Transasia Airlines Crash

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
101

Definitely not good to not receive proper visibility readings. However, the pilots should descend until decision altitude and if runway is NOT in sight they should abort the landing.

I fear that pilots flying modern planes (and the ATR is quite modern) are losing basic flying skills.

The Air France junior pilot completely mishandled what should have been a relatively minor event of the pitot tubes freezing up. And his superiors were of no timely help as they did not realize what was happening in time either. Airbus planes seem to be able to be hard to read at critical moments unless one is completely up to speed and ahead of what the aircraft is doing.

The Asiana crew were unable to visually land at SFO and crashed in good weather in daylight. They thought their 777 had auto throttle on and would not go below stalling speed, it seems.

There has been other crashes worldwide when crews went below minium altitude without seeing the runway and crashed.

That is why the final decision to land or not rests with the Captain. IF you can’t see the runway by decision altitude you are supposed to go around , make another attempt or head for alternate airports.

The SQ crash in TPE. The crew blamed “confusing runway lights” when they turned too early and took off on the wrong runway, thinking they were on the active runway. The airport could have some blame in using part of that closed runway as a taxiway. They should have closed it off entirely. However, the crew is mostly to blame for losing situational awareness and not confirming that they were in fact on the correct runway. They should have called for a follow me truck in the low visibility conditions at the time.

TPE airport also had no ground radar showing aircraft positions. So all in all, it was an accident waiting to happen on dark and stormy night. And it did happen.

Pilots were mostly to blame on that one, but there were extenuating circumstances that made the holes line up in the swiss cheese.

I hate flying as there are so many things that can go wrong. Luckily by far most of the time things go ok. We have tens of thousands of flights worldwide daily and only a handful of crashes a year.

102

It’s very questionable whether this flight should even have left KHH, given that Penghu weather conditions were below min requirements at departure time. So they then entered a holding pattern above Penghu, waiting for a break in the weather. That’s not a situation you (as a passenger) want to be in, with the pilots unable to land, but under financial & social pressure not to turn tail and fly back to KHH. Such conditions can lead to poor decisions.

It’s still not clear to me why the pilot didn’t execute a timely go-around, presumably low-level winds were the ultimate cause of the crash, perhaps coupled with a lack of situational awareness. But it’s seems almost inexusable why the military wouldn’t grant permission for them to land on a different runway, one which had ILS - presuming that the runway was not blocked. Surely you accede to such a request from any flight crew, when vis is so variable & poor?

The more holes you make in 2 slices of Swiss cheese, the more likely 2 of those holes are going to line up.

103

Yes Dispatch should not be so hasty to dispatch flights to airports that may be below weather minima.

It is not clear if the military had not allowed them to use the runway with the ILS. I thought i read that a request was not made.

Ultimately we hope to have sane pilots who can read the situation and head back to safety if that is the best thing to do. AS weather changes so fast.

The Air Asia flight was among several others in the area and yet it alone suffered its fate. What happened exactly we don’t know yet.

it may have flown straight into a killer cell. It can be argued that all the flights that day should have been routed hundreds of miles away from the line of thunderstorms.

And yet they were not. Were the others simply lucky?

104
105

I don’t get that. Technically not their fault but they were of ZERO help.