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Kevin Hiatt, president and chief executive officer of the Flight Safety Foundation, an Alexandria, Virginia-based international watchdog group, told Reuters in an interview on Thursday that a "full instrument" landing was not highly advisable at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth.
The airport can be tricky to land at because it is nestled among hills and that is especially true of Runway 18, said Hiatt.
Hiatt, a former Delta Airlines pilot, said he had touched down on the runway many times himself.
"It is not a full instrument landing. You have to visually fly into that runway," he said. "Sometimes it takes nuance to land there. You have to realize that hill is there or you could come in too low."
Time for another reminder that the target runway in this incident had no ILS - it is localizer only. The computer was not controlling rate of descent and that fact is central to the problem here.
Time for another reminder that the target runway in this incident had no ILS - it is localizer only. The computer was not controlling rate of descent and that fact is central to the problem here.
That depends. We don't know what mode the a/p was in. If in vertical speed or vnav (or equivalent on that aircraft type) the a/p will indeed descend. They don't have to be coupled to a ground based glidepath to be able to descend on a/p.
That depends. We don't know what mode the a/p was in. If in vertical speed or vnav (or equivalent on that aircraft type) the a/p will indeed descend. They don't have to be coupled to a ground based glidepath to be able to descend on a/p.
Look at the Flight Track Log again, linked earlier in the thread, and tell me whether you really think the AP was controlling descent.
It is truly amazing to watch the zeal with which many of you dance away from the elephant in the room.
Time for another reminder that the target runway in this incident had no ILS - it is localizer only. The computer was not controlling rate of descent and that fact is central to the problem here.
If there is no ILS then how can it be central to the problem? Since planes and pilots land on non-ILS runways all of the time, it appears not to be a factor here. I expect that you're going to say that if there were an ILS then this accident would not have happened. That may be so, but in this case there wasn't any, and competent pilots should still have been able to land without it.
Look at the Flight Track Log again, linked earlier in the thread, and tell me whether you really think the AP was controlling descent.
It is truly amazing to watch the zeal with which many of you dance away from the elephant in the room.
Part 121 airliners have been safely landing on runways without ILS's since the beginning of the industry. To suggest that the presence of an ILS is a panacea for all approach/landing accidents is misplaced. The NTSB database is full of accidents where the airplane was on an ILS approach.
ILS isn't some magic beam that locks on to an airplane and guides it safely to the runway. It requires human interaction just like any other thing in flying an airplane.
ILS isn't some new technology. It's been around since WWII. It's a ground based NAVAID, subject to routine maintenance and outages. To have functioning ILS's to all runways, 24/7, at all air carrier airports isn't going to happen. Not only is it not cost effective, it would be investing money in a system that's soon to be obsolete.
Emphasis on aircraft size is misplaced. Seems there's an impression that wide body jets are cumbersome to fly. Likely a comparison to large ground based vehicles, because that's within the realm of your experiences.
The main exception the FAA makes with heavy (in your terminology,large) jets, is in the area of wake turbulence. That being that heavy aircraft produce wing tip vortices, that create a hazard for aircraft trailing them. This issue is addressed with increased spacing standards, that ATC adheres to when sequencing aircraft. As far as instrument approaches, aircraft are categorized according to approach speed. Faster aircraft, have increasingly higher weather minimums for legally performing the approach.
Most other weight/size issues relate to runway performance. Although these aren't directly related to size and weight, but to stopping ability. It just so happens, that aircraft size, usually relates to the amount of runway required. But in the past, there were numerous military jet attack/fighter types, of relatively small size, that required 2 miles of runway to operate out of. Mainly because of high landing speeds and limited braking ability. Neither the Asiana or UPS accidents, were related to this issue.
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