On Thursday, July 11, 2013 9:05:02 AM UTC-7, JJ Sinclair wrote:
Shortly after I started flying navigator in the buff, an old master navigator handed me an approach plate and said, "Don't let the *******s kill you". I said to myself, he's right. I have nothing else to do when we are in the pattern and from then on I would place the radar cross-hairs on the runway and monitor position, altitude, airspeed and heading for whatever they were trying to do on the upper deck. My question is; Why wasn't the copilot and third pilot doing the same thing at SFO?

JJ


Yup.

The instrument scan is a basic airmanship skill. The most important instrument on approach, arguably, is the ASI. The fact that they had three pilots in the cockpit and no one looked at the airspeed as it drifted to 35 knots below Vref is inexcusable.

The news reports are that the captain has claimed at various times that he engaged the autothrottles at the beginning of the approach so the autopilot is to blame or (just yesterday) that he was blinded by a bright white light and therefore was unable to monitor altitude or airspeed, are both, IMO, weak attempts at deflection from the simple fact that the pilot in command has final responsibility for safety of flight. Ultimately that person is the Instructor Pilot, but all three of the guys in the cockpit share responsibility for allowing a landing to continue despite the fact that it was going so obviously and badly wrong.

I've seen the article Sean quotes from other sources in the industry. I take these sort of "I saw it all coming years ago" writings with a big grain of salt. There may be elements of truth in them, but they gather so much hyperbole when written after the fact that it's really hard to sort out what's true from what's exaggeration - or fabrication.

9B