Making 2016 A Successful Year for Commercial Aviation

Making 2016 a successful year for your commercial aviation organization depends on one word:  training. By emphasizing flight crew training, a commercial company equips their operating crew members with the tools to conduct flight operations smoothly and to confront any unexpected challenges successfully.  When fiscal year 2016 comes to an end, success could be measured by two matrices many organizations have in common.

First, you know that you have had a successful year if injuries to people are at a minimum. We are talking flight crews, ground crews, maintenance crews, passenger customers and all others with whom your company interacts. Deaths of course cast an irrevocable shadow over your operation. Training has been found in most if not all mishap investigations to have been lacking when injuries and death occur. Training is procedural based, so when people are involved in violation of procedures that lead to mishaps, somehow training failed to achieve a level of safe performance. Who needs a mishap investigation to tell us that? Hopefully no one. Instead of investing time in injury investigations, invest time in training, so that people are doing the job per procedures. The costs involved with injuries and death are monumental, beyond the imagination. Worse yet, after these costs have been paid, the injury and death remains, a haunting reminder of training failure.

Second to account for is damage and destruction of property, equipment, material assets, things that cost money. Nothing cuts into profits than replacing damaged and destroyed property. Worse yet is all the paperwork associated with the loss investigations. But in these investigations, it is very common to discover that people somehow did not know what they were doing when they damaged or destroyed the equipment. Why is that? Was training lacking or only minimally provided? Did the training have it's origin in the company's procedures? Want to enjoy a successful 2016? Make sure all people know what they are doing with the equipment that they use to do the job. If they are flight crew, do they know every switch, every light, every function of every system? Have they flown every procedure in the procedures manual in the simulator? Have they practiced the Go Around in the sim enough to do it well every time, smoothly every time, coordinated every time with their fellow crew member?

Training is training only when it is based on procedures. That is the definition of training: practicing the written standardized procedures associated with the company certification.  Think about that. Who knows the company's certification operating specifications? Does everyone know them?  Are all pilots educated on the subject of operations specifications? Does everyone know that the SOP is based on these Ops Specs? Does every one know that training is based on the procedures? If not, seems like it would be worthwhile to connect these dots for all employees and managers.

By training all of the people in your organization to comply with the procedures that support the ops specs, you r company could have a very successful 2016.

