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Maybe the reason why Lufthansa does not allow visual approach at SFO at night, could be after the Air Canada near miss. > The NTSB determined the probable caus

Maybe the reason why Lufthansa does not allow visual approach at SFO at night, could be after the Air Canada near miss. > The NTSB determined the probable cause was the Air Canada flight crew's confusion of the runway with the parallel taxiway, with contributing causes including the crew's failure to use the instrument landing system (ILS), as well as pilot fatigue. FAA changed the rules for SFO and made visual approaches forbidden at night "when an adjacent parallel runway is closed" [2]. Maybe Lufthansa plays it safe and requires ILS for all long haul night landings. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_759 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_759 [2] https://www.flightglobal.com/faa-changes-san-francisco-landing-procedures-after-a320-near-miss/125135.article https://www.flightglobal.com/faa-changes-san-francisco-landi...

koyote 3y ago
There's also this crash that happened while ILS was broken: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214 This was ultimately pilot error but also due to the fact that the pilots were not as accustomed to doing visual landings.
- thriftwy 3y ago
  Pilots are not going to be accustomized of visual landings in case of emergency, if you have a corporate policy that forbids them in controlled setting! This one is bizzare, not only European pilots on average have less experience than US ones, but they are not allowed to gain experience by corporate policy. (This one coming from a country where aviation is a big mess)
  - p_l 3y ago
    You do not train with passengers on board, period.
    - iudqnolq 3y ago
      That is simply not how things work. Every airline trains with passengers on board.
    - quickthrower2 3y ago
      What about the rookie copilot with 50 hours on type?
    - csours 3y ago
      We don't test software systems in production either. Except we do. We should be testing in non-production environments, but non-prod is not the same as production, so it is inevitable that you will be testing a system change when you deploy to prod. If your non-prod environment is similar enough that there are NO system changes when you deploy to prod ... then your non-prod env is actually prod, because that would mean that your non-prod network routing, auth, and database are the same as prod, because changing any one of those would be a system change.
    - YPPH 3y ago
      A pilot's 'flight hours' is regarded as a key measure of their experience. If a pilot only ever trained visual approaches in sim, and not the real world accounting for the overwhelming majority of their flight experience, that number would be meaningless.
      - p_l 3y ago
        "Experience building" by flight hours (and in properly managed organizations, regular "manual" flying) is not the same as "training", at least in local vocabulary as used by my flight instructors and other people I know in aviation. Thus somewhat mixed reading of what I wrote earlier. Was obvious to me, from responses wasn't obvious to others.
    - lxgr 3y ago
      It can absolutely make sense to "train" with passengers on board. Automation complacency or simply being out of practice can have significant repercussions in emergencies. Consider a task where humans have a marginally higher error rate than the autopilot. Obviously, per task, the safe thing to do is to let the autopilot fly. But now consider a more difficult scenario where the autopilot just bails out, e.g. due to ILS being inoperable, wind shear, any kind of non-permissible sensor discrepancy on board etc. – how would you like be on a plane flown by a pilot that has never done a manual landing in the past few months or even years due to company policy? Of course, a night approach at a foreign airport might not be the best opportunity to practice a manual landing (and it looks like the planned arrival time was during daylight hours!), but as a general policy, allowing some manual flying seems like a very good safety practice, at least until autopilots can fly and land in 100% of all scenarios.
  - throwaway2037 3y ago
    You wrote: <<This one coming from a country where aviation is a big mess>> Can you provide more details?
    - thriftwy 3y ago
      Russia - a history of crashes caused by rapid growth and weird aircraft park, followed by the war where the whole industry is now out of international law.
      - ta1243 3y ago
        What does Russia have to do with anything?
  - RamblingCTO 3y ago
    Visual landings are only disallowed at night. Get your facts straight.
    - thriftwy 3y ago
      What if they have to do one in emergency scenario, and they only ever did this in daylight?
    - jcalvinowens 3y ago
      >> Pilots are not going to be accustomized of visual landings in case of emergency > Visual landings are only disallowed at night I don't agree with the rest of what he said... but he actually has a valid point here. Emergencies happen at night too, and sometimes the nature of the emergency will make an instrument approach impossible.
      - growse 3y ago
        The visual approach isn't an issue, it's the requirements to maintain visual separation. Under emergency conditions, you'd expect the separation to be handled by ATC.
        jcalvinowens 3y ago
        > Under emergency conditions, you'd expect the separation to be handled by ATC. ATC is never responsible for general traffic separation in visual meteorological conditions in the United States. ATC is responsible for separating IFR airplanes from other IFR airplanes. When flying below 18000ft MSL in VMC, those IFR aircraft are still responsible for looking out the window to see and avoid VFR aircraft who may not be talking to ATC (and to be clear, the VFR aircraft is jointly responsible). Just to drive this home: it is still 100% legal to fly around in a Piper Cub at 9500ft MSL with no transponder or radio in most of the country. It is legal to fly around VFR in a jet at 17500ft squawking 1200 not talking to ATC almost everywhere in the country. Primary radar coverage is going away, not getting better. You have to look out the window.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- smcin 3y ago
  Asiana 214 crashed (in broad daylight and perfect visibility) because Asiana pilots were overused to landing on the autopilot, which was off on this landing; also because they ignored the "sink rate" warning going off for a minute. Not because landing at SFO is particularly dangerous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214#Crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214#Cra...
  - jnsaff2 3y ago
    This is a bit simplified. See https://youtu.be/Toy92_qriZU?feature=shared https://youtu.be/Toy92_qriZU?feature=shared

koyote 3y ago

There's also this crash that happened while ILS was broken: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214 This was ultimately pilot error but also due to the fact that the pilots were not as accustomed to doing visual landings.

