The recent crash in San Francisco has reminded us of the conventional view that the most dangerous parts of a flight are the take-off and the landing. In the space of just a few seconds the arriving 777 was thrown around - I believe it went up in the air slightly, turned around 360 degrees, and came to rest off the runway, and in the same time a substantial number of passengers experienced significant injuries, many of them back injuries. Two passengers were killed when the rear of the aircraft came off, though one may have been killed by a vehicle on the ground later. The plane also caught fire as it came to rest, and the passengers had to do a rapid evacuation. It is amazing that most of them were able to get out of the plane.
It seems likely that human error by those flying the plane was at least partly responsible, though there are still other questions which can be asked.
Does San Francisco airport have automatic landing equipment? If it does, why was it not being deployed. In Europe many landings are in fact done by the automatic equipment, not by a human pilot. It is, of course, possible that automatic landing equipment was being used on the plane, but malfunctioned, and the crew did not notice in time to override it effectively. Why did the air traffic controllers at SFO not warn the pilots of any possible problems? Perhaps they didn't think there was a problem. Also, it seems that an attempt was made to increase the air speed of the aircraft, but it did not respond.
San Francisco is a very busy airport. Long haul planes take off and land on two parallel runways. Incoming planes frequently come in to the long runways with an over water approach over San Francisco Bay. Other smaller aircraft take off on shorter runways which run across the two long runways, and the timing of take-offs and landings has to be very carefully coordinated. Possibly the complications of managing a large number of complex operations led to a lack of attention to the incoming flight. Airports in the USA quite often use complex take-off and landing patterns, with incoming aircraft flying over outgoing ones, and landing in front of planes waiting to take-off. Sometimes there has to be a rapid movement of a plane on the ground in order to move it out of the way of an incoming flight, though this would not have been an issue in the SFO incident.
This latest event should remind us that although flying is statistically safe, things can still go very badly wrong in just a few seconds.
It seems likely that human error by those flying the plane was at least partly responsible, though there are still other questions which can be asked.
Does San Francisco airport have automatic landing equipment? If it does, why was it not being deployed. In Europe many landings are in fact done by the automatic equipment, not by a human pilot. It is, of course, possible that automatic landing equipment was being used on the plane, but malfunctioned, and the crew did not notice in time to override it effectively. Why did the air traffic controllers at SFO not warn the pilots of any possible problems? Perhaps they didn't think there was a problem. Also, it seems that an attempt was made to increase the air speed of the aircraft, but it did not respond.
San Francisco is a very busy airport. Long haul planes take off and land on two parallel runways. Incoming planes frequently come in to the long runways with an over water approach over San Francisco Bay. Other smaller aircraft take off on shorter runways which run across the two long runways, and the timing of take-offs and landings has to be very carefully coordinated. Possibly the complications of managing a large number of complex operations led to a lack of attention to the incoming flight. Airports in the USA quite often use complex take-off and landing patterns, with incoming aircraft flying over outgoing ones, and landing in front of planes waiting to take-off. Sometimes there has to be a rapid movement of a plane on the ground in order to move it out of the way of an incoming flight, though this would not have been an issue in the SFO incident.
This latest event should remind us that although flying is statistically safe, things can still go very badly wrong in just a few seconds.
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