7 hours ago, ESzczesniak said:

Yes I am. Crew is responsible for the safe operation of the aircraft. That was in Jeopardy. Whatever the reason. They could have even initiated the go-around for a foul runway. 

Your assuming the crew saw a fouled runway and landed anyway. The facts of this incident are not 100% known yet. It is very possible the crew saw a clear runway, and with the loss of communication (does not matter what the reason), they followed their last known instruction, which was "Cleared to land". If that is the case, then the crew did operate the aircraft in a safe operation, and it turns out, the previous aircraft was clear.  Having flown on Air Canada several hundred times now, I find if very unlikely, that an Air Canada  crew would knowingly land on foul runway as they are supposed to be highly trained. 

Its easy to be a Monday Morning Quarterback, We need to wait for the facts to come out of the investigation before we cast blame.

The following statement has shown up in recent news reports on The incident: 

"a radar replay showed the runway was in fact cleared of the earlier arrival by a Southwest Airlines jet when the Air Canada plane landed."

That there was an aircraft on the runway while they were on short final is not unusual.  Plenty of busy airports run tight intervals. Flying into my base at bos, I can be inside a 1000’, cleared to land with preceding traffic just touching down and crossing traffic about to takeoff and another taxiing across the runway.  Of course you are primed to go around on your own initiative if any of that gets delayed in front of you.  So I highly doubt that crew landed wilfully ignoring the controller or without being aware of the preceding traffic and whether the runway was actually clear when they touched down.  So I think we can throw out the notions that they weren’t primed to go around if there was traffic on the runway, because landing tight behind preceding traffic and being ready to go around if they are not clear by the time you cross the threshold is par for the course for any pilot.

But this incident does highlight systemic issues both in atc procedures and the pilots.  For atc, as well elaborated already, is the issue of whether or not they should only be allowed to issue a landing clearance only once the runway is clear of other traffic.  That has its merits as already pointed out, but also introduces other possible undesired outcomes.  Such as unnecessary go arounds since the window for issuing a landing clearance is much reduced and more vulnerable to frequency congestion.  This introduces extra risk to a flight because of extended flight time, exposure to weather risks, and fuel risks.

For the pilots involved, and particularly the pilot on the radio for this flight, there may be a systemic problem to identify as well.  Does the pilot have a problem with impulsivity? Does he have personality traits that tend to lead him to act quickly and reflexively instead of slowly and deliberately. If so, then that would mean that any flight he pilots has an increased risk of something undesired happening such as being accidentally switched off frequency because he may reflexively hit the swap button after predialling an anticipated frequency into the sby window. If this is indeed what happened, then there is perhaps a systemic issue with the pilot that he needs to be made aware of and addressed.

Hi Folks,

There is no better view of the runway - than from the pilots seat...

Regards,

Scott

1 hour ago, KevinAu said:

Flying into my base at bos, I can be inside a 1000’, cleared to land with preceding traffic just touching down and crossing traffic about to takeoff and another taxiing across the runway.

Can such a landing clearance be given if the runway visibility is in any way restricted? Say, a bank of fog on part of the runway.

 

1 hour ago, KevinAu said:

...Does the pilot have a problem with impulsivity? Does he have personality traits that tend to lead him to act quickly and reflexively instead of slowly and deliberately. If so, then that would mean that any flight he pilots has an increased risk of something undesired happening such as being accidentally switched off frequency because he may reflexively hit the swap button after predialling an anticipated frequency into the sby window. If this is indeed what happened, then there is perhaps a systemic issue with the pilot that he needs to be made aware of and addressed.

As far as I know the President was not piloting this aircraft... 

(As a Canadian I am a bit embarrassed with this, so just trying to lighten what was a serious incident a wee bit...)

Kind regards,

36 minutes ago, Murmur said:

Can such a landing clearance be given if the runway visibility is in any way restricted? Say, a bank of fog on part of the runway.

 

I’m not a controller, but if it was ifr conditions, then I think I would have been spaced further from the guy in front, and I think the departure on the crossing runway would have to be with the arrival still outside a certain distance. Of course, it was vfr the other day when I had all those three planes in my front view as we came in to land.

Really the issue isn't the methodology behind allowing clearances and spacing, granted that did have an impact on the situation, but that was as a result of the actual issue at hand, which was the crew not responding to an ATC call to go around for whatever reason that was. Clearly there isn't a problem with the way the ATC issue clearances to land when everyone is following the correct procedures.

It's all very well saying they could see if there was another aeroplane on or off the runway and if that was the reason for the go around call then fine, but for all they know it could have been a call to go around because of some other issue, such as debris, surface damage, a spillage on the runway etc, they wouldn't necessarily have been able to detect something like that until they were right on top of it. They did not hear that call and so went ahead and landed. That's the real problem.

Sure, it turned out okay, but that would not necessarily have been the case if it had been some other problem which prompted the go around call, so it's still a safety issue caused by not hearing an ATC call regardless of the outcome.