InnsbruckFlyer wrote:

Is anyone familiar with the 737 Classic flight deck? After they slam down, two red lights at the center above where the EICAS would be light up. What does that mean and is it normal?

Those lights indicate reverser operation.

Aaron747 wrote:

aeroc wrote:

The Captain was in the right seat. Right before landing you can see the 4 stripes and he also has his hand (not hand because his other one was holding his phone) on the yoke and probably should have taken over before the pilot flying broke the airframe but he didn't seem to concerned since he was saying "Be carful, don't worry right at the beginning of the video.

I'm guessing the pilot flying was training to get his private license??? Who knows maybe getting you private in a 737 is possible in Indonesia?

What in the world are you talking about? In irregular operations it is not uncommon to send a crew with two captains.

IOE training captain in right seat was my first thought.

Next stop...TGU!

As bad as it was it’s even more impressive to see it done so well by the Pilots of Druk Air

Sam Chui did a video about the airport with footages of various planes (A-319 & ATR-72) landing and taking off.

https://youtu.be/JyovSoqsxwY

zeke wrote:

Dreamflight767 wrote:

If I understand correctly, that is a circle approach. So from PR708 you over fly the airport, go up the valley, make a 180 degree turn, and come back and land opposite direction of the approach onto RY15.

No that is a RNAV(RNP) approach, no circling is allowed at the airport. Same approach flown with an A319 to the same runway end https://youtu.be/SbLHah4XUwk

aeroc wrote:

The Captain was in the right seat. Right before landing you can see the 4 stripes and he also has his hand (not hand because his other one was holding his phone) on the yoke and probably should have taken over before the pilot flying broke the airframe but he didn't seem to concerned since he was saying "Be carful, don't worry right at the beginning of the video.

I'm guessing the pilot flying was training to get his private license??? Who knows maybe getting you private in a 737 is possible in Indonesia?

The airport s a special authorization required, that means normally a simulator and physical entry with a another pilot authorized. The captain in the RHS would have been a training captain.

Sorry. Circling was the wrong term. I thought you had to be VMC by PR708 overflew the airport and made a 180 degree turn back to RY15...again VMC/VIS APP. But I guess you can land RY33 too. I just thought the crossing restrictions were so high, you won't have enough distance to get to RY33.

graceintheair wrote:

phatfarmlines wrote:

zkojq wrote:

Looks like the First Officer is holding a phone towards the end of the clip. Maybe filming the landing? Just unbelievable....

That's the scary part.

I imagine the Indonesian (and Bhutanese) aviation authorities will be looking into this for possible violations?

I wouldn't hold my breath on any investigation...

Don't forget, we are talking about the authorities that gave us this marvel of an investigation: http://avherald.com/h?article=4bedf840&opt=0

I don't trust them a bit to come up with anything useful regarding this landing.

Whatever happened here was of course bonkers on a different level and goes against everything our industry has done the past 30/40 years. Thank god they are alive and the airplane survived too.

This is what the general public remembers after it goes viral. And all for the wrong reasons.

This can be done in a sim when you have a spare 5 minutes after your session and the instructor ask; “you want to see anything again or so something else?” That’s for a laugh. This is real life. Sad...

This same airline and aircraft type. Surprised?

“A ‘good’ landing is one from which you can walk away. A ‘great’ landing is one after which they can use the plane again.”

I'm not sure this plane was in a decent enough state to be departing 16h later after that 'landing'...

BEG2IAH wrote:

I can't believe what I've just seen. Two random people picked up from the street could have landed this poor plane better.

Chill down mate, most likely you don't even know where Paro airport is and obviously you have never ever landed there, let alone in 737. But you are very good in judging others, aren't you? Paro is VFR airport only, is rather hight(elev 7300ft)and is on difficult side of the airports to approach(which is absolutely spectacular and some cockpit jumpseaters can get scared quite a bit) and land. Under normal circumstances pilots have to be specially trained to operate in/out and ultimately checked out and approved by bhutanese DCA. And there is a reason for that. Obviously these indonesian guys in the cockpit flying one-off hum-relief flight received none of it so for them it is a first time. Furthermore there may be a (performance?) reason 737s are seldomly operating in/out of Paro(this may very well be the first 737-300 visiting the place) as Paro is mainly A319 and ATR territory.

