On Sunday night, an American Airlines jet
scraped a wingtip while landing in poor visibility at the Charlotte, N.C.
Airport, according to an article in the online version of the Wall Street
Journal. It states that the NTSB is “expected to look at whether fatigue may have played a role in the
performance of the pilots. They had been on duty for some 14 hours before the
botched landing, according to preliminary internal airline data.”
According to
the article…
ATC controllers alerted the pilots that the aircraft was off the
approach course. Controllers then asked the crew whether they wanted to go
around for another landing, but the pilots decided to continue the approach.
Faced with an autopilot that the crew did not trust, they turned it off about
300 feet before touchdown and landed the aircraft manually. The left main
landing gear rolled off the side of the runway and in the process of
correcting, the right wing tip hit the ground.
The incident
raises many questions including whether the crew followed American Airlines’
operational rules and procedures. Those rules apparently state that when on an
instrument approach, if complications occur below 1000 feet AGL, the crew
should climb out and re-sequence for another landing.
Interestingly, Cirrus Design teaches aircraft
owners and factory trained flight instructors a similar criteria for deciding
whether to discontinue an approach to landing. For example, one version of
their Flight Operations Manual describes a stabilized approach as "characterized by a constant angle, constant
rate of descent approach profile ending near the touchdown point." It later lists conditions that must be met while the aircraft
is below 500 feet AGL when flying under VFR. If one or more of the conditions
is not met, a go around must be executed. A similar list of criteria applies to
flying instrument approaches. However for IFR approaches, pilots must execute a
go around anytime the aircraft does not meet the stated conditions below 1000
feet AGL.
A couple of
years ago, a local flight school analyzed their insurance claims and discovered
that something like 70 or 80% of all the accident claims would have been
avoided if pilots had executed a timely go around instead of trying to save
botched landings. It was an eye-opener for me and I realized that I needed to
put less emphasis on teaching students how to save every landing and instead
teach them to immediately execute a go around at the moment they first started
to think that perhaps a go around was needed.
I can't help but wonder whether the Department
of Transportation’s Airline On-Time statistics create a subtle pressure for
airline pilots to attempt to save some landings they might otherwise abandon.
Executing a go around would automatically add a minimum of five minutes to one
of these flights and more likely add closer to 10 minutes by the time an
aircraft is vectored back around onto approach. What do you think?
It’s not the DOT on-time stats that puts pressure on airline pilots to save landings — it’s more of an internal pride thing. If you go around, it means you screwed something up, and everyone will see you do it! Actually executing a go-around sometimes feels like a kind of defeat.
You have to swallow your pride and realize the professional thing to do is respect the “stabilized approach” criteria, and go around if you’re not there.
It was an eye-opener for me and I realized that I needed to put less emphasis on teaching students how to save every landing and instead teach them to immediately execute a go around at the moment they first started to think that perhaps a go around was needed.
This was the approach my instructor took and I’m glad for it. I’ve seen a lot of pilots waiting / hoping that they can sort things out (and I agree, ego plays a big part in this) leaving them in a riskier position for their go-around if nothing else.