My Head Hurts; I Am So Tired I Can't Think: The Injury of Pilot Fatigue

Fatigue: Is It a Stress or a Strain, that is, an injury? Is fatigue an injury to the human body from which we need time to recover? Or is fatigue just being tired or over tired, a stress for which a good night’s sleep is the common remedy?
That is the question: is fatigue just a stress on the body and mind and as such something from which the body and mind can bounce back without any damage? Or is fatigue rather something more insidious and injurious than just a stress? Is it possible that fatigue is actually a strain, that is to say,  an injury, damage to the body and mind? If fatigue is an injury to the body and mind, an overstress resulting in a strain, does the body and mind need time to heal back to health from this injury? Is the time of a "good night's sleep enough time to heal from this injury?
Does repeated stress lead to more damaging strain? Can the road to recovery from the strain of fatigue to the body and mind be a lot longer than just one good night’s sleep? Is the body and mind being damaged beyond the ability to recover in a day or a weekend?
I am a professional international pilot of 40 plus years, twenty in the US Navy, much of it on carriers with extended hours, much of it at night and twenty at a global package delivery airline, much of it in international operations and much of it at night. I have a degree in liberal arts and a degree in metallurgical engineering. I have no degree in sleep-ology, so any sheep skin focused sticklers can stop reading right here.
But I am a human being who has spent many nights and days working multiple shift hours far in excess of any reasonable eight or ten hour schedule. I have been over tired, falling asleep at the switch as the saying goes from fatigue, yet been there trying to do a good job, a necessary job and trying to have a life outside of work at the same time. The one thing that I have noticed is that recovery from fatigue seems to take much more time than just one good night’s sleep. So I began to wonder why? Was I injured somehow in my mind and body to the extent that I needed to heal? But where was the injury, how can I feel it and how can I measure it? How much time did I need for full physiological recovery of my body and my mind? Was I sacrificing the health of my body and my mind for some jobs? If so, was I being separately compensated for both the work I did and the sacrificing of the health of my body and my mind?
Well again, I didn’t study physiology in college, but I did receive a reasonably good education in flight physiology during these past 40 years and I have read most of what the fatigue and sleep experts have written in industry literature.  It is all good, many studies, great work by some fine people. And I didn't study labor relations and compensation, but I did recognize that there are two issues to working at night and working extended hours repeatedly, the issue of compensation for the work and compensation for the hours past any reasonable shift.
But even then I often come away with more questions fatigue than answers.  What is the pineal gland anyway and how does it work? Does the brain need oxygen and sugar to function? Why does worry have the same affect as caffeine? Why is a hot shower so refreshing when tired? Why do kids fall asleep when tired where ever they sit down? Why do older folks struggle often with sleep?  Why do I feel so tired on weekend layovers that I just want to relax and do nothing stressful, just recover and hope for restful sleep? Why does fatigue knock your brain out like a light switch turning off, even when you are not lying down in bed? How does it know to do that? What else do we not know about fatigue?
So, in my curiosity I harkened back to my university days studying metallurgy. I remembered that we studied the physical relationship between stress and strain on a metal sample and on samples of wood, plastic, ceramics and other material. Stress is the force that is applied to the metal sample and strain is the amount of deformation that occurred to the sample piece as a result of the stress.
What we found was that for the most part, metals deform elastically under lower levels of stress and essentially return to their original shape, size and strength. This means that the stress is borne by the material and it springs back into its original being.
In physiology terms, we might say that one all nighter isn’t so bad; just get a good night’s sleep and you will bounce back, good as new and be ready to go just fine. Probably all true, especially so for lab studies.
Now back to the metal samples. As we continue to add stress to the metal samples, somewhere down the line we get strain that is no longer elastic. The sample now begins to deform. It is still strong and has some of its original strength, but it has become bent, stretched and weakened.  The stress that was put on the sample past the elastic strain point damaged the sample. It is deformed plastically, that is, it will no longer spring back into it’s original size, shape and strength.  Moreover, if the stress is continually applied, not only does the strain become a deformation in size, shape and strength, the sample will eventually break, fail and just come apart, often with a very loud bang.

Now, back to the human physiology story. Again I am not an expert, but I wondered if the human body and mind did not react in a similar manner, that is to say, that the body and mind can take some stress, some sleeplessness, and bounce back elastically with just a good night’s sleep.
But what happens to the human body and mind when the stress of sleeplessness is applied continuously, and applied over the ability to take this stress undamaged? Can the stress eventually cause a strain, that is, damage to the body and mind, damage that one good night’s sleep is insufficient time in which to recover? Can we over stress the body and mind with fatigue? Can fatigue be damage that affects the body and mind such that it is injured and needs time to recover from the injury?
I don’t know the answers to all of these questions. But I believe that these questions need to be asked. Is fatigue more of a strain at some point that just a stress? Can we do injury to our bodies and minds by stressing them with fatigue to the point that they are damaged in some manner and no longer function well? Can this damage be such that one good night’s sleep is insufficient in which to recover? Have we broken something that needs mending? Have we injured something in ourselves which needs recovery?
Is fatigue more of a strain than a stress?