While this certainly was miserable approach and landing, it has to be pointed out that Paro airport and it's conditions(hot, high, terrain, winds) are not ordinary pilot's bread and butter. It seems they were heavy and very keen on putting that old baby down so they can avoid going missed. Not an excuse, just saying this is difficult airport to operate to without previous experience and training.

aviationjunky wrote:

Can you imagine seeing the aircraft trying to land from the ground? I'm sure it looked crazy from all angles.

Check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siCo5LP374o

It seems like ground crew wasnt sure if they just witnessed a crash.

Dreamflight767 wrote:

cedarjet wrote:

I’m not making any claims of good flying but Paro is uniquely challenging, and almost a one shot deal before diverting because the “circuit” goes round a lot of valleys before coming back around for another go. I would say this crew’s failure is if anything to even be attempting to land here, and that having committed, not done a terrible job if this is indeed a first effort. A squeeze of power and a more aggressive flare in the last two seconds and he would have had it made

I'm not sure. He overshot final quite a bit.

And that really was the only real problem I see. No way to judge the rest of the approach as it isn't in the video, but had he not overshot the final as much he could have added just a bit of power and some decent flare it wouldn't have been a nice approach, but an okay'ish one.

And yeah, pretty obvious a trainings captain was sitting on the right hand seat.

Complete lack of CRM and SOPs. Scary stuff. Glad it was "only" a cargo flight.

Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the chief pilot doing the landing. There are many airlines in certain parts of the world that are run like this.

Dreamflight767 wrote:

Sorry. Circling was the wrong term. I thought you had to be VMC by PR708 overflew the airport and made a 180 degree turn back to RY15...again VMC/VIS APP. But I guess you can land RY33 too. I just thought the crossing restrictions were so high, you won't have enough distance to get to RY33.

It’s a RNAV(RNP), final descent starts at PR712 at 11800, the Cat C DH is 10740, 3376 ft above the runway. From before PR710 to the runway it’s visual for terrain clearance.

FiscAutTecGarte wrote:

cedarjet wrote:

I’m not making any claims of good flying but Paro is uniquely challenging, and almost a one shot deal before diverting because the “circuit” goes round a lot of valleys before coming back around for another go. I would say this crew’s failure is if anything to even be attempting to land here, and that having committed, not done a terrible job if this is indeed a first effort. A squeeze of power and a more aggressive flare in the last two seconds and he would have had it made

Thanks for adding some perspective to this thread. Easy to be critical. My only concern was the guy on the right holding a cell phone during a dangerous stage of flight.

It is easy to be critical because the conduct of the entire approach is unprofessional. As others have said, it looks to be a challenging approach, and in this case, it was very poorly flown.

aviationjunky wrote:

Can you imagine seeing the aircraft trying to land from the ground? I'm sure it looked crazy from all angles.

No need to imagine

https://youtu.be/siCo5LP374o

Paro is a challenging approach, yes.

All the more reason for the training pilot in the right seat NOT to be filming it on his cellphone, as is seen towards the end of the video. Completely irresponsible.

jellyhead wrote:

BEG2IAH wrote:

I can't believe what I've just seen. Two random people picked up from the street could have landed this poor plane better.

Chill down mate, most likely you don't even know where Paro airport is and obviously you have never ever landed there, let alone in 737. But you are very good in judging others, aren't you? Paro is VFR airport only, is rather hight(elev 7300ft)and is on difficult side of the airports to approach(which is absolutely spectacular and some cockpit jumpseaters can get scared quite a bit) and land. Under normal circumstances pilots have to be specially trained to operate in/out and ultimately checked out and approved by bhutanese DCA. And there is a reason for that. Obviously these indonesian guys in the cockpit flying one-off hum-relief flight received none of it so for them it is a first time. Furthermore there may be a (performance?) reason 737s are seldomly operating in/out of Paro(this may very well be the first 737-300 visiting the place) as Paro is mainly A319 and ATR territory.

