Originally Posted By: LT4 Vette
ALL pilots make mistakes.
Even the best of the very best.
Indeed. And there is no such thing as the perfect flight. The key to aviation safety is the identification and correction of those mistakes. Error management, the optimization of human performance, has yielded the greatest improvements in aviation safety.
Different airlines, and their societies, have different cultures that make the identification of those errors easier...or harder...in some cases, airliners have crashed because of the mistakes made by the Captain flying, mistakes that were evident to the other cockpit crew, and that those other crew were unwilling to point out. Serious, uncorrected errors (like an unstable approach) can lead to aircraft crashes. Examples include Korean Air flight 801 that flew into the ground during a night approach. The Captain had selected the wrong altitude for the airplane's position on the procedure, the FO and FE knew it, said it, but did not demand a correction of that error...it was a cultural thing... And there have been many instances of uncorrected errors due to cockpit/crew culture that resulted in crashes
And it's not just Korean airlines, SWA 1455 in Burbank in 2000 was a grossly unstable approach that led to a non-fatal crash. Both pilots knew they were well outside established parameters for a safe approach long before landing, but for some reason, perhaps pressure to "make it happen" they continued...and touched down too far down the short runway, at 44 knots above target speed and were unable to stop. The only explanation in that case had to do with the psychology of error management.
It is my suspicion that there was nothing wrong with this airplane, I suspect that a common SFO practice of being placed high and fast on final by approach control was not managed correctly by the crew, and that instead of correcting the situation by going around, they continued on a unstable approach and got the airplane well behind the power curve at touchdown ...but I emphasize that I reserve judgement until the mishap investigation is complete....if the engines or autoflight systems (autothrust) did not respond, as in the case of BA, this investigation might yield a very different conclusion.