NTSB Press Release Asiana 214

[gliderboy]

Makes me sick when I think of the kind of dues that my pilot buddies and I (and so many others on this site) have paid to get even the modest jobs we now enjoy: gliders, tow planes, instructing, jump planes, mapping, 135 cargo, Alaska....
These are, of course, dues willingly paid because we now have a deep well of experience to draw on when needed — experience sadly lacking in so many foreign pilots.

And yeah, I have some friends who tried to instruct at majors in Asia and they all say the same thing: "Don't fly them."

 

[Polar742]

Show me just one airline flying a swept wing jet that will hire anyone with a wet commercial certificate. Hell, even look back 5-10-15 years and find one. When you do, then I'll buy your argument. Until then, it holds zero weight. The fact remains, they send guys over here, get them FAA certs, send them home, slap a type on them, and they are in the right seat at sub 500 hours, with many haveing barely made it through training.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

I checked many of those pilots out in swept wing jets (me being one of the low time hire pilots as well), and the vast majority did a great job.

 

[PositionAndHold]

I think the accident has a lot of human factors to look at. A guy new to the plane in the left seat getting IOE, the guy in the right seat was giving his first instruction from the right seat...combined, over 20,000 hrs at the controls that day.

After the fact it's all just so clear right? It could never happen to me...I'm not saying it's not their fault, but bad stuff happens to decent pilots.

Ask the Southwest pilots who almost took 150 people off a cliff near Branson...Or the Continental crew that totaled a 737 in Denver...The list goes on and on.

I know we're all good cowboys here in the States that know how to take the bull by the horns while all those dumb foreigners are slaves to the automation right?? That's the narrative we like here...

No, I'm saying stupid pilot tricks know not race, country or type of aircraft. Bad stuff happens and pilots screw up. Pretending the aircraft did any thing abnormal is ludicrous. It's like if the crew in the SW incident in Branson said "Yeah, we landed at the wrong airport buuuuuuut it's was because Boeing used the wrong glass in the front window causing us to not properly see the correct airport". If I get slow and pile it in, I screwed up. It's our jobs to fly the airplane, at some point the airplane was flying them.

Yes, we've all those "whats the box doing" moments. I can all but gaurentee, we clicked off george and made the airplane do what we were expecting it to do. Then, when there was time, looked at the box and figured out what we or it did wrong. It happens enough we have a name for it, but its not causing planes to fall out of the sky.

 

[Baronman]

Yes, we've all those "whats the box doing" moments. I can all but gaurentee, we clicked off george and made the airplane do what we were expecting it to do. Then, when there was time, looked at the box and figured out what we or it did wrong. It happens enough we have a name for it, but its not causing planes to fall out of the sky.

For most of us that occurs during phases of flight outside of the last 15 seconds. I can think of those moments on an arrival, maybe early in an approach, but never <1000' AGL. We all know to go around, I'm sure if you had asked them they'd say they'd go around too. Throw in a high workload, the CA on IOE, the new instructor, at the end of a transpacific flight and we're adding factors.

 

[PositionAndHold]

For most of us that occurs during phases of flight outside of the last 15 seconds. I can think of those moments on an arrival, maybe early in an approach, but never <1000' AGL. We all know to go around, I'm sure if you had asked them they'd say they'd go around too. Throw in a high workload, the CA on IOE, the new instructor, at the end of a transpacific flight and we're adding factors.

They received a low speed awareness aural warning and waited four seconds to touch the power. Which sounds like forever. If you add in "startle factor" that's probably a reasonable amount of time. Just the possibility of being that surprised by a speed warning when they had been fighting to correct approach almost since it begins says a lot. Maybe they were tired. Maybe all three were exhausted. I guess if that's the case we should have seen this issue with multiple carriers over many years since the start of transpacific and Transatlatic flying. Blame it on circadian rhythm, blame it Boeing, just don't blame it on the guy's that want the money, day's off and "prestige" but none of the responsibility. Every now again pilots really screw it up. If this isn't one of those times, I'm not sure we can ever blame a pilot for a crash again.

 

[mshunter]

Take this as a lesson for yourself, and not a reason to bash foreign pilots.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

I checked many of those pilots out in swept wing jets (me being one of the low time hire pilots as well), and the vast majority did a great job.

No, I just never remember ever seeing mins that low.

