<p>busdriver…Both. Retired military, currently flying civilian.</p>
<p>It does seem odd that they would not perform an evacuation immediately, given the obviousness of a hard crash landing and severe aircraft damage indicating a high risk of fire.</p>
<p>“Both. Retired military, currently flying civilian”</p>
<p>Interesting. I wonder if I know you. Of course, if you are spending your time doing day flying, you are far more senior than I.</p>
<p>FlyMe, I found the post and you’re right; it is thought-provoking, and disturbing. The gentleman makes a point when he says you can’t change 3000 years of culture. </p>
<p>Regarding the confusion about whether or not the auto-throttle was on or off, or engaged or not – how on God’s green earth is it possible that, of the 3 experienced pilots on deck, not one of them noticed that the plane was flying significantly slower than it should have been?? Wouldn’t that be extremely obvious to any pilot? I just don’t see how they all missed that, and what the NTSB has released of the interviews doesn’t really answer that. The only explanation I can think of is what others have said – too many pilots place too much trust in their computers, and don’t really know how to fly anymore.</p>
<p>For you flyer types: NPR had a piece today discussing the Korean culture as it plays out in the cockpit, and the interviewee (can’t remember who, sorry) talked about seniority as being all-important; for example, there would be a strong disinclination on the part of the junior pilot to tell the senior pilot that his approach was too low. Question: On this flight, who would have been the senior pilot? The trainee who was flying the plane, or the instructor?</p>
<p>busdriver…It’s possible, but I’m guessing you’re commercial? I’m went charter after military life. Certainly better than working a real job!! :)</p>
<p>LasMa, do consider that the post was from someone who was fired by the airline. So maybe it was honest, but maybe it was biased. He sounded angry.</p>
<p>Here’s the thing about senior/junior pilot. The guy who was the student was in the left seat. The instructor was in the right seat. Instructors/flight evaluators are captains, and he is the pilot in command of record, even though the guy in the left seat is playing captain and making decisions…he can be overridden in a second by the instructor. It is a bit of a complicated game of who is in charge, but I doubt that the senior/junior pilot thing would be an issue. If this was the first IOE that the instructor had given, that could have been a factor, but everybody wants to survive.</p>
<p>As one of my favorite commanders used to say, “Barring a steep left bank, you’re dying at the same time as me…so speak up if you see something!”</p>
<p>Yes, commercial, wolverine. Definitely better than a real job (and better than the military too). I’ve done some charters in both the military/civilian world, and really enjoyed it.</p>
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<p>Exactly what busdriver said. As an instructor, you need to let the left seat pilot make the decisions and the calls on what to do, but you need to step in when necessary to keep things safe and legal. It’s a fine line to walk sometimes. If you intervene too early the left-seater doesn’t learn to handle things on their own. If you intervene too late or not at all…bad things can happen. Is that a factor in this accident? It’s quite possible, but we’ll have to wait and see.</p>
<p>LasMa, in response to your second paragraph, that’s what I think the poster was addressing in the forum I referenced. It’s the rote memorization but inability to apply critical thinking skills on the job, combined with the deference to authority that comes into play. At least that’s the only way I can make sense of what happened.</p>
<p>Possibly the method of training pilots, and the fast track to the left seat (I think I have that right) could be a factor as well.</p>
<p>I once worked for a very brilliant women, but she could only spit back details of what she observed…she couldn’t draw conclusions. The worst part was she didn’t realize she was incapable of drawing conclusions. She thought the world functioned the way she perceived it. It drove me (the big picture person) nuts!</p>
<p>So if I think of these pilots as one dimensional thinkers, I guess I can see how this might have happened with three pilots in the cockpit (the 4th was in the passenger cab).</p>
<p>Thanks for the senior/junior info, busdriver. </p>
<p>I realize that the poster had a bad taste in his mouth. At the same time, I doubt that he was fabricating the whole thing, and I think he had a valuable angle on the deferential Korean culture as it affects flight crews.</p>
<p>busdriver…I love flying charter. It’s a great mix of controlled/uncontrolled/large/small airports and it keeps me on my toes. Smaller paycheck…but it’s rewarding in other ways. :)</p>
<p>It could all be as simple as they felt rushed going in, had the throttles at idle, the left seater was so dependent upon automation that he forgot to push the throttles up (assumed the autothrottles would do their job), and the other guy was tired and not monitoring. Sometimes it’s not much at all, but inattention, fatigue, complacency and distraction…which can ruin your life in the blink of an eye. So as wolverine said…no matter what, fly the airplane. When everything else is falling apart around you, ATC is yapping about something, there is a malfunction going on, the co-pilot is being unnecessarily blabby, you’re tired and have to pee, you just made a mistake that irritates you, there’s other airplanes all over the place, you’re going to miss your jumpseat home, the winds are gusting like crazy, if you go around you have little fuel left…fly the airplane. It’s an art of paying attention to what is going on around you (or inside your head) at a lower level, no matter what happens, not necessarily tuning things out, but tuning things down, while you concentrate on what could actually kill you. I think that if people could manage to do that, the vast majority of accidents could be avoided.</p>
