Chaotic Circumstances Among his colleagues, the San Francisco International Airport has a particularly bad reputation. In addition to the electronic landing system being off, the pilots were often instructed by the air traffic controllers to approach the runway at an extremely steep rate of descent, he said. Presumably due to noise concerns, the aircraft were supposed to make their path of descent as short as possible, so that they would only be flying at low altitude for a brief period. "This rate of descent is often the maximum of what is allowed, and sometimes even higher," the captain said. Adding to these stressors, the pilots must also land in quick succession. These chaotic circumstances are not without consequences. SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that some three weeks ago, a Lufthansa Airbus had to abort a landing at the airport. Furthermore, Lufthansa statistics rank the San Francisco International Airport at the top of the list for aborted landings, which is why even before the Asiana crash landing, the German national carrier had implemented special safety instructions for ending flights there. On Sunday evening, Hersman said the Asiana pilot had attempted to abort the landing about one and a half seconds before impact. The flight recorder shows that just seconds before that, there were no complications. Hersman has so far remained silent on what may have caused the accident, but commenters on several pilot forums suggest that it was indeed because the landing system was unavailable.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:57:05 +0000
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