So it's ok to forgive Pilots' incompetence just because statistics say it doesn't happen a lot?
Life, and all subcomponents of life, is one giant ball of probabilities. Training, preparation, and planning all go towards decreasing the probability of undesirable events, but they do not rule them out entirely.
This includes plane crashes, car crashes, or even scraping your knee.
Professional football players don't play perfectly every game. Olympic athletes still make mistakes despite years of daily training. And you still have major bugs in your codebase - would you describe yourself as incompetent?
Mistakes happen. Accidents happen. So long as we can confidently determine that it is accidental rather than systemic (i.e., incompetence), we learn from it and keep going.
But nevermind all that. Let's hang a sign around their necks, parade them in the streets, let people throw things at them, and then execute them publicly.
I realize that not all the facts are in, and the NTSB full process will take quite some time, but I believe that once all the facts are in, you will find this to be a stunning display of lack of basic airmanship skills.
Why would no one on the ground warn the flight? The altitude transmitted to ATC radar is in hundred foot increments and the high and fast on initial won't trigger an alert, once they pull the power off and try to capture the appropriate vertical profile, ATC radar has no information that anything is wrong, then when they start blowing through the vertical profile, there's not enough resolution to trigger a low altitude alert.
More fundamentally perhaps, it's not ATC's job to fly the plane. ATC keeps planes separated; pilots fly them. On a clear-and-a-million day, and an 11,000 foot runway, the crew couldn't manage a visual approach. There was more than one error, but I think the NTSB findings on probable cause will overhwelminginly find the failures to be in the forward portion of the aircraft, immediately behind the yokes. (It is hard to fathom.)
As you say, a failure like this is not "pilot error" but rather a failure of the aviation system and that is what needs to be corrected for all aviation. The "pilot error" is a symptom of the problem, not the cause.
Same type of plane( yes different type of engines) , same type of issues while landing. I am not suggesting that sfo crash was due to engine failure. I am just suggesting that we all should wait for the investigation to conclude.
You know, there's not a single thing about your comment that's useful.
>Jet engines don't change their output on a dime.
Yeah, I know. That's the reason for the question.
This specific item has been addressed by people who know this stuff. They didn't indicate it was abnormal. How is that not useful?
Who? You're some guy on the Internet. I should take it on faith that you can tell who is knowledgeable and who is a blowhard?
> have commented on it and not said it was anything unusual, so, yes, I'd say it's reasonable.
Again, instead of providing a fact I have to trust the judgment of a person I do not know.
> Jet engines don't change their output on a dime.
It should have been obvious from my question that I know that much about turbines. Do you have any information specific to 777 engines or something comparable?
>Experts commenting on their field of expertise don't count for anything, or what?
They might. It depends who they are. I don't always believe everything I see on television or the Internet. Sometimes I like to know their reasoning.
Boeing, the same company who months ago reviewed their 787 batteries and found no reason to ground their planes?
The initial conclusions from the US National Transportation Safety Board is that the engines were functioning normally; i.e. a totally different issue while landing. I doubt a Seoul-San Francisco flight in mid-July was likely to have experienced the same unusually cold temperatures that resulted in the BA038 fuel droplets freezing (over Siberia in January) either
My comment is not about the culpability of the pilots, but the long recognized psychological phenomenon of overestimating risk probabilities due to increased "hearing of" incidents, rare or not, the cause being irrelevant.
Besides, it's incredible such an accident happen when the weather is perfect, there is no wind, it's not at night, the plane is working just fine, and it's just a couple of pilots who don't know what they are doing because they don't know how to land a plan manually since they are used to pressing buttons the whole time and relyong on autopilot. That's what the news is about.
Just like the AF447 crash between Rio and Paris: Pilots incompetence at its best.
There were clear indications from the communication with the air tower that the pilots did not communicate any emergency situation until 1.5 seconds before the crash, and that the co-pilot was apparently silent in the cockpit. Check the Los Angeles times article about that. It's clearly linked to cultural aspects, all over again.
Which is a wild leap no matter which way you cut it.