<p>One other thing I thought of…one of the pilots on this thread pointed out that the pilots of the Asiana 777 could have been distracted by something that prevented them from noticing the drop in speed. Somewhere I read, and I’ve been all over the place today, so I don’t remember where I read it, that the pilots where aware that they needed a course correction. If I recall correctly, they were referring to centering the plane for the runway, not altitude. The pilots were so focused on that that they overlooked the speed.</p>
<p>That behavior supports the focus on rote memorization without critical thinking, in my mind anyway.</p>
<p>I don’t want the findings of the crash investigation to be about the Korean culture, but unfortunately it looks like it is heading in that direction.</p>
<p>Well, wolverine, you have that military retirement coming in, so that paycheck just isn’t so important anymore. Staying on your toes is good, you can get lazy doing the same thing all the time. I fly with guys that fly out of their home town to the same place. Over, and over again, for years, sometimes decades. I’m all for more time at home, but how very boring!</p>
<p>Amen busdriver!! I love flying too much to ever want to be bored doing it. A little more predictability in the schedule would be nice…but I guess we can’t have everything!!</p>
<p>FlyMeToTheMoon…One of the early “eyewitness” reports I read talked about the aircraft making a late turn to align with the runway but I haven’t seen that substantiated anywhere else since then. It’s very hard to tell much from the Fred Hayes video, but I don’t see any obvious late turn. Something distracted/prevented them from doing what they should have…but we just don’t know what yet.</p>
<p>FlyMeToTheMoon, You are not an architect, are you? The “big picture person” thing reminds me of a conversation between a physics professor and an architecture major I once overheard. Have done rather poorly on the test, the architure major told her professor, Some people are big picture types. I sure wouldn’t want to live in a house designed by this future architect.</p>
<p>Wolverine, this is the article I read yesterday that indicated the pilots were indeed working on a “lateral deviation”. </p>
<p>“They were making corrections because they knew they were low and they were making lateral corrections to line up on the center line” of the runway.</p>
<p>[SF</a> plane crash pilots focused on centering jet - SFGate](<a href=“SF plane crash pilots focused on centering jet”>SF plane crash pilots focused on centering jet)</p>
<p>Or this,</p>
<p>[NTSB:</a> Pilots relied on automatic speed control | US National Headlines | Comcast](<a href=“Countdown to 250th anniversary begins in the US with planners hoping it can unify a divided country | Xfinity”>Countdown to 250th anniversary begins in the US with planners hoping it can unify a divided country | Xfinity)</p>
<p>FlyMe…That’s interesting. It’s the first semi-substantiated mention of lateral corrections I’ve seen, but it’ll be interesting to see how large the lateral deviation was. I imagine eventually there will be computer re-creations of the descent to landing profile from the black box data but it may be awhile before that happens.</p>
<p>It’s very possible that the deviation in altitude led to the lateral deviation happening. When landing, the pilot has to keep a constant crosscheck of all the parameters of the airplane…aimpoint, airspeed, descent rate, lateral alignment, MSL altitude (read on the altimeter), AGL altitude (height above the ground from a radar altimeter), proximity to other traffic, radio transmissions, etc. A deviation in one area makes the pilot focus on correcting that one area. If their attention is too fixated on correcting one deviation, it slows down their crosscheck and often leads to deviations in other areas.</p>
<p>The article in your link says the right-seater (instructor) realized at 500’ AGL they were “too low” (further out from the runway than they should’ve been at 500’ AGL) and told the left-seater to “pull back”. We don’t know what their airspeed was at that point, but if they decreased or stopped their descent rate and the auto-throttles weren’t engaged their airspeed would decrease. Focusing on correcting their altitude could’ve led to them paying less attention to lateral alignment, which they noticed at 200’ AGL and may have tried to correct. Both these deviations may have distracted them from noticing their airspeed was well below the 157 knots they had bugged and were expecting auto-throttles to maintain for them.</p>
<p>As busdriver said earlier an accident is almost always a chain of events, any one of which (if removed) would break the chain and the accident might be prevented. If they notice the altitude/glidepath deviation earlier, maybe the lateral deviation doesn’t happen. If the altitude and lateral deviations don’t happen, maybe they notice the airspeed decreasing earlier and correct it. Minor deviations happen all the time, but a good crosscheck and good crew coordination catch them and correct them. That seems to be an increasingly likely failure in this case, and sure seems to be the direction the investigation is headed.</p>
<p>Wolverine, I think I understood everything you said, except the details of paragraph two. I do understand the general concept, however. So how likely is it that deviations occur to distract the pilot(s)? As a lay person, I would assume that if everyone is doing their job, is a fairly rare likelihood.</p>
<p>I so want to believe that this was mechanical failure. And I have to get my daughter home from Italy (via London) on Sunday.</p>