And I'm not bashing Asian pilots. Read my post.

 

[bc2209]

uh, no that's not the narrative. The narrative is that these airlines (they happen to be Asian) send pilots to the US where many of them barely make it through training and have a pretty serious hand-holding going on the whole time then go into heavy metal pretty quickly. This is not so much the pilots fault as an entire training culture that is subpar. Although, I don't get how you don't take your own time to try to get deeper into understanding due to the fact that you're in a huge aluminum can screaming around at death speed.

In my short time down here in Phoenix at an international pilot mill...you aren't kidding. It's almost scary to watch sometimes.

 

[SrFnFly227]

I just never remember ever seeing mins that low.

I was hired at Pinnacle in March of 2008. There was a kid 3 or 4 classes in front of me that was hired with around 180 hours. Commercial Multi Instrument from Riddle and then straight to the CRJ200. He was the lowest I ever heard about, but being hired at 200-250 was pretty common at that time.

 

[Polymox]

I think the accident has a lot of human factors to look at. A guy new to the plane in the left seat getting IOE, the guy in the right seat was giving his first instruction from the right seat...combined, over 20,000 hrs at the controls that day.

After the fact it's all just so clear right? It could never happen to me...I'm not saying it's not their fault, but bad stuff happens to decent pilots.

Ask the Southwest pilots who almost took 150 people off a cliff near Branson...Or the Continental crew that totaled a 737 in Denver...The list goes on and on.

I know we're all good cowboys here in the States that know how to take the bull by the horns while all those dumb foreigners are slaves to the automation right?? That's the narrative we like here...

So. so much wrong with this accident. It's entirely human factors. Training, fatigue, CRM, systems understanding, decision making, and airmanship all played a part. We've all been in an unstable approach that we thought we could salvage, and did, so the negative learning is reinforced. This PF tried to do it in an unfamiliar type, and paid the price. I don't know if there would be any cultural backlash from a go around, such as "failing" his IOE, but maybe that was a factor. Even after all of the problems, they crossed the glideslope almost exactly at ref speed in that video, and had they understood the autothrottles, could have made a normal landing from there.

People seem to ignore the fact that UPS1354 was not too different. The weather was a bit worse and it was dark, but they still got too low on an approach and put a good airplane in the dirt. Those pilots were trained and gained experience the American way, and yet they still made similar mistakes.

Nobody is immune.

 

[z987k]

The PF did not trim below 170 knots.
The PF was experienced but lacked critical flying skills.
- NTSB

 

[CoffeeIcePapers]

uh, no that's not the narrative. The narrative is that these airlines (they happen to be Asian) send pilots to the US where many of them barely make it through training and have a pretty serious hand-holding going on the whole time then go into heavy metal pretty quickly. This is not so much the pilots fault as an entire training culture that is subpar. Although, I don't get how you don't take your own time to try to get deeper into understanding due to the fact that you're in a huge aluminum can screaming around at death speed.

So these guys have 20k+ hours between them and we are saying their 250 hours in a C172 and Seminole 20 years ago is the problem?

 

[seagull]

At 500 feet they were on speed, on glideslope. Just 10 seconds later it was too low and slow to be recoverable. Ten seconds. Have you ever been distracted or looked away for 10 seconds? If not, how many Pacific crossings have you done?

 

[Bumblebee]

where were they at 1000'?

My point is they were not stabilized...they were on speed and approach for 10 seconds...only because it took 10-15 seconds to go from too fast and high to too low and slow.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

 

[Bumblebee]

what is the most feared phrase to a new FO at a regional airline....anyone know?
"Cleared for the visual."

Tell me you've heard of this. Because it is when you need to make your own judgment about speed, descent rate, power, configuration, and it's not laid out in the profile. New FO's in fast equipment struggle with this until they learn to hand fly the plane a bit. It was always fun, and I talked many though their first ones...and appreciated when my captains did the same for me when I was a new FO.

So these guys have 20k+ hours between them and we are saying their 250 hours in a C172 and Seminole 20 years ago is the problem?

20K+ hours if you divide by 10, is 2K approaches between them. If they do them all with autopilot and ILS, then how many times were they in this position? just back 20 years ago when they went through early training...that's when. If they never got the hang of it then, a flight instructor helped them out. So...

