Did the crew wait too long to go-around in this RW stormy approach?

[dal330200 216]

Howdy Folks,

I just came across this clip on Youtube showing a RJ trying to outrun a thunderstorm on approach.  Wait and see the aircraft suddenly bank to the right at about 100 feet AGL...I got queezy just looking at it.  Do you think that the crew should have aborted the approach earlier?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb-u8j9gX7I

[Egbert Drenth 250]

This is the P3D forum

[fluffyflops 1,845]

I can beat that, we had a call in IOCC last week on the sat phone on from one of our aircraft in flight from a training captain to engineering control

Crew:hello its the captain  on aircraft xxx

Engineering : hi go ahead 

Crew: yeah hi, on taxing out a load of  circuit breakers popped out,  we put them back in and did the take off, we are in the cruise now and where wondering if we need to fill out any kind of asr for it.

 

In the 10 years Ive been in operations I've never heard engineering go ape as much as when they heard that.  The skipper is in his fiftys and due to retire. 

 

[Murmur 3,941]

For the first few seconds, I thought it was a post-processed flight sim video and not a real video. It's incredible how visually realistic flight sims have become, although only in some specific scenarios and with the help of post-processing.

[nam1394 10]

1 hour ago, Murmur said:

For the first few seconds, I thought it was a post-processed flight sim video and not a real video. It's incredible how visually realistic flight sims have become, although only in some specific scenarios and with the help of post-processing.

Same here

[DylanC 181]

7 hours ago, dal330200 said:

Howdy Folks,

I just came across this clip on Youtube showing a RJ trying to outrun a thunderstorm on approach.  Wait and see the aircraft suddenly bank to the right at about 100 feet AGL...I got queezy just looking at it.  Do you think that the crew should have aborted the approach earlier?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb-u8j9gX7I

Personally think it was perfect timing.  For the majority of the approach, winds didn't appear to be as strong until they made the turn to final.  Once they started to experience what appeared to be downdrafts or a windshear, they got the hell out of there.

Edited July 1, 2018 by DylanC

[dal330200 216]

I still don't know what I would do after giving it more thought than it really deserves, but man, what a crew.  I've been practicing go-arounds in the NGX this week, and my hat goes off to the PF for the attempt.  However, I'm also a pretty cautious guy, and I don't know if I'd even attempt an approach like that.  I remember accidents involving AA in Little Rock and DL at DFW that involved storms, windshear and pushing the edge of the envelope too-far.  But again, I'm flying a desk, and I don't have to contend with angry passengers or the logistics involved in the aftermath of a diversion. 

[dal330200 216]

5 hours ago, tooting said:

I can beat that, we had a call in IOCC last week on the sat phone on from one of our aircraft in flight from a training captain to engineering control

Crew:hello its the captain  on aircraft xxx

Engineering : hi go ahead 

Crew: yeah hi, on taxing out a load of  circuit breakers popped out,  we put them back in and did the take off, we are in the cruise now and where wondering if we need to fill out any kind of asr for it.

 

In the 10 years Ive been in operations I've never heard engineering go ape as much as when they heard that.  The skipper is in his fiftys and due to retire. 

 

Ha, I wonder if they heard sizzling too...man. 

[N2382R 49]

I don't think anyone who knows anything about aviation can answer the posed question since we can't see the instrumentation. Speculating what the pilots were seeing through the lens of an over the wing view is like guessing what a dolphin's thinking on a BBC documentary whilst sitting on your couch.

 

To answer the core of your question, you should always go around if the approach is not stabilized by your DH. You as the PIC are the only person who can make that call.

Edited July 1, 2018 by N2382R

[188AHC 2,138]

50 minutes ago, N2382R said:

I don't think anyone who knows anything about aviation can answer the posed question since we can't see the instrumentation. Speculating what the pilots were seeing through the lens of an over the wing view is like guessing what a dolphin's thinking on a BBC documentary whilst sitting on your couch,

To answer the core of your question, you should always go around if the approach is not stabilized by your DH. You as the PIC are the only person who can make that call.

Exactly correct. It is impossible to determine the conditions the PIC and FO experienced simply looking at an over the wing view.  Apparently they waited just as long as they deemed safe and took the proper action. Hats off to these fellows. If they had forced the landing, then the results might have been catastrophic.