My Head Hurts; I Am So Tired I Can't Think: The Injury of Pilot Fatigue

Fatigue: Is It a Stress or a Strain, that is, an injury? Is fatigue an injury to the human body from which we need time to recover? Or is fatigue just being tired or over tired, a stress for which a good night’s sleep is the common remedy?
That is the question: is fatigue just a stress on the body and mind and as such something from which the body and mind can bounce back without any damage? Or is fatigue rather something more insidious and injurious than just a stress? Is it possible that fatigue is actually a strain, that is to say,  an injury, damage to the body and mind? If fatigue is an injury to the body and mind, an overstress resulting in a strain, does the body and mind need time to heal back to health from this injury? Is the time of a "good night's sleep enough time to heal from this injury?
Does repeated stress lead to more damaging strain? Can the road to recovery from the strain of fatigue to the body and mind be a lot longer than just one good night’s sleep? Is the body and mind being damaged beyond the ability to recover in a day or a weekend?
I am a professional international pilot of 40 plus years, twenty in the US Navy, much of it on carriers with extended hours, much of it at night and twenty at a global package delivery airline, much of it in international operations and much of it at night. I have a degree in liberal arts and a degree in metallurgical engineering. I have no degree in sleep-ology, so any sheep skin focused sticklers can stop reading right here.
But I am a human being who has spent many nights and days working multiple shift hours far in excess of any reasonable eight or ten hour schedule. I have been over tired, falling asleep at the switch as the saying goes from fatigue, yet been there trying to do a good job, a necessary job and trying to have a life outside of work at the same time. The one thing that I have noticed is that recovery from fatigue seems to take much more time than just one good night’s sleep. So I began to wonder why? Was I injured somehow in my mind and body to the extent that I needed to heal? But where was the injury, how can I feel it and how can I measure it? How much time did I need for full physiological recovery of my body and my mind? Was I sacrificing the health of my body and my mind for some jobs? If so, was I being separately compensated for both the work I did and the sacrificing of the health of my body and my mind?
Well again, I didn’t study physiology in college, but I did receive a reasonably good education in flight physiology during these past 40 years and I have read most of what the fatigue and sleep experts have written in industry literature.  It is all good, many studies, great work by some fine people. And I didn't study labor relations and compensation, but I did recognize that there are two issues to working at night and working extended hours repeatedly, the issue of compensation for the work and compensation for the hours past any reasonable shift.
But even then I often come away with more questions fatigue than answers.  What is the pineal gland anyway and how does it work? Does the brain need oxygen and sugar to function? Why does worry have the same affect as caffeine? Why is a hot shower so refreshing when tired? Why do kids fall asleep when tired where ever they sit down? Why do older folks struggle often with sleep?  Why do I feel so tired on weekend layovers that I just want to relax and do nothing stressful, just recover and hope for restful sleep? Why does fatigue knock your brain out like a light switch turning off, even when you are not lying down in bed? How does it know to do that? What else do we not know about fatigue?
So, in my curiosity I harkened back to my university days studying metallurgy. I remembered that we studied the physical relationship between stress and strain on a metal sample and on samples of wood, plastic, ceramics and other material. Stress is the force that is applied to the metal sample and strain is the amount of deformation that occurred to the sample piece as a result of the stress.
What we found was that for the most part, metals deform elastically under lower levels of stress and essentially return to their original shape, size and strength. This means that the stress is borne by the material and it springs back into its original being.
In physiology terms, we might say that one all nighter isn’t so bad; just get a good night’s sleep and you will bounce back, good as new and be ready to go just fine. Probably all true, especially so for lab studies.
Now back to the metal samples. As we continue to add stress to the metal samples, somewhere down the line we get strain that is no longer elastic. The sample now begins to deform. It is still strong and has some of its original strength, but it has become bent, stretched and weakened.  The stress that was put on the sample past the elastic strain point damaged the sample. It is deformed plastically, that is, it will no longer spring back into it’s original size, shape and strength.  Moreover, if the stress is continually applied, not only does the strain become a deformation in size, shape and strength, the sample will eventually break, fail and just come apart, often with a very loud bang.

