Richard Hertz wrote:
"C Kingsbury" wrote in message
link.net...

"Richard Hertz" no one@no one.com wrote in message
.net...

but when people spout things like adding another approach to an airport
would have saved these people I wonder why they think that.

Well, I'm the original spouter and I approve this spouting.

I thought my first post made the point pretty clearly but I'll elaborate
here.

What we are dealing with here is by nature a game of generalities. Every
accident is by definition unique, but looking at broad patterns certain
unmistakable trends emerge.


Yes, that pilots make mistakes and many are unprepared and ill-trained. I
do not mean that of these two pilots, bet certainly many are.


Among those trends is the fact that precision approaches are safer than
non-precision ones. Stabilized-descent approaches are likewise preferable
to
step-downs, and several of the major airlines got approval for FMS-based
vertical-guidance for non-precision approaches starting a few years ago.


I do not see how they are inherently "safer." I prefer them - they let me
get closer to the ground before having to make a decision. A decision that
was not made by the plane in question.


LPV approaches provide a capability that is on its face almost equal to an
ILS, and have all the inherent advantages of a stabilized-descent
precision
approach. They provide better guidance in all 3 dimensions and simply
allow
fewer opportunities for the pilot to screw up.


Better than a localizer in that dimension?
The localizer is not a bad guidance system. They failed to get to the
appropriate height.


in this case. The bottome line is that you still have to execute the
approach and if they did not exdcute this one correctly, what makes you
think they will execute a different one correctly?

This is a red herring. My point is not to glom onto this case so
specifically but rather to make the broad point that since precision
approaches are generally safer, we should push for more LPV approaches as
a
safety issue.


Not a red herring at all. Precision approaches are "safer" if flown
correctly, but since this crew was not able to fly the localizer and missed
properly, how can they be expected to fly any other one? I responded to
this other person who objected to me doing what he thought was speaking ill
of the dead. Again, I see no reason to belive that in this case a
precision approach would have been any better. They ran into a clearly
plotted bit of terrain that is 2000 feet below the approved height for that
sector/part of the approach.



I agree that precision approaches preferable to nonprecision approaches,
but the bottom line is that actually flying either type of approach is
more difficult than necessary, given what current technology makes
possible. The amount of effort necessary to fly approaches safely in
IMC even under normal conditions is very high. It is way too easy to
lose situational awareness. What we need is to demand faster
development and adoption of synthetic vision and Highway in the Sky
symbology in cockpits.

I've flown extremely complicated approaches (curving around mountains,
etc.) down to very low minimums in a research simulator equipped with
Rockwell Colins' future synthetic vision system. It turned hard IMC to
a bright sunny, day VFR pleasure flight, with a display that showed
where all terrain and obstruction were. Folow the boxes and don't fly
into anything brown that looks like a mountain, and you're fine. The
flight management system that drives the displays depends on solid state
Attitude Heading Reference System (solid state gyros) and precision GPS
(GPS + WAAS) but also integrates barometric altimeter and terrestrial
navigation aids. The GPS, however, is generally the most precise
navigation instrument available.

The technology is available, and the faster we get it into cockpits the
more lives we'll save. I find it unfortunate that we still have the
attitude that training alone will solve all our problems. The accident
record clearly shows that even well trained crews can lose situational
awareness in perfectly healthy airplanes. The fact is that there are
human factor issues involved in just about every fatal IMC accident, and
THOSE HAVE BEEN SOLVED with synthetic vision. There should be no
technological hurdles to implementation of this technology in even the
smallest GA aircraft. In fact, I can foresee the Garmin G-X000
replacing the dirt and sky attitude indicator with a SV display. It
would be a matter of changing software. A change that will save lives!

-Aviv