Close call?

[HiFlyer 9,333]

What do you guys think?

 

[KevinAu 441]

They got unstable, so they went around. Just like they were supposed to.

[Chock 17,769]

Looks like he decided to go around because of the dumbass driver of the flipping big truck parked up at the end of the runway's clearway. Difficult to see but the truck looks like a 'bin wagon' to me, anyway it's pretty tall and it's really not a great idea to park a tall vehicle there. He'd have hit that for sure if he'd continued the approach. It might be a bit lower than some approaches, but he'd have been in ground effect and I reckon that would have seen him reach the runway okay. And it looks pretty windy too, which wouldn't help either. A case of good decision making, from the pilots in my opinion.

[KevinAu 441]

Seriously?  Truck or no truck, that was way below the glideslope.  And surely, you're jesting about the part where they can muddle in ground effect to reach the runway?

[Chock 17,769]

Yes, it does look to be below it, I suspect they may have hit a wind gradient, as it does look a bit dodgy wind-wise when you see the canopy on the beach umbrellas blowing around a lot. Below or not, the aircraft would almost certainly have hit that truck if it would have continued the approach, but I'm suspecting that hitting a wind gradient and seeing it parked there served to put them off, as one can well imagine.

I'm not suggesting one should rely on ground effect to let one get away with an iffy approach, but given that the 737 in particular is noted for floating along a bit in GE, I'm just pointing out that it almost certainly would have got them to the runway in one piece had the truck not been in the way.

[KevinAu 441]

Seriously, the truck on the road had nothing to do with it.  If you are so low that you would hit a truck on a road on the outside of the fence, you are way too low and should have gone around already...for being too low.

[brucets 94]

1 hour ago, KevinAu said:

Seriously?  Truck or no truck, that was way below the glideslope.  And surely, you're jesting about the part where they can muddle in ground effect to reach the runway?

There is no glide-slope at TNCM. There are no published instrument procedures at TNCM.

https://www.airnav.com/airport/TNCM

[Pict 15]

35 minutes ago, brucets said:

There is no glide-slope at TNCM. There are no published instrument procedures at TNCM.

https://www.airnav.com/airport/TNCM

There are a few actually (example of one below)....

All runways have glideslopes....just that most don't have glideslope guidance (e.g. ILS/MLS).

 

[KevinAu 441]

And even then, modern aircraft equipped properly will generate their own glideslope guidance even on non precision approaches without ground based glideslope equipment.  Having flown into tncm numerous times and used the rnav 10 each time, it is done in real life at my airline just as if it was an ils.

I am sure there is more to the story of that westjet ending up that low.  It could have been an inexperienced pilot who just simply screwed it up, or it could have been something mechanical, like what happened to the turkish 737 that crashed at eham.

[G550flyer 1,007]

You really don't know since you don't see the part of the video leading up to where this video starts. From the start of the video, the jet appears to be level and not descending. Again, can't tell since part of the approach is missing. Also, every runway has a glide path but not a glide slope unless an ILS approach is tuned. Even in the plate that pict posted, it only has LNAV minimums instead of LNAV/VNAV and LPV minimums. You could fly this approach similar to the way you would using LOC minimums on an ILS. Point is, once you are visual, you can go VFR mode and go as low as you want. Smart crews will continue to follow the glide path until obstruction clearance is guaranteed. So in this case, the jet appears to be low, but we don't know if it was intentional or not. We can't tell what happened leading up to the go around. Based on the plate pict posted, he could be as low as 700ft(686 AGL) 2 nm from the threshold in the weather.