While this certainly was miserable approach and landing, it has to be pointed out that Paro airport and it's conditions(hot, high, terrain, winds) are not ordinary pilot's bread and butter. It seems they were heavy and very keen on putting that old baby down so they can avoid going missed. Not an excuse, just saying this is difficult airport to operate to without previous experience and training.

You serious bro? It doesn’t matter if it’s Paro or Heathrow there’s things you don’t do in a jet:

Bank Angle warning - early indication your approach is unstable

Pitch attitude before the “sink rate” is obviously far too low

“Sink Rate - Pull Up” - mandatory Go Around in almost every airline

Aircraft sinking fast and thrust isn’t immediately applied

Aircraft lined up to the right of the runway over the threshold

No flare, probable nose wheel touchdown,

Here’s a longer video of the incident:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_contin ... =emb_title

The pilot on the jumpseat who is filming seems to be the one issuing orders. One pilots apologises “sorry, sorry” to what appears to be his superior after landing. This may be a sign of the cultural tendency of Indonesians to not speak up and not challenge superiors. My thought is at least one “pilot” (I use that term loosely) on the flight deck would have had to have concerns with the approach but was too scared to speak up, maybe they had been instructed to get these vaccines to Bhutan as soon as possible, otherwise they would be fired.

Scary to watch this. No crew should treat their aircraft like this. The banking, the brutal touch down, the unstable approach. They will destroy the aircraft in no time. Hopefully nobody gets killed.

fsnuffer wrote:

aviationjunky wrote:

Can you imagine seeing the aircraft trying to land from the ground? I'm sure it looked crazy from all angles.

No need to imagine

https://youtu.be/siCo5LP374o

Not the same aircraft nor incident whatsoever, that's a 737-200 in the video evident by the lack of the wedge tail and the glorious sound of JT8Ds.

Paro is a very tricky airport where even an aborted landing can be tricky, especially with the aircraft the size of a 738 loaded to the brim.

InnsbruckFlyer wrote:

What on earth were the pilots doing? And can anyone identify where this is? As stated in the article, the craft is PK-YGW, flying for an Indonesian cargo airline.

https://www.airlineratings.com/news/inc ... n-airline/

Reminds me of the „not good, not terrible“-scene from the Chernobyl series.

ok guys, if you wreck this plane on your weekly approach into Paro, without dying, you will get an almost new used One from our insurance.

--
Hold my beer, and film, Buddy

jellyhead wrote:

Chill down mate, most likely you don't even know where Paro airport is and obviously you have never ever landed there, let alone in 737. But you are very good in judging others, aren't you?
...
While this certainly was miserable approach and landing, it has to be pointed out that Paro airport and it's conditions(hot, high, terrain, winds) are not ordinary pilot's bread and butter. It seems they were heavy and very keen on putting that old baby down so they can avoid going missed. Not an excuse, just saying this is difficult airport to operate to without previous experience and training.

I know where Paro is and I know it's a very challenging airport, but that's irrelevant.

Why is this pilot flying like someone informed him mid-flight that he will be landing there? Are you trying to tell me that despite all his thorough preparation and planning his approach looked like this? And all that while flying vaccines?

What do you think was this pilot's plan if he missed that runway? Crash or go around?

zeke wrote:

Dreamflight767 wrote:

Sorry. Circling was the wrong term. I thought you had to be VMC by PR708 overflew the airport and made a 180 degree turn back to RY15...again VMC/VIS APP. But I guess you can land RY33 too. I just thought the crossing restrictions were so high, you won't have enough distance to get to RY33.

