I see a little more explaining to do in the CA's near future. If he lost the RWY then it's an automatic missed approach.

As for the FLT Vis, if the PIC says he had it then he did. This can't be disproved, unless the FAA was in the jump, even then there's no proof.

Some may say, "why did he admit to anything?" The bottom line is that honesty usually leads to some retraining and not termination.

Honesty is respectable!

I'm confused. From what I understand, there was not glideslope so he was shooting a non pres app. I'm not sure what the MAP was (mabye someone can let me know) but what was he doing between it (and the MDA) and 50' when he saw the runway? Descending? I wasn't there so I'm not going to pass any kind of judgement. I'm just trying to understand what happened.

He said he had the approach lights, So he was free to descend form MDA to 100' above TDZE. I can see his statement "got the runway at 50 feet" may cause a little trouble with the feds.

yeah but don't you need the "red terminating bars" to descend to 100'ft? I havent looked at my ATP oral exam guid in a while though so I could be wrong:eek:

You are right

You do need the runway environment(terminating bars and all those other things we has to commit to memory) to go below 100' tdze. I was trying to point out that you can get below MDA without seeing the runway environment.

The pilot probably has some answering to do for his comment on getting the runway at 50'. I can't see anyway you sould be that low except for a CAT III ILS.

You neet see the red terminating bars to descend below 100' not to 100'. to descend to 100' all you need to see is the app lights. Thanks for clearing that up for me though, I'm going to assume that he saw the red terminating or side row lights. That would enable him to descend further which might explain why he told the FEDs that he saw the runway at 50'. Once again I wasn't there so...
I do, however, feel real bad for the guys. No matter what we say, this could happen to us. They are our brothers. We, as pilots have such unique jobs (just like firefighters or policemen) that we must stick together and support one another. The public will never understand what we do. I wish those guys the best of luck.

That runway has the MALSR, this shows that; http://204.108.4.16/d-tpp/0702/00084I28.PDF. The MALSR does not have those red lights. So you need one of the other things in the runway environment at 100 ft. He also said he had it in sight at 50 ft. then lost it which is a missed approach anyway.

I agree I hate those who, especially with the COMAIR crash, play monday morning quarterback, for sure could happen to any of us.

So, he was cleared for the ILS 24R approach and then was cleared to runway 28? At that point, they were informed the glideslope was not working, so how could they be cleared for the ILS 28? It also sounds as if the FO took the autopilot off at 50 feet when the CA saw the runway. Don't most airlines make you turn the autopilot at 200 feet? I know the two I have worked for did. Something seems to missing in this testimony, or is it just me???

Next time you guys do an approach to minimums, count how many seconds it takes to go from mins. to the runway. Now tell me that in the split second you watched the runway disappear and then come back you'd do a go-around....

Tomorrow is Monday though....