Now, back to the human physiology story. Again I am not an expert, but I wondered if the human body and mind did not react in a similar manner, that is to say, that the body and mind can take some stress, some sleeplessness, and bounce back elastically with just a good night’s sleep.
But what happens to the human body and mind when the stress of sleeplessness is applied continuously, and applied over the ability to take this stress undamaged? Can the stress eventually cause a strain, that is, damage to the body and mind, damage that one good night’s sleep is insufficient time in which to recover? Can we over stress the body and mind with fatigue? Can fatigue be damage that affects the body and mind such that it is injured and needs time to recover from the injury?
I don’t know the answers to all of these questions. But I believe that these questions need to be asked. Is fatigue more of a strain at some point that just a stress? Can we do injury to our bodies and minds by stressing them with fatigue to the point that they are damaged in some manner and no longer function well? Can this damage be such that one good night’s sleep is insufficient in which to recover? Have we broken something that needs mending? Have we injured something in ourselves which needs recovery?
Is fatigue more of a strain than a stress?

Go Around! Should We be doing More Go Around Procedures? A Report of the Recent Go Around Seminar

Commercial pilots do not often go around when an approach has gone bad. As a matter of fact about 97%  of the time, pilots have tried to salvage a good landing out of a bad approach. From that segment of attempted landings out of bad approaches comes nearly all of the fatal commercial aviation landing disasters. At least that is what seven separate groups of commercial aviation safety researchers have discovered.
Those seven separate and independent research groups presented their papers at the recent Go Around Safety Forum, June 18, 2013 held at EuroControl Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. The Go Around Safety Forum was organized by the European Advisory Committee and the International Advisory Committee of the Flight Safety Foundation and co-sponsored by the European Regions Airline Association and EuroControl. EuroControl is the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation, with 39 member nations. See http://www.eurocontrol.int/ .  After working on this joint EAC-IAC project for three years, which included international meetings and a great deal of correspondence, I am pleased to say that all of the formative work, persuading our safety community that we need to look deeper into the issue of go arounds has proven to be well worth the effort manifested today in this highly unique conference. The work of EAC. has been to look ahead and find new ways to dramatically improve commercial aviation safety.



All of the papers presented are now supported by EuroControl Skybrary, an on line reference web site open to all. See http://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Portal:Go-Around_Safety and http://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Portal:Go-Around_Safety_Forum_Presentations.
I would like to recommend the articles concerning flight crew Go Around Procedures Training to all commercial airline safety and training managers to determine how the syllabus at your organization compares. See http://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Go-around_Training
Author and member of European Advisory Committee (EAC) Captain Paul Miller with long time committee member Jean-Jacques Speyer VUB University and current EAC chairman and Eurocontrol Safety Manager Tzvetomir Blajev at the June 18, 2013 Go Around Safety Forum.

Independent Pilot Association representative Captain Cris Simmons (middle) with chairman of the International Advisory Committee Captain Bill Curtis (left) and Captain Martin Smith, PhD, aviation safety researcher, Presage Group (right).

Author with Zeljko Oreski, Executive VP, Int'l Federation of Air Traffic Controllers' Assns (IFATCA).


When airlines write Go Around procedures and then train their flight crew members on how to use them, somehow a disconnect may be happening.  What have here may be a failure to communicate. If only 3 out of 100 pilots is use the going around procedure when the approach goes wrong or as it is referred to in industry terms as "unstable,"  then statistics show that in that pool of the 97% of pilots who try to land, virtually all of the landing mishaps occur that involve runway over runs, excursions off of the side of the runway, short landings into terrain and other structures occur.
In safety terms, this is an area where industry wide, a great improvement in safety can be achieved if flight crew members execute a go around 100% of the time out of an unstable approach and come back around. Why there is a large disparity between what is trained and what done by line pilots is up to each airline to determine and remedy.  The Go Around Safety Forum was intended to bring the issue to the attention of the global commercial aviation community and in that regard it was a successful three year effort, capped off by the successful one day seminar. Now all of the papers, the data and discussion is available to all airlines and it now is up to the local safety managers at each airline to put this information to good use and improve safety.
Flags of the 39 European nations of Eurocontrol.

Does Fatigue Cause an Injury to the Human Body and Mind?

