. Then, they increased their angle of descent, however, inexplicably, the throttle was essentially taken to zero (not even taxi mode from what I understand), as low as you can go without shut down. That is weird. On some av forums there was speculation about a known issue with certain 777s altimeters and possible interactions with the throttle. Danged computerized planes. Oh, and both the glide path system and ILS are down at SFO right now. Personally, I've been known to cancel a trip if I found that the ILS was down at my destination, call me paranoid. I digress. In any case, with no ILS, this was a 100% visual / altimeter / attitude indicator approach with no ILS, it was done the way someone lands a 6 seater on a rural strip. So, if the altimeter ain't working, you might get in trouble fast.

I will withhold judgement and await the NTSB report. Should be interesting and I am guessing there will be plenty of blame to go around here.

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Originally Posted by Snort

Incomprehensible. There are too many telltales of low airspeed to go unnoticed.
Experienced or not for that particular model, a pilot knows (damned well should know!) what the minimum airspeed to maintain is for any plane he or she flies.

The problems controlling altitude and throttle are the keys to this, IMHO. If I were heading the investigation these two things would be my main areas of focus. I would not go into it with any preconceived notions I would simply attempt to determine why there was such difficulty controlling altitude and speed (too high at Coyote Point, too low and too slow at the ILS posts).

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Originally Posted by dalparadise

Unfortunately, yes, partly.

The extenuating circumstance seems to be his inexperience with the aircraft. I hadn't considered a pilot with so little time in that type being at the controls. Perhaps he figured his airspeed for a 747, the type in which he had so much experience? Even so, that would, indeed, be "doing something stupid."

The evidence did show an attempted go-around, as i suggested, which led me to conclude that something had happened at the last moment. The "accident" unfortunately seems to be the first officer waiting too long to counter the captain (perhaps for cultural reasons) and ask for the go-around.

Doesn't the 47 have a higher stall speed than the 77? I thought the 77 incorporated STOL aspects that were not available when the 47 was being designed?

[dalparadise]

Originally Posted by BayAreaHillbilly

Doesn't the 47 have a higher stall speed than the 77? I thought the 77 incorporated STOL aspects that were not available when the 47 was being designed?

I don't know either stall speed. Seems like this guy didn't either. I can't imagine a scenario where his career isn't over, given what we now know.

[Scott456]

$150K is not a bad deal if I could walk away from the crash unharmed.

[andyadhi01]

The saddest part of the whole crash:

S.F. plane crash: Police probe whether truck hit girl - SFGate

Survive the crash and then get hit by a truck.

[DMenscha]

For all you non-pilots out there.

To go up, you increase the thrust. To come down, you decrease the thrust. It's slightly more complicated than that, but essentially that's how it works. If the aircraft is too high on approach, the throttles are retarded to descend back to the glideslope. Too low, power is added to climb back up. You would have noticed when the plane begins it's descent from altitude, how quiet the engines get. They've been reduced to practically idle and the crew lowers the attitude of the plane to maintain speed. As the plane nears it's final approach and flaps and landing gear get deployed, the power comes back up, and the plane begins it's landing attitude configuration.

Pilots refer to a flight condition called "getting behind the power curve" in which the attitude and power settings are such that without either decreasing the angle of attack (attitude) and/or increasing power, the aircraft may enter an aerodynamic stall (The wings don't have enough lift to sustain flight). Large aircraft have what is called a "Stick Shaker" in which the control yoke actually vibrates to warn the pilot he is about to enter a stall.

Jet engines take a moment or two to "spool up" so the crew needs to be "ahead" of the aircraft and make adjustments to the throttles in anticipation of where they want to position the plane on it's approach.

I've had the opportunity many years ago to fly 3 approaches in a 727 simulator along with my fellow members of the Experimental Aircraft Association. I landed HARD on the airport twice (enough to kill myself and all my passengers) and pull a similar too low and too slow which resulted in a nice pancake into the edge of the berm in front of the runway.

Finally, the airport has GPS based published approaches, which, in the case of the ILS not being functional are fully capable and probably even more accurate than the ILS.

[BayAreaHillbilly]

The NTSB report should be interesting assuming no stone is left unturned. Although some crashes are due to a single cause, multiple causes are far more frequent. Quite a few things had to go wrong here. Maybe the things all had to do with the crew, maybe not. Again, airspeed and altitude are the key variables of interest. These are the areas of focus.

[andyadhi01]

Does anyone know why the non functional instrument landing system is not considered part of the problem?