Another Potential Accident @ SFO

[Don Gieseke]

Incident: EVA B773 at San Francisco on Jul 23rd 2013, descended below safe height

By Simon Hradecky, created Thursday, Jul 25th 2013 18:05Z, last updated Thursday, Jul 25th 2013 18:05Z

An EVA Airways Boeing 777-300, registration B-16701 performing flight BR-28 from Taipei (Taiwan) to San Francisco,CA (USA), was on final approach to San Francisco's 28L being cleared to land when the aircraft descended to about 600 feet about 3.8nm before the runway threshold (about 600 feet below glidepath, remaining glidepath angle 1.5 degrees instead of 3 degrees), tower warned the aircraft "climb immediately, altitude alert, altimeter 29.97", the crew initiated a go-around and positioned for another approach, that concluded in a safe landing about 13 minutes later.

[Don Gieseke]

FAA Urges Landing Aids at San Francisco Airport

The Federal Aviation Administration is urging all pilots of foreign airlines to use landing aids as they approach San Francisco International Airport, amid a recent increase in aborted landings by foreign pilots there, including this month's crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214.

The FAA said its air-traffic controllers in San Francisco would assign foreign pilots approaches that use a satellite-based system to guide the plane in automatically, requiring minimal help from the pilots.
If the pilots aren't trained to use the system or their planes aren't equipped for it, the controller will assign an approach that relies on a less-automated, ground-based guidance system that helps pilots calculate where to land.

The FAA said that it has noticed an increase in "go-arounds"—or aborted landings—at the airport by pilots of foreign carriers who tried to land without the help of outside landing aids, such as satellite- or ground-based systems.
The FAA said go-arounds are routine and "important safety tools," but "out of an abundance of caution" it adopted this new policy for foreign pilots at SFO, as the airport is commonly known. The FAA said the policy only applies to foreign pilots because it has observed the increase in aborted landings only among foreign airlines..

Pilots can still choose to land without aids if they wish, the FAA said.

On July 6, seconds before an Asiana flight from Seoul crashed when it landed short of an SFO runway, the pilot tried to abort the landing. Three people died and more than 180 were injured in the crash. The National Transportation Safety Board said it is still investigating whether the pilots were using outside landing aids.
The FAA didn't provide statistics on the increase in go-arounds, but the agency said that on July 17, another Asiana pilot aborted a landing a half mile from SFO, and on July 23, a pilot of Taiwanese airline EVA Airways Corp. aborted a landing after approaching too low.

On two of the busiest SFO runways, another popular ground-based aid called the "glideslope" is out of service between June 1 and Aug. 22 due to runway improvements. The FAA said its controllers would assign the alternate approaches to foreign pilots until the glideslope returns.

Mark Rosenker, former chairman of the NTSB, applauded the FAA's move, which he said is unusual. "Providing these pilots with as much situational awareness as you can, that's always a good thing," he said.

But he also questioned whether pilots were becoming too dependent on landing aids, potentially contributing to any increase in aborted landings. "When we do go back to the traditional stick-and-rudder skills, do we have enough experience to guarantee the safety of the flying public?" he asked.