I think both of you are a bit off the mark. The approach ended with the aircraft safely on the ground - yes. However, that approach had much more potential for problems than a properly flown approach.

Lag,
You saying they "decided" the approach was safe has about the same level of assumption as me saying they were totally distracted by their lack of gear in the last 300' of the approach and were most likely paying attention to little else.

Stabilized approach criteria is supposed to be more than just a square to fill so you're "legal". If you're stable before you enter the last 500-1000 feet of the approach, you are in a better position to:

Notice windshear (pitch, VSI, airspeed changes meeting the limits)
Scan the runway for incursions
Process radio calls
Actually monitor as the PM
Notice/deal with malfunctions
.....and I'm sure folks could add more.

There's no way you're in the best position to deal with issues in the last few miles if your gear is in transit, your flaps are not yet at their final setting, your power is moving, your airspeed is not at Vapp and your PM is still finishing up the checklist. At the very minimum, the fact that you know you're pressing or past the accepted limits is in itself a distraction.

Obviously everything can and often will work out in spite of a bad approach but only because things stay "normal". We can't know what would have happened if these guys had been thrown a curve ball in the last few seconds.

 

Yep, you're right. It is safer to be stabilized at 500ft. And, even more safe to be stabilized at 1000ft. Probably safer yet to be stabilized 30 miles out at 10,000ft.

It's also safer to drive your car at the speed limit, rather than 10 over.(Except on I-240, of course) But, most of us do it. And, we don't consider it unsafe.

Again, I'm not condoning the planning of this type of approach. I went through too many power off, over the fence at +30kts while extending flaps in the flare with the old timers here, to want to go back to that technique.

My question was do all of you really think THIS approach was actually unsafe or was it just not within the parameters of our stabilized approach requirement? Is it unsafe to be configured, on G/S and +15kts at 500ft? How about +12kts? Is it unsafe to say "Before landing checklist complete" at 450ft?

Hey! Maybe this clip was taken before we had the "stabilized approach" criteria.

 

Yes, it was "actually unsafe". If you don't get gear down and locked until about 200' on a normal approach, it's unsafe. Just because it doesn't end in a disaster doesn't make it safe. Apparently all the money the company spent on Threat & Error Management, Blue Threat during CQ and the spiffy posters about "Don't Hint, Don't Hope" was wasted on you since only the outcome seems to matter in your world... Not picking a fight, but I find it almost unbelievable that a professional aviator at our airline with our history would even ask that question.

 

just went back and looked at the fleet status. This aircraft has a hud installed as of the latest fleet status which is before the date on the video. The acft in the video does not. Old video. Who knows when this was taken. Doesn't make it right but it does make it old.

 

Look more closely. Full screen on my iPad, I barely can make out a black "dot" under the Capt's front windscreen at about the 30sec mark of the video.

 

With our history? Really? So tell me, what was our history prior to the stabilized approach required criteria?

Seriously...I think you'd be hard pressed to find many line pilots that think all the money spent on Blue Threat training and all the fancy magazines, books, etc., is worth it. So far, the meaningful information could have been condensed into about 4hrs of GS.

I do play by the rules. And, my approaches meet the stabilized criteria. My point is that somebody(?) decided that 500ft was the minimum altitude to be stabilized for VMC conditions. It's an arbitrary number. Doesn't necessarily mean that less than that is unsafe. It just means that's our rule. What if the number they came up with for a stabilized altitude had been 700ft? Would not being stable at 600ft be unsafe?

 

.......................

 

you may be right. I went back and looked again on my 27inch screen at home and I see a tiny tiny dot at 30 secs so i don't know but all the videos of the efvs windows all seem to be a little bigger than that black dot.

 

Apparently someone willing to pay the bill has decided that our safety record and/or culture justified the expense of all those safety related items you listed. Somebody also decided 250 below 10K was the limit. Is that any safer than 260 or 265?

Unlike the FAR example, being stable earlier on an approach rather than later does actually make a safer approach. Maybe your airplane has an automated callout at 600' or 700', but mine doesn't. Mine only has them at 1K and every 100' interval starting at 500'. Seems that might be a great reason to pick that "arbitrary number".

I'm not sure if you're just arguing for arguements sake, or you really think pushing this approach is defensible. Hope it's the former.

 

Another thing there SkyKing...By waiting to put the gear down until 150ft, he's going to have that much better performance for a go-around. If they should run into windshear or have a runway incursion.