Stan Gosnell me@work wrote
The pilots made an error. Dive and drive is dangerous.

So is instrument flying in general. If we all just waited for CAVU, I
bet there would be fewer accidents. Tradeoffs are made between safety
and cost/utility all the time, and dive and drive is one of them.

I'm in
no particular hurry to get out of the clouds - at MDA is fine.
Why would anyone be in a huge hurry to get out of the clouds?
Being in a hurry is almost always dangerous, sometimes fatal.

It's not about being in a hurry to get out of the clouds - it's about
reaching MDA well before reaching the MAP. In other words - it's not
about rate of descent (I couldn't care less about spending an extra
couple of minutes in the clouds) but about angle of descent (I don't
want to reach MDA only seconds before reaching the MAP). This is
simply another one of those areas where the checkride diverges from
real life.

On the checkride, as long as you reach MDA prior to the MAP, you're
good to go. In real life, you actually want to land. When ceilings
are close to MDA (or broken such that they are above MDA in places and
below in other places) and visibility is limited by haze, mist, and/or
rain (especially at night), you're going to need some time to pick the
runway out of the murk - especially if the runway environment (such as
the beacon) is not correctly depicted on the plate. Otherwise, you're
going to be shooting the missed approach not because you didn't break
out prior to MDA but because you couldn't find the runway - at all or
until it was too late to land on it using normal flight maneuvers.

In limited visibility (especially at night) finding the runway is best
accomplished while the airplane is in level flight at MDA, and
configured and trimmed to fly hands off. To get to that state, it's
necessary to descend to MDA expeditiously (dive and drive), power up
and level off, and configure the airplane - all before reaching the
MAP - so you can devote most of your time to looking out the window.
If you must rush something, you're better off rushing the relatively
straightforward descent to MDA (flown purely as an instrument
maneuver) rather than the more complex visual segment, which often
requires at least some reference to instrument for aircraft control
and at the same time requires significant 'outside' time to find the
runway.

Of course CANPA (which is what the industry is moving to) is safer -
in the sense that it allows a less competent pilot to fly the approach
without putting too much strain on his less-than-stellar skills. The
cost is increasing the probability of a missed approach when weather
is at or close to mnimums AND requiring additional equipment that the
average small airplane lacks.

An excellent article on this topic was written by John Deakin, and is
available fromm AvWeb he
http://www.avweb.com/news/columns/182091-1.html

Michael

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