No, never. So being at Vapp at 3.2nm from touchdown causes panic in the ATC Tower? Sounds like a "them" problem and not an "us" problem.

Why? Do you accept a lot of "180 or greater until 3nm" requests?

Y'all are a bunch of dorks!

Everybody seriously needs to relax.. The plane landed safely. You all never did a approach that wasnt by the book stabilized? I swear it's like more than half the people posting on this thread are FAA narcs.

So here's a question for ya. You forget the gear, you whitewash the checklist, and then when you go to final flaps you hear the GPWS and you lower the gear.

You utter an expletive, lower the gear, and get three green. Do you go around?

I know my answer. I can tell you with certainty that some (if not all) airplanes do not send FOQA data unless/until you land from an unstabilized approach. Go-around and the data goes to the circular file.

This may not be true for every airplane, but it is certainly food for thought.

Pipe

That's a much better argument and one I agree with. I wasn't disagreeing with your point, just the original math. Your point just got lost in there somewhere. I don't think there's much reason to shoot for being stable below 1000'. I don't know if that's what happened here. My guess is that somewhere the gear got forgotten and the flaps reminded them but who knows. There but for the grace of God...

FOQA dudes say they collect data, from those capable, on every flight.

One out of two= I was referring to a twin engine aircraft with one engine out.

The other comments in my post were referring to a three engined aircraft with one engine out ("one out of three").

Maybe you thought I meant one out of three was running? I could see that perhaps. And yes, that would be a pretty big deal. I was trying to say that a one-engine inop in something like a 75 or 76 would be a much bigger deal than having just one engine fail in an MD 11.

You're stating my exact point, with one engine out, it's not much of an event. It's significant, but not a significant change in how you fly.

I guess I should have worded it differently.

The FOQA data comes from the approach you land out of. Every flight lands -- one way or the other.

PIPE

I think I'm agreeing with you here, but I just want to clarify...
Yeah. You go around. It's just that easy.
Then you land safely. You debrief and figure out what got you into that position. And then you file an ASAP report when you get to your hotel room so that whatever stupidity put you on an unstable approach can be reviewed so that the next poor bastard walking in your shoes doesn't end up in the same position.
Mistakes happen. Good pilots learn from them.

No, all phases of every flight on an airplane with working flight data monitoring is recorded. Period. However, only those flights that are flagged by exceeding a set value are normally reviewed, and stabilized approach is one of those set values. Did you not sit through ground school last year when this was covered?

I'm not a FDX guy, just a bystander, but if 1000 in IMC and 500 in VMC are both considered stabilized approaches, does the FDR know the weather? I fly an ancient airplane with an FDR, but ours doesn't know the weather...this is an honest question, not troll bait. Curious if or how the FDR knows the WX.

I totally agree with Rock's statement.

FOM 6.45 Stabilized Approach Criteria - last sentence - "A go-around shall be initiated."

and in Rock's scenario (go around followed by safe/"stabilized" approach & landing) - your ASAP report would be accepted

my only reason for commenting on this thread in the first place was to attempt to clarify what the ASAP program "is for" and "is not for"

Our pilots are able to "project themselves ahead" and actually visualize the weather at the destination. At least some of them....

(inside joke...lowslow...not mocking you)

Best thing said yet !

;)

Just curious...and, I'm certainly not condoning that type of approach...But, do you guys really think that approach and landing were unsafe?

For the most part all I've heard on here are references to FOQA and ASAPs. Which leads me to the conclusion you're not really worried about the safety aspect of it...but, more the legality of it.

The ACARS data comes from the approach you land out of, the FOQA gets 'em all.

Yes. Is there ANY doubt they rushed or gaffed off the Before Landing Checklist? Is rushing or gaffing off a checklist a threat to safe operation? Minus extenuating circumstances that pose a more immediate threat (fire), is there any reason to press a bad approach? I'm sure there are thousands and thousands of people driving just below the DUI limit every day, but they get home safely nonetheless. Does that one time they make it home safely now define a new norm? "Well, nothing bad happened that time, so I'm sure I'll be fine to do it again..." I can think of at least two accidents here at FedEx caused by rushed approaches/gaffed off checklists. That should be enough data points for professional aviators.

Yes there is doubt they were rushed or gaffed off a checklist. I see an aircraft flown on glidepath on speed. The gear likely came down late rushed/gaffed or more likely distracted. They likely pushed the 500' target and if that is the case they probably should have gone around. In the cockpit they made the decision that the approach was safe and what do you know, they were right.

The rest is between them and the company. None of my business.

I guess you could program it to flag any approach not stable below 1000' and 500' and listen to the voice recorder to determine if the intent was to be stable by 1000 or 500.

According to the FOQA folks there's currently no way to tell if the approach was flown in IMC or VMC, but they will have the ability to tell sometime soon (it may already be in place.) They said the FOQA program will look at old weather reports and compare them with the time stamps they get from the FDR data. It may be more sophisticated than that but this was the dumbed down pilot explanation given to us.

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.:cool:

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.:rolleyes:

Train like you fly, fly like you train. Otherwise, what's the point of training?

(<--- Not without sin.)

Totally agree - and in addition to that, I agree with av8rmike - this approach was unsafe.

(from what we see in this video & not having the cockpit tapes and/or FDR to go with it - as I stated earlier - "anything is possible")

The end (outcome = didn't crash or land gear up) doesn't justify the means.

P.S. whether this approach was filmed before the FOM-directed "stabilized approach" criteria being implemented or not does not make it any more or less safe. Legality is a different question all-together. Definitely unsafe.

Great discussion here about it too.

Pretty obvious to me this video is just the last bit of what was a $hit hot break ("overhead" for you USAF types). Prolly 450 at the initial, 4G break at the numbers, dude finally got it slowed to gear speed on short final.

I'd call it: SHB (HFWUX) (\IM) (LOBIC-AR)

OK pass.

Now you know that s/he needs more than 4 G's after a 450 kt break at the numbers :D (of course you did say 450 at the intial - maybe s/he came in for the whisper break???) No LSO here - but at least I remember something and could have wished for such passes during my few times! ;)

USMCFLYR

You're right - forgot to mention "wide abeam".:p

More like JWIB-SPIG:)
John Wayne in the break- Slim Pickens in the groove. Got one of those in the training command:(

Had that problem in IAD. First they assigned 250 when I was 12nm out. Then at 10nm they gave me 170. Like you, I aim to be stabilized by 1,000 and was. On 1nm final tower tells me to speed up. The captain politely tells him to stuff it and the tower complains that we went back to final approach speed 3 miles out! I couldn't care less. I fly by the book and could care less if that makes ATC slow down traffic behind me.

Anyone else notice that at 10 seconds before touchdown they were 2 dots low on the glide slope, about 24 knots fast, and had the incorrect incorrect crosswind correction??

Using your logic then I have never messed up because I have always landed safely. If our only benchmarks for success are making sure no one is killed and no metal is bent then this job would be a heck of a lot more fun but also much more dangerous.

You seem to take this personally. Just because those are you coworkers does not mean you need to wear rose-colored glasses. We learn from mistakes whether a stranger, our best friend, or even ourselves make them.