The media reporting is garbage so you can only take things with a grain of salt. No reason to jump down my throat, I'm just playing the guessing game right now like most of us pilots will do when we hear of a crash.

Those with B777 and or autoland knowledge, thanks for sharing your insight.

Not all carriers allow VNAV with ILS GS OTS. Our carrier mandates V/S due to uncoded step downs.

No but I am disgusted with it....

Denny

As a Triple 7 Captain one of the things I always set up in the FMS is to have the end of the runway typed in on the fix page. Reason is I'm running a 3, to 1 glideslope in my head. Overkill when the ILS is up and working, but comes in real handy when shooting a visual or any non precision approach. Interesting in that when I came off the MD-11 and went through training a lot of our F/O flex instructors kept asking me "why would you want that page set up". If these guys were doing the same they would have realized they were very low a lot sooner.

I didn't see it mentioned earlier but it looks like they were 15-20 feet right of center line when they hit, and slightly diverging right to left, from the debris field. Hand flying maybe? Trying to avoid the approach lights too?

BTW Is the FBI now standard ops for accident investigation? Kinda weird

Sucks either way.....

Anyone know where the left eng is? Looks like it took the left side flaps with it to.

The chances of this in any Asian carrier are from "NIL to No way in hell" I can assure you that they were properly briefed by a dispatcher on the NOTAMS related to their flight, they went through it line by line.

Now this is a speculation that fits within the way Asian company cultures operate. But at this point we simply don't know what happened here.

Has there been any info as to the nationality of the pilots? Do the regs still allow for flights that are scheduled under 12 hours to operate with two pilots and a third as a relief pilot? Been retired a long time-things change!

I really have to agree with the poster that expressed concern for the pilots involved. How they must feel. For 36 years I sat in the pointy end of everything from the dc9-10 to the 747 and came to realize that as pilots we have to do everything possible to hone skills and then hope that luck is our companion.

Eye witnesses are notoriously unreliable. And as time goes on, that inaccuracy will extend to the pilots involved. Cockpit seemed intact, and a previous post hinted at R/Ts requesting assistance which would seem to indicate the flight crew are okay. Right now, the Capt and FO along with any RFOs who were up in the cockpit are trying to make sense of what happened. How did the bird wind up alongside the runway? Any hint of a Did the Engines not respond when you pushed the power up? Well, that will become the reason why the bird wound up in the dirt.
Even if the physics don't match, our minds want to protect us and the "truth" of any memory becomes hazy as time goes on.

Speculating that the crew screwed up is not throwing anyone under the bus. Whatever happened, happened, and no post on APC is going to change the reality of what occurred. Throwing someone under the bus to me is more along the lines of Boeing knows there's something wrong with the plane and rather than fix it let's find some reason to blame the pilots. 777 is a mature plane though, with a pretty robust design by all reports. Certainly possible some mechanical defect just reared it's ugly head, but a failure of Human Performance is the way to bet.

Take the speculation with a grain of salt, a possibility of a lesson to make US safer pilots.
I don't put a lot of trust in the reported descent rates at this point in time, but we won't have the flight data recorder info for a year+. Still, unstable approach speculation---would you go around? Would you tell the Capt to go around? What do you do if the Capt blows off the GA call since he "knows" he's okay. What do you do if you push the power up short final and nothing happens? Do you react fast enough to suck up some flaps? Maybe push forward and try and build the speed up and get some more distance through ground effect? Raising the gear-better or worse? Short term performance hit but does that get you enough distance to avoid landing short?

No doubt in my mind the plane hit well short of the "perfect" touchdown point. Will take a bunch of time until we know exactly why.

There but for the Grace of God Go I. And if it ever is ME, feel free to throw spears-knowing that I'm no doubt chucking a few at myself trying to figure it all out.

Before we hang the crew for an unstabilized / misjudged approach let's consider the British Airways 777 event at LHR also.