thriftwy 3y ago
Pilots are not going to be accustomized of visual landings in case of emergency, if you have a corporate policy that forbids them in controlled setting! This one is bizzare, not only European pilots on average have less experience than US ones, but they are not allowed to gain experience by corporate policy. (This one coming from a country where aviation is a big mess)
- p_l 3y ago
  You do not train with passengers on board, period.
  - iudqnolq 3y ago
    That is simply not how things work. Every airline trains with passengers on board.
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    What about the rookie copilot with 50 hours on type?
  - csours 3y ago
    We don't test software systems in production either. Except we do. We should be testing in non-production environments, but non-prod is not the same as production, so it is inevitable that you will be testing a system change when you deploy to prod. If your non-prod environment is similar enough that there are NO system changes when you deploy to prod ... then your non-prod env is actually prod, because that would mean that your non-prod network routing, auth, and database are the same as prod, because changing any one of those would be a system change.
  - YPPH 3y ago
    A pilot's 'flight hours' is regarded as a key measure of their experience. If a pilot only ever trained visual approaches in sim, and not the real world accounting for the overwhelming majority of their flight experience, that number would be meaningless.
    - p_l 3y ago
      "Experience building" by flight hours (and in properly managed organizations, regular "manual" flying) is not the same as "training", at least in local vocabulary as used by my flight instructors and other people I know in aviation. Thus somewhat mixed reading of what I wrote earlier. Was obvious to me, from responses wasn't obvious to others.
  - lxgr 3y ago
    It can absolutely make sense to "train" with passengers on board. Automation complacency or simply being out of practice can have significant repercussions in emergencies. Consider a task where humans have a marginally higher error rate than the autopilot. Obviously, per task, the safe thing to do is to let the autopilot fly. But now consider a more difficult scenario where the autopilot just bails out, e.g. due to ILS being inoperable, wind shear, any kind of non-permissible sensor discrepancy on board etc. – how would you like be on a plane flown by a pilot that has never done a manual landing in the past few months or even years due to company policy? Of course, a night approach at a foreign airport might not be the best opportunity to practice a manual landing (and it looks like the planned arrival time was during daylight hours!), but as a general policy, allowing some manual flying seems like a very good safety practice, at least until autopilots can fly and land in 100% of all scenarios.
- throwaway2037 3y ago
  You wrote: <<This one coming from a country where aviation is a big mess>> Can you provide more details?
  - thriftwy 3y ago
    Russia - a history of crashes caused by rapid growth and weird aircraft park, followed by the war where the whole industry is now out of international law.
    - ta1243 3y ago
      What does Russia have to do with anything?
- RamblingCTO 3y ago
  Visual landings are only disallowed at night. Get your facts straight.
  - thriftwy 3y ago
    What if they have to do one in emergency scenario, and they only ever did this in daylight?
  - jcalvinowens 3y ago
    >> Pilots are not going to be accustomized of visual landings in case of emergency > Visual landings are only disallowed at night I don't agree with the rest of what he said... but he actually has a valid point here. Emergencies happen at night too, and sometimes the nature of the emergency will make an instrument approach impossible.
    - growse 3y ago
      The visual approach isn't an issue, it's the requirements to maintain visual separation. Under emergency conditions, you'd expect the separation to be handled by ATC.
      - jcalvinowens 3y ago
        > Under emergency conditions, you'd expect the separation to be handled by ATC. ATC is never responsible for general traffic separation in visual meteorological conditions in the United States. ATC is responsible for separating IFR airplanes from other IFR airplanes. When flying below 18000ft MSL in VMC, those IFR aircraft are still responsible for looking out the window to see and avoid VFR aircraft who may not be talking to ATC (and to be clear, the VFR aircraft is jointly responsible). Just to drive this home: it is still 100% legal to fly around in a Piper Cub at 9500ft MSL with no transponder or radio in most of the country. It is legal to fly around VFR in a jet at 17500ft squawking 1200 not talking to ATC almost everywhere in the country. Primary radar coverage is going away, not getting better. You have to look out the window.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
smcin 3y ago
Asiana 214 crashed (in broad daylight and perfect visibility) because Asiana pilots were overused to landing on the autopilot, which was off on this landing; also because they ignored the "sink rate" warning going off for a minute. Not because landing at SFO is particularly dangerous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214#Crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214#Cra...
- jnsaff2 3y ago
  This is a bit simplified. See https://youtu.be/Toy92_qriZU?feature=shared https://youtu.be/Toy92_qriZU?feature=shared