[Chock 17,769]

It's always fun to speculate, but all we can do is guess because it is difficult to make any sort of informed judgement only on the basis of a wing view video, particularly since that viewpoint can make things appear more extreme than they really are; the wingtip moves through a large arc even on fairly minimal roll movements. 

We can't see the VSI nor the ASI, we don't know landing weight (although we do know they were fairly light on fuel) so we don't know the approach speed, nor do we know the crosswind and gust component. Without at least some or all of that info, we can't really know how good aileron control authority will be in those gusts, or how well (or badly) the aircraft will penetrate the wind gradient. Certainly we can see there is more aileron input needed just before the decision to go around is made, but prior to that, all we can say is that it looks a bit rough but manageable, beyond this, it's just an educated guess based on watching aileron inputs.

I don't know if the Embraer 175 does this, but I know the A320 limits the roll authority available upon touchdown, a feature which is intended to prevent wing strikes caused by over-controlling. It is a feature which can present a problem if you get a wing low in a gust whilst touching down on one wheel, if you then try to pick a wing up with a large aileron input, you can't because it is inhibited by the FBW. On that video, up until there was a big roll movement which required a big input to counter, they were doing okay and continuing, but if the 175 has that same limiter the A320 has when there's weight on the wheels, deciding to go around at that point, when it was beginning to require very large aileron inputs to pick up a wing and might therefore require that to be done on touchdown, was certainly the right time to wave off.

Edited July 1, 2018 by Chock

[mtrainer 136]

Speaking of windshear...

My friends and I, in 1985 were coming from Shreveport Louisiana to Dallas Texas to spend a few days at Six Flags Over Texas.  One of my friends had some coupons for the airport at DFW, which at the time I think was called the AMFAC hotel.  We got there the day after the Lockheed L-1011 crashed due to a microburst and our hotel balcony provided a view of the carnage.  I remember thinking that the parts remaining seemed so small, that there was no way it seemed like it could add up to an entire airliner.

In the category if "it's a small world after all", a friend who I went to high school with and who once lived down the street from my parents, was the one person who got killed on the ground as the plane initially bounced off the Interstate and flattened a car.

It was this very accident that led the way to wind shear detectors being installed around the airport, as it put a very bright spotlight on a phenomena that not many folks had ever heard about.  Most sinister of microbursts it the property of initially reflecting in a higher IAS, causing a throttle retardation, only to get on the other side of it to find you've got no air blowing over your wings and engines that need time to spool up, at a time when you're close to the ground and most vulnerable.

Regarding the video, it seemed  they made the right call - always err on the side of caution.

My dad was in the Air Force and part of the process of getting to Flight School was to pass a psychological test, they actually didn't want shoot from the waist hot-shots flying their airplanes, they wanted disciplined people who would follow orders and make conservative decisions.  I don't think Tom Cruise in his Top Gun role would have been able to pass that test...

Mark

 

  

Edited July 1, 2018 by mtrainer
Figured I should at least weigh in on the video.

[skelsey 765]

9 hours ago, N2382R said:

you should always go around if the approach is not stabilized by your DH

Worth a reminder that DH has little to do with stabilisation criteria -- which in most cases would need to be met significantly earlier (typically 500-1000ft aal, vs around 200ft aal for the DH on a typical ILS approach). DH is purely about whether one can see enough to continue the approach; if not then a go around must be flown. However, a go around remains an option all the way down to touchdown and beyond - reverse thrust selection is usually the cut-off point after which you are then committed to a full stop landing.

Edited July 1, 2018 by skelsey

[N2382R 49]

Just now, skelsey said:

Worth a reminder that DH has little to do with stabilisation criteria -- which in most cases would need to be met significantly earlier (typically 500-1000ft aal, vs around 200ft aal for the DH on a typical ILS approach). DH is purely about whether one can see enough to continue the approach; if not then a go around must be flown. However, a go around remains an option all the way down to touchdown and beyond - reverse thrust selection is usually the cut-off point at which you are then committed to a full stop landing.

Blah blah blah technicalities 🙂 Well said skelsey!

[dal330200 216]

On the topic of technicalities, and my odd obsession with this video clip, I'm starting to wonder if the pilot was on a visual instead of ILS or RNAV, which would add another dynamic to this approach.  Does anyone know if DH applies to a visual approach as well?