 

[CoffeeIcePapers]

what is the most feared phrase to a new FO at a regional airline....anyone know?
"Cleared for the visual."

Tell me you've heard of this. Because it is when you need to make your own judgment about speed, descent rate, power, configuration, and it's not laid out in the profile. New FO's in fast equipment struggle with this until they learn to hand fly the plane a bit. It was always fun, and I talked many though their first ones...and appreciated when my captains did the same for me when I was a new FO.

20K+ hours if you divide by 10, is 2K approaches between them. If they do them all with autopilot and ILS, then how many times were they in this position? just back 20 years ago when they went through early training...that's when. If they never got the hang of it then, a flight instructor helped them out. So...View attachment 28208

Nice pic.

 

[typhoonpilot]

So what exactly does this " Hold" mode do? Seems like the autothrottles were on, he disconnects the autopilot and holds the thrust levers back and then the AT are in this seemingly useless mode... Are they on? Are they off?

HOLD is generally only seen in a descent. If using FLCH to descend, which is fairly normal prior to the approach, the thrust annunciation first says IDLE while the thrust levers are moving back to idle, it then changes to HOLD until the selected altitude is captured. They go to HOLD because when you use FLCH to descend you are telling the AP that you want pitch to control airspeed in the descent. You do not want the thrust levers moving for small speed changes, you want pitch to correct it. The thrust levers can still be used in HOLD, but only manually. This fits in with Boeing's design philosophy of allowing the pilot to control the aircraft how he/she pleases. If the FLCH descent is too steep the pilot can move the thrust levers forward while in HOLD to increase thrust, thus decreasing the descent rate.

What is not widely understood is they will also go to HOLD in a FLCH climb if you interrupt their movement to the thrust limit for the climb. That is what the Asiana Captain did. Once in HOLD and moved to idle they will not re-engage in a speed mode until altitude capture or until both flight directors are turned off.

It is normal Boeing procedure in the B777 to turn off both Flight Directors on a visual approach for just this reason.

The list of basic procedures this crew violated is astounding.

The human factors part of this that doesn't seem to get talked about much is tunnel vision and loss of senses. Until you've experienced it you really can't appreciate it. When a pilot gets tasked saturated to the point that this crew was they start losing their senses. The first sense to go is actually touch ( this explains pilots tendency to fumble with knobs and switches when under pressure ), the second sense is hearing.

I'm a strong advocate of 1000 feet AAL being the stabilization cut-off point on any approach in a commercial airliner. The main reason being that pilots who push it to 500 feet hoping to make the stabilization criteria by then are so hopelessly behind the airplane and task saturated that they will not even note the passing of 500 feet.

There was no point in the Asiana approach where they were stable because stable means the thrust is at a normal setting for the approach. The thrust stayed at idle the whole time.

One of the huge failures in this approach was the instructor in the right seat. He did nothing to intervene. He was just along for the ride. It's the instructor's job to either prevent or correct inappropriate mode selections. Where the hell was he when the PF set 3000 feet and engaged FLCH?!!


Typhoonpilot

 

[seagull]

where were they at 1000'?

My point is they were not stabilized...they were on speed and approach for 10 seconds...only because it took 10-15 seconds to go from too fast and high to too low and slow.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Might not matter. At my company, I'm not required to be stabilized until 500 feet VMC. I like to aim for 1000' anyway, but plenty of others do not.

 

[mshunter]

what is the most feared phrase to a new FO at a regional airline....anyone know?
"Cleared for the visual."

I dunno. That's the most welcome phrase I ever hear. More than a little time in the RJ, less than a lot, and I'm still learning. But I'll take a visual over an ILS any day of the week. I fly with one reserve captain quite a bit, and he makes me turn everything off and hand fly with no FD when it's prudent.

 

[desertdog71]

what is the most feared phrase to a new FO at a regional airline....anyone know?
"Cleared for the visual."
[/ATTACH]

Wrong.

"Hello this is scheduling, we have an adjustment to your schedule."

Far more frightening.

 

[Bumblebee]

Might not matter. At my company, I'm not required to be stabilized until 500 feet VMC. I like to aim for 1000' anyway, but plenty of others do not.

but you ignore the bigger point...just because you stumbled through what might have appeared to be a stable approach criteria at 500', doesn't mean you WERE stable at 500'. That would require all parameters to be stable...including the correct power setting which was not.