Fatigue: Is It a Stress or a Strain? Is fatigue an injury to the human body from which we need time to recover? Or is fatigue just being tired or over tired, for which a good night’s sleep is the common remedy?
That is the question: is fatigue just a stress on the body and mind and as such something from which the body and mind can bounce back without any damage? Or is fatigue rather something more insidious than just a stress? Is it possible that fatigue is actually a strain, that is to say,  an injury, some kind of damage to the body and mind? If fatigue is an injury to the body and mind, and overstress resulting in a strain, does the the body and mind need time to heal back to health from this injury?
Does repeated stress lead to more damaging strain? Can the road to recovery from the strain of fatigue to the body and mind be a lot longer than just one good night’s sleep?
I am a professional international pilot of 40 plus years, twenty in the US Navy, much of it on carriers with extended hours, much of it at night and twenty at a global package delivery airline, much of it in international operations and much of it at night. I have a degree in liberal arts and a degree in metallurgical engineering. I have no degree in sleep-ology, so any sheep skin focused stickler can stop reading right here.
But I am a human being who has spent many nights and days working multiple shift hours far in excess of any reasonable eight or ten hour schedule, over tired, falling asleep at the switch as the saying goes from fatigue, but trying to do a good job, a necessary job and trying to have a life outside of work at the same time. The one thing that I have noticed is that recovery from fatigue seems to take much more time than just one good night’s sleep. So I began to wonder why? Was I injured and needing to heal? But where was the injury, how can I feel it and how can I measure it? How much time did I need for full physiological recovery of my body and my mind? Was I required to sacrifice the health of my body and my mind for some jobs? If so, how am I being separately compensated for both the work I do and the sacrificing of the health of my body and my mind?
Well again, I didn’t study physiology in college, but I did receive a reasonably good education in flight physiology during these past 40 years and I have read most of what the fatigue and sleep experts have written in industry literature.  It is all good, many studies, great work by some fine people. And I didn't study labor relations and compensation, but I did recognize that there are two issues to working at night and working extended hours repeatedly, the issue of compensation for the work and compensation for the hours past any reasonable shift.
But even then I often come away with more questions fatigue than answers.  What is the pineal gland anyway and how does it work? Does the brain need oxygen and sugar to function? Why does worry have the same affect as caffeine? Why is a hot shower so refreshing when tired? Why do kids fall asleep when tired where ever they sit down? Why do older folks struggle often with sleep?  Why do I feel so tired on weekend layovers that I just want to relax and do nothing stressful, just recover and hope for restful sleep? Why does fatigue knock your brain out like a light switch turning off, even when you are not lying down in bed? How does it know to do that? What else do we not know about fatigue?
So, in my curiosity I harkened back to my university days studying metallurgy. I remembered that we studied the physical relationship between stress and strain on a metal sample and on samples of wood, plastic, ceramics and other material. Stress is the force that is applied to the metal sample and strain is the amount of deformation that occurred to the sample piece as a result of the stress.
What we found was that for the most part, metals deform elastically under lower levels of stress and essentially return to their original shape, size and strength. This means that the stress is borne by the material and it springs back into its original being.
In physiology terms, we might say that one all nighter isn’t so bad; just get a good night’s sleep and you will bounce back, good as new and be ready to go just fine. Probably all true, especially so for lab studies.
Now back to the metal samples. As we continue to add stress to the metal samples, somewhere down the line we get strain that is no longer elastic. The sample now begins to deform. It is still strong and has some of its original strength, but it has become bent, stretched and weakened.  The stress that was put on the sample past the elastic strain point damaged the sample. It is deformed plastically, that is, it will no longer spring back into it’s original size, shape and strength.  Moreover, if the stress is continually applied, not only does the strain become a deformation in size, shape and strength, the sample will eventually break, fail and just come apart, often with a very loud bang.