It’s a RNAV(RNP), final descent starts at PR712 at 11800, the Cat C DH is 10740, 3376 ft above the runway. From before PR710 to the runway it’s visual for terrain clearance.

So from the chart, what info. indicates where visual starts?

N47 wrote:

aviationjunky wrote:

Can you imagine seeing the aircraft trying to land from the ground? I'm sure it looked crazy from all angles.

Check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siCo5LP374o

It seems like ground crew wasnt sure if they just witnessed a crash.

Jesus christ...what a load of non-sense...the inside conpit video was from Paro (Bhutan)...that one you posted its from Wamena, Indonesia....only a few miles away

InnsbruckFlyer wrote:

Is anyone familiar with the 737 Classic flight deck? After they slam down, two red lights at the center above where the EICAS would be light up. What does that mean and is it normal?

Game Over.
Insert Next Coin.....

Dreamflight767 wrote:

So from the chart, what info. indicates where visual starts?

The DH (Decision Height), if you have visual reference continue to land, if not, there is an equally complicated procedure for the missed approach.

Search for the YouTube video „Boeing 737 hard landing 1“ and you see someone from the jumpseat giving instructions. You can even see his arm.

Landings always looks way harder than they are in reality, when filmed with a hand held phone or camera.

I'd love to see footage from a fixed GoPro.

(I'm not saying this was a soft landing by any standards)

That guy is really behind the plane. Poor Stick and rudder skills.

This reminds me of US-Bangla Airlines flight 211 (Ironically their flight code is BS) I just saw it on Air Crash Investigation.

Pilot almost flew the plane INTO the control tower.

See insane footage here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzBybEaZqq4

InnsbruckFlyer wrote:

Is anyone familiar with the 737 Classic flight deck? After they slam down, two red lights at the center above where the EICAS would be light up. What does that mean and is it normal?

Those are the "REVERSER UNLOCKED" lights, they illuminate to let the crew know the reversers are unlocked, whether commanded or not. As they turned on during the landing, it's from the pilot deploying the TRs.

I think the issue here isn’t so much the hard landing, which can happen to the best of us on a bad day, but the astonishingly unstable approach.

To all those saying ‘all they needed was a bit more flare and they’d have been fine’ - the fact is that they should never have been in the position to flare, an approach that unstable should unquestionably have been a go around after (or even before) the first EGPWS alert. I honestly don’t think any professional airline pilot could reach any other conclusion, and to any amateur who thinks they were ok to continue should have a Google of stabilised approach criteria. Yes Bhutan’s missed approaches are complicated, but they’re there for a reason.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there’s a CRM / cockpit gradient issue here, I’m sure I can hear a ‘can we make it captain’ comment from one of the team who might well have wanted to call for a missed approach but been unwilling to speak up more firmly.

DUSdude wrote:

That guy is really behind the plane. Poor Stick and rudder skills.

I think it is less about a lack of stick and rudder skills that an airline pilot should possess, and much more about flying beyond the envelop that an airline pilot should put themselves in. The combination of low airspeed, thin air due to elevation, low altitude above the terrain, and high turn rates leave very little margin for error.

I pointed out upthread that the responsiveness of an airplane is very slow under those conditions, and the pilot flying can be seen adjusting his control inputs well ahead of when it becomes apparent they are necessary. I suspect he has decent to good handling skills, but he's flying well outside of what should be normal experience, so he even though he was anticipating the aircraft, he still ended up behind it.

I tend to think what he fundamentally was behind on was not really the plane, but the required flight path for this approach. He ended up behind the plane because he tried to recover the flight path instead of going around after coming in high and wide, even when it meant pushing into a difficult to control flight regime.

tallis wrote:

an approach that unstable should unquestionably have been a go around after (or even before) the first EGPWS alert.

I'm tempted to say before the video even started. From what I am reading, the altitude and turn checkpoints for this approach are critical parameters. The tight turn and apparently deliberate high sink rate strongly suggest to me they were high and late starting the final turn.

