Second SFO Disaster Avoided Seconds Before Crash

sabri writes "On July 25th, flight EVA28, a Boeing 777 flying from Taiwan to SFO, was on the final approach for runway 28L when they were alerted by ATC that they were only at 600ft above the ground at less than 4NM from the threshold. SFO's tower directed the flight crew to climb immediately and declare missed approach. Assuming they were flying at 140 knots (typical approach speed of a 777), they were less than 2 minutes from the runway and at a 3 degree angle (approx 500ft/min descent), about a minute from impact. This is the same type of aircraft and runway used by the crashed Asiana flight. Similar weather conditions and awfully similar flight path. Is there a structural problem with computer-aided pilot's ability to fly visual approaches?"

Comments

Is there a structural problem?

[EmagGeek]

In short, no, there is not. There is a problem with the airline putting inexperienced dumbasses in the left seat to save money.

Pop some popcorn

[Anonymous Coward]

Time for a 500 post thread saying the same 3 things:
1) I am not a pilot but here is why the pilot was wrong
2) There is a problem with Asian pilots since they weren't loved enough by their mothers
3) Hey don't be racist, Asians are just good at different things than Americans

Re:Disagree

[Hobadee]

I'm just an armchair-sim pilot, but IMHO the KSFO approach is SUPER easy compared to some other ones. There aren't really any turns for noise abatement or any other weird things like some approaches have. All planes are basically put into 2 single files lines south of SFO, turned towards the runway, (28L or R generally depending on if they are arriving from the East or West) and go. Contact SFO tower when they are over the San Mateo bridge, and that's it. Fly straight and on the correct glideslope, nothing out of the ordinary to worry about. Occasionally ATC will ask them to change runways, so they should have the charts for the alternate ready to go, as well as the autopilot ready to re-configure, but that probably only happens 10-20% of the time. (AFAIK it didn't happen for the Asiana flight, not sure about this one.)