But I mean, congrats I guess. You were looking for a conclusion and unsurprisingly you found it.
Can't find the link I originally saw that went into this in more detail, but the basic subject is covered here: http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2008/12/04/malcolm-gladwell-...
More on the business side here: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/26/business/new-standards-mea...
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/518568-asiana-flight-cras...
Don't play the martyr. If you had posted that link as an entirely separate comment and suggested that it was a major factor in the crash, no one would have down voted you, I'm sure. But because of that first comment that was, IMO, a huge jump in both tone and topic from its parent, people probably perceived your subsequent comments as being irrational and motivated by emotion. It was nothing to do with what you were talking about, and everything to do with how you were talking about it.
The main issue I had with the post was that he's claiming this to be the case purely on the notion that the copilot did not speak during the crash. That's severely reaching, and smells a lot like fitting facts to a predetermined conclusion rather than the other way around.
"The Koreans are very very bright and smart so I was puzzled by their inability to fly an airplane well. They would show up on Day 1 of training (an hour before the scheduled briefing time, in a 3-piece suit, and shined shoes) with the entire contents of the FCOM and Flight Manual totally memorized. But, putting that information to actual use was many times impossible. Crosswind landings are also an unsolvable puzzle for most of them. I never did figure it out completely, but I think I did uncover a few clues. Here is my best guess. First off, their educational system emphasizes ROTE memorization from the first day of school as little kids. As you know, that is the lowest form of learning and they act like robots. They are also taught to NEVER challenge authority and in spite of the flight training heavily emphasizing CRM/CLR, it still exists either on the surface or very subtly. You just cant change 3000 years of culture.
The other thing that I think plays an important role is the fact that there is virtually NO civil aircraft flying in Korea. Its actually illegal to own a Cessna-152 and just go learn to fly. Ultra-lights and Powered Hang Gliders are Ok. I guess they dont trust the people to not start WW III by flying 35 miles north of Inchon into North Korea. But, they dont get the kids who grew up flying (and thinking for themselves) and hanging around airports. They do recruit some kids from college and send then to the US or Australia and get them their tickets. Generally, I had better experience with them than with the ex-Military pilots. This was a surprise to me as I spent years as a Naval Aviator flying fighters after getting my private in light airplanes. I would get experienced F-4, F-5, F-15, and F-16 pilots who were actually terrible pilots if they had to hand fly the airplane. What a shock!"
The whole post : http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/518568-asiana-flight-cras...
Right.. and this crash only killed 2 people. Perhaps one if the reports of the girl being hit by a rescue vehicle are believed; so what's your point? The real story is just how better aircraft safety has come over the years. This same accident years ago could very well have killed everyone aboard.
Just like the AF447 crash between Rio and Paris: Pilots incompetence at its best.
...and a week after this accident everyone was blaming the weird weather that happens at the equator for the crash. The point is that everyone is speculating, even you, that this this accident is the pilot's fault, but more often than not it's found to be a combination of mechanical failure and the pilot not being able to respond to it quickly enough -- which just so happens to be the official cause of AF447 crashing in 2009.
Air disaster investigations typically take a while. Most reach conclusions that are extremely non obvious, nor intuitive. I recommend, for the sake of my own sanity and the rest of the people you inflict your opinion on, that you read the following books:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Air-Disaster-Vol-Macarthur-Job/dp/18...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/books/dp/1875671196
There is a third volume available as well if you can stick it out, but perhaps you may gain some much needed perspective.
In fact, if you can actually get an airline pilot in a relaxed situation where he's certain you won't rat him out, you'll hear lots of stories about stupid mistakes. The fact that this inevitable human error almost never results in fatalities is a testament to the level of redundancy in air traffic procedures.
As a case in point, I talked to a pilot in one of Europe's major low-price carriers. They had an incident where both pilots literally fell asleep in the cockpit and were intercepted by German jets. Apart from the jet fighter escorts, the passengers never knew anything was off.
This you know how?
My point is, it is premature to rule out aircraft problems.