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Asiana 777 Crash at SFO

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Asiana 777 Crash at SFO

Old 07-08-2013, 05:27 PM
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Originally Posted by Captain Bligh View Post
Hilariously completing my inditement of the media's denial of cultural accident causes, WSJ had removed this 5 year old article as people were beginning to comment on it and it's relevance to Asiana 214. Wow. We really do live in the information age.
Boeing and KAL believed it caused accidents, and look how KAL turned it around. When I lived in NW CO, by neighbor was a Boeing sim instructor. He worked mostly with KAL and Asiana and spent most of his time in Korea, in 2-3 month blocks (he was a former USAF, and Saudia before Boeing). He had some interesting stories about Capts that wouldn't think twice about reaching across the cockpit to backhand an FO. He worked specifically on CRM issues, and while he said it was often a tough row to hoe, they were making progress (this was 2002). He said that it was really tough to get FOs to assert themselves, but then once they got them speaking, they couldn't shut them up!
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Old 07-08-2013, 05:29 PM
  #312  
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Originally Posted by USMCFLYR View Post
Time compression.
IF the reports are correct - ARFF was on station in 3 MINUTES.
I think the definition of "on station" is what might be in question here. The individuals ejected from the aircraft and observed by the UAL crew were thousands of feet from the wreckage. Is it not possible that they were without aid for much longer than those egressing the aircraft at the location it finally came to rest?
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Old 07-08-2013, 05:31 PM
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Originally Posted by Adlerdriver View Post
I think the definition of "on station" is what might be in question here. The individuals ejected from the aircraft and observed by the UAL crew were thousands of feet from the wreckage. Is it not possible that they were without aid for much longer than those egressing the aircraft at the location it finally came to rest?
I wonder if one of the 2 mentioned by the UAL885 bunkie was the one that got run over!
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Old 07-08-2013, 05:33 PM
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Originally Posted by ForeverFO View Post
The cultural disconnect is huge.
......
Apparently, death, or prison, or grounding for life, is less important than face, and cultural tradition.

We in the "West" had some of that for a while, whereby the CA was a demigod. But even then, not many FO's are going to allow Cappy to kill everyone when they recognize immediate danger.

They do in more than a few Asian cultures.

Failure is a better and more face saving outcome than quitting. Those who have taught Chinese students will tell you that generally, they would rather purposefully sabotage their training at the risk of hurting themselves or someone else than ask to quit.

Crashing an airplane IS better than going around. Seriously. That's the nasty combination of a lack of uncertainty avoidance (traditional religious values say that everything will be okay) and the desire to save face.

It's not a race thing, since there are plenty of pilots from other places of Asian descent that do just fine, it's a cultural thing.
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Old 07-08-2013, 05:38 PM
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Originally Posted by Adlerdriver View Post
I think the definition of "on station" is what might be in question here. The individuals ejected from the aircraft and observed by the UAL crew were thousands of feet from the wreckage. Is it not possible that they were without aid for much longer than those egressing the aircraft at the location it finally came to rest?

3 minutes feels like eternity to a pilot. Have you ever timed yourself performing memory items? You can very reasonably have taken the appropriate action on a hung or hot start in like FIVE seconds. Waiting 30 seconds for a fire to be out or still going to blow secondary fire bottles feels like forever as well.

Pilots spend years mastering flows until you appear to be a wizard to a layman. A pilot watching fire trucks rolling a few minutes into a disaster seems like they were asleep, but it's standard. I've had fires put out and been inspecting damage from the exterior as firefighters showed up.
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Old 07-08-2013, 05:41 PM
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Originally Posted by otari99 View Post
As an outsider looking in (I'm an Electrical Engineer), I wonder what role and responsibility, if any, the control tower plays relative to monitoring aircraft trajectory?

Please excuse my ignorance on this.