Now, back to the human physiology story. Again I am not an expert, but I wondered if the human body and mind did not react in a similar manner, that is to say, that the body and mind can take some stress, some sleeplessness, and bounce back elastically with just a good night’s sleep.
But what happens to the human body and mind when the stress of sleeplessness is applied continuously, and applied over the ability to take this stress undamaged? Can the stress eventually cause a strain, that is, damage to the body and mind, damage that one good night’s sleep is insufficient time in which to recover? Can we over stress the body and mind with fatigue? Can fatigue be damage that affects the body and mind such that it is injured and needs time to recover from the injury?
I don’t know the answers to all of these questions. But I believe that these questions need to be asked. Is fatigue more of a strain at some point that just a stress? Can we do injury to our bodies and minds by stressing them with fatigue to the point that they are damaged in some manner and no longer function well? Can this damage be such that one good night’s sleep is insufficient in which to recover? Have we broken something that needs mending? Have we injured something in ourselves which needs recovery?
Is fatigue more of a strain than a stress?

Asiana 214 Mishap, SFO, July 6, 2013: Stable Approaches & Go Around Procedures

Stabilized Approaches must be part of an Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) and not just a criteria, policy or even best practice.  Procedure means that it is a written set of steps, notes and it is trained by the airline, checked by the FAA and continually verified, reviewed and updated by the FAA and the airline. Part of a stabilized approach procedure must include a verbalized communication of the aircraft state and progress at several points in the approach and a verbal command to continue the approach or to Go Around as the aircraft passes these points.
One of the most important things we learned in the recent June 18, 2013 Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) Go-Around Safety Conference, sponsored jointly by EuroControl, European Regions Airline  Association (ERAA) and the European Advisory Committee and the International Advisory Committee (EAC and IAC) of the FSF, in Brussels, addressed the idea of a criteria, policy or best practice as opposed to an SOP.
[See the conference link at http://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Portal:Go-Around_Safety]
It is one thing to have a 500ft or even a 1000 ft stabilized approach criteria.  It is quite another thing to have an SOP that all flight crew members are trained to that says if the crew does not accomplish a stabilized appraoch by 1000 ft or even 500 ft, the pilot monitoring flight crew member(s) flight crew member(s) not flying, say verbally "GO AROUND,  APPROACH UNSTABLE," and then per SOP, the pilot flying (PF) initiates the Go Around (GA)as per trained, per briefed and as published per air traffic management procedures.
Even now, even with a stabilized approach criteria or policy at 500ft or 1000 ft and a even with no fault GA policy, wherein the crews motive for going around is not called into question, air lines still need to have an SOP, a written procedure that says crew members must verbalize, "1000 feet, APPROACH STABLE, CONTINUE," or "1000 feet, APPROACH UNSTABLE, GO AROUND."
Why is this important now? Well, it has always been important.  However now we need to understand what happened to Asiana 214 and learn from it. Having seen the video of Asiana 214 approaching San Francisco International (SFO) runway 28 Left, one thing is quite noticeable. The approach appears very flat, meaning very low in altitude at a considerable distance from the stone wall at the waters edge. In lieu of the standard three degree glide slope, the aircraft appears to have essentially leveled off at 100 or 150 feet 1/4 to 1/2 mile from the seawall.
Keep in mind that the designated normal landing area on any runway is between 500 feet and 1500 feet down the runway. Add onto that, the stone wall at the waters edge appears to be approximately 1000 feet from the end of the runway.  So the aircraft landed approximately 2000 feet short from the intended point of landing, that is, the normal landing area on the runway. This means that the aircraft had descended approximatley 50ft and 100ft  below the normal 3 degree glide slope. This deviation did not occur 4 or 7 seconds from landing, but at least 1/2 mile or more from the end of the runway.
If and when the aircraft passed 1000 feet in altitude or even 500 feet during the final approach, which would have been a considerable distance from the runway, the aircraft had to have been well below glide slope. So did the airline have a procedure (SOP) that required the crew to verbalized stable or unstable and continue or go around? If so, why did the crew continue the unstable approach? Did the crew notice the unstable approach?
In addition, early reports from the NTSB identified the airspeed decreased from a landing target of 137 knots to about 109 knots. Remember that normal target speed is 130% of the stall speed at that weight or 1.3 times the stall speed.
Rounding off for argument sake, a stall speed of 100 knots, with a 30% buffer gives a landing speed of 130 knots. The stall warning stick shaker come on 5-8 knots above stall speed (or more correctly stall angle of attack).  So the crew was not flying the aircraft just a little slow, the crew was flying substantially slow, dangerously slow and into the region of rapidly rising induced drag.  The crew appeared to be unaware of the rapid decay from 137 knots to 109 knots right into the stall. I wonder if the subject of the region of reverse command in swept winged aircraft was part of the Asiana B777 training program?
Remember it is typical for crew to add 5-7 knots to give keep a margin above the minimum target speed. So that would mean most pilots would be flying at about 142 knots. The aircraft landed 30 or more knots slow. This would require a significant increase in angle of attack and nose up position, which was seen in the video at the last moments. This again is a major deviation from a stabilized approach procedure.  This deceleration should have been recognized immediately as it occurred initially below 137 knots and corrected by the crew or the crew should have commanded a go around and the GA SOP should have been initiated as soon as the airspeed fell below the target speed. The correction would have been to add substantial power and lower the nose slightly.
As it happened the aircraft was well below glide slope and very slow below landing target speed. Both of these occurred well before the aircraft arrived at the sea wall. Not having a Go Around SOP based on deviation from Stabilized Approach is a severe risk to safety. Not having a training program that covers the aerodynamic principle of the region of rising induced drag and does not address corrections is a severe risk to safety.
Concerning the Instrument Landing System (ILS) electronic glide slope for runway 28 left being inoperative, this puts a burden on the crew members in the cockpit to build an artificial glide slope using runway data. But this would have been a good training opportunity for the crew to build that approach within the aircraft flight management system. This is a standard and written procedure in the B777 flight manual. If that was not done, the runway did have precision approach path indicators known as PAPI, which when below glide slope, would have been illuminating four red lights to the left side of the landing area of the runway.
One last thing, as the initial operating experience instructor pilot sitting in the right seat should have said when things got far out of hand, "Okay, I've got it," and flown the aircraft back into safety.
Alot going on here to discuss. We all would be better off tomorrow if we all tried to understand what happened to Asiana 214 today.
Stabilized Approach Procedures, Go Around Procedures and substitutes for ILS procedures all must be part of the skills sets of B777 crew members.