Thanks.
The radar system in the TRACON and Tower gives a Low Altitude Alert when an aircraft descends below (or is projected to descend below) pre-programmed parameters. The tower radar display shows altitudes in hundreds of feet based in the aircraft's mode C (which is considered accurate with a 200' variance between mode C reported altitude and field elevation or pilot reported altitude). In this case, electronically, it doesn't appear that the tower would have gotten any alarms. Visually, with the control tower being several stories above field elevation, it is unlikely a controller, assuming he had nothing to do except stare at the landing airplane, would have seen anything unusual from his vantage point until the last second.

As controllers, we give alerts and warnings, but leave the airplane flying to the pilots. None of us as controllers are qualified to make decisions based on how a 777 crew flies the last 7 seconds of their approach unless it involves a runway safety issue (another a/c crosses a hold short line, etc).
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Old 07-08-2013, 05:42 PM
  #317  
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Originally Posted by Adlerdriver View Post
I think the definition of "on station" is what might be in question here. The individuals ejected from the aircraft and observed by the UAL crew were thousands of feet from the wreckage. Is it not possible that they were without aid for much longer than those egressing the aircraft at the location it finally came to rest?
I have no idea. In middle of all of the confusion, and if survivors were scattered from the threshold to the wreckage - and laying down none the less - I'd still say that ARFF was not long in responding.
There is no doubt that during a stress filled situation that time compression doesn't set in - even in the cockpit right?

"a long time"...."appeared slow"?
Under what conditions and definitions do these descriptions fit?
I'm sure for an person who has stumbled away from the wreckage and is lying injured in the dirt - time seems an eternity. For first responders rushing towards a mishap I'm sure time flew by.
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Old 07-08-2013, 05:53 PM
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Originally Posted by F15andMD11 View Post
Yea, I understand what you're saying about rusty but...not impressed. For a ferry flt sure. But a revenue flt no! I've watched guys shut-off the automation. "Look what a good pilot I am." What do you think the media's and the company's reaction will be when they learn you have the automation off and you were, God forbid, involved in a mishap. Especially those with safety redundancies like auto throttles. You'd be hung out to dry. Just wait until we learn Asiana had AT off. The pilots will be even more roasted. IMO once you're in the big leagues flying heavy metal those "look at me" days are over!! For your passengers sake!! Sorry, I'll get off my soap box. Just my safety training.
Not say you but I see many guys who have become autopilot addicts and in the sim now cannot fly the aircraft to even close to ATP tolerances without a flight director and AT. Aircraft can be distpatched with AT's inop and more than one failure can lead to no flight director, bad time to learn to fly again. I hand fly when the situation/workload allows and personally feel that is a good thing.
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Old 07-08-2013, 06:02 PM
  #319  
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Originally Posted by USMCFLYR View Post
but I'll bet a dollar that some controller didn't look at that approach and say to himself [they look extremely low, but it isn't my job]
My point was that their job is not to continuously monitor every airplane from the marker to TD. That's what a Final Monitor is for, but they don't use those on visuals Tower has work to do on handoff from approach and during rollout, but no real need to monitor an airplane's performance on short final...spacing is addressed further out. They were probably busy talking to other airplanes checking in, rolling out, or taxiing. The SFO tower controller handles landings on 28L/R as well as takeoffs on 1L/R.

Like I said before, if tower gets altitude alerts from approach radar they will pass that along...not all small towers have that. SFO does, but it was probably too late in this case.

I'm sure if they happened to be looking during the crucial last second they would have keyed the mike (but probably too late in this case).
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Old 07-08-2013, 06:09 PM
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Originally Posted by rickair7777 View Post
Things happen fast in the flare, and even the best captain/check airman might not be able to save the day, even though they are always held accountable. At SFO they didn't get low and slow in a split second, somebody should have seen that coming.
That's exactly what I'm wondering? What was happening at 1,000 and 500 AGL. Two points that are almost universally used for trip wires on an unstabilized approach in IMC and VFR respectively. Were the throttles at idle then? Were the A/T even on? What was the vertical mode?
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