Lithium-Ion Aircraft Batteries as a Passenger and Cargo Smoke/Fire Risk

In fact three aircraft have been destroyed by fires caused by lithium ion batteries, one in 2006, two in 2010. But the FAA, NTSB and other government and official agencies categorize safety as related to passenger safety or a cargo acft only hazard and of no interest to passenger airline safety, such as the current FAA and EASA Cargo Carve-out Exemption of new Flight Duty and Rest Regulations. However, by summarily ignoring the distinct ties in safety that nevertheless may validly exist between cargo airlines, passenger airlines and their respective pilots safety, FAA, EASA and others may have gravely missed the most valuable of all safety principles, that of early warning.The early warning evidence in this case was the two cargo fires caused by lithium-ion batteries.  The fire dangers of lithium ion batteries have been amply noted, the information on this hazard has been widely available and mishap reports by FAA and EASA have identified a clear and present danger since at least 2006.
Instead of keeping lithium-ion batteries away from commercial aviation however, FAA, EASA and others have made a clear choice to allow industry lobbyist lawyers to influence safety decisions when it came to lithium ion battery carriage regulation and by that same process, have kept the safety experts themselves at arms length.
No greater illustration of inverted safety logic is present in aviation government regulatory administration today than this example.
When will the FAA, EASA and other government aviation safety agencies place aviation safety experts in charge of making important public safety and industry regulatory safety decisions?
When will the direct, clear connection in commercial aviation safety between passenger and cargo airline operations be recognized by FAA, EASA and others? It is obvious that attorneys themselves appear unable to make that connection. Wouldn't the industry be better served by placing safety experts in charge of safety decisions and regulations?