This video was LITERALLY no different than me landing a 737 in Flight Simulator as a kid. I mean good lord.

Mega oof. Nose low touchdowns seem to be endemic to this particular carrier.

DUSdude wrote:

That guy is really behind the plane. Poor Stick and rudder skills.

Not really. His maintenance of the centreline, approach path, sink rate and touchdown point is horrible, but the often misused term “stick and rudder skills” is not the underlying cause of this incident.

This is a failure of decision making, for not making an obvious decision to go around at the about 4 times is become obvious the approach was unstable.

It’s a failure of leadership that one pilot on the flight deck in the jumpseat was seemingly pushing the two pilots in front to continue an unstable approach.

It’s a failure of teamwork that a junior pilot didn’t speak up and demand a go around, maybe because he was culturally intimidated by a superior or the company had said their jobs would be at risk if they didn’t deliver this cargo on time.

It’s a failure of the airline’s training and checking system and their management to develop a safe culture, and instead develop an unsafe culture where their pilots believe they can land safely off that approach and don’t need to go around.

This incident is a human factors nightmare.

[*]

Max Q wrote:

As bad as it was it’s even more impressive to see it done so well by the Pilots of Druk Air

And why not the ones at Bhutan Airlines also?

a36001 wrote:

zeke wrote:

9252fly wrote:

It would help to know which airport it was and what the weather conditions were at the time. It is Indonesia after all and it was a cargo flight thankfully. I almost got the sense and impression the pilots were going through the motions as if were not something they hadn't done before at that particular airport.

Paro, it is a special authorisation required airport. Very difficult approach, especially if you are not used to manoeuvring at the slow speeds required to meet the turn radius.

So if it is a special authorization required airport, with a very difficult approach, you would expect the airlines most senior or highly experienced pilots would be allocated that flight. Says a lot about the standards of that airline when their senior flight crews (assuming) think its ok to have their mobile (cell) phone on their person and filming the landing in stead of actually assisting in flying the plane into such a challenging approach.

Why were they speaking English to each other? A mixed crew from different companies (and countries)? It apparently was a humanitarian delivery of vaccine so was a Paro authorized captain among the crew, just not the PF or PIC? Why didn't Bhutan Airlines or Druk Air fly the vaccine in on a regularly scheduled flight? There's likely more to this than appears in the videos.

Aaron747 wrote:

aeroc wrote:

The Captain was in the right seat. Right before landing you can see the 4 stripes and he also has his hand (not hand because his other one was holding his phone) on the yoke and probably should have taken over before the pilot flying broke the airframe but he didn't seem to concerned since he was saying "Be carful, don't worry right at the beginning of the video.

I'm guessing the pilot flying was training to get his private license??? Who knows maybe getting you private in a 737 is possible in Indonesia?

What in the world are you talking about? In irregular operations it is not uncommon to send a crew with two captains.

My second statement was a joke man.....calm down! My first statement simply meant that the captain in the right seat was probably a training captain just by the way he was talking to the other pilot.

hivue wrote:

Why didn't Bhutan Airlines or Druk Air fly the vaccine in on a regularly scheduled flight?

AFAIK TRI-Mg Intra has a kind of contract with several entities such as RED CROSS and similar to do medevac, relief and hospital flights along all Asia...it also says that on their Wikipedia page.
My 22 cents...cheers

Typical Indonesian hard landing. Reminds me of my Denpasar-Dili (Timor Leste) flight. Whole cabin whacked out of their seats and bounced twice. What can I say.

Here's a fairly detailed take on the incident from Mentour Pilot on YouTube. There's a guide pilot on board who's familiar with the airport, riding the jump seat. He's the one giving the instructions. Also explains why they're speaking English.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tga6fn6nXI

Well, as the famous old saying goes, any landing you can walk way from.....

What I don't understand is why they are using a 737 for this.

The COVID vaccines come in boxes with around 975 viles, each vile with 5 doses. They have a population of around 12,000 people there, two doses each that is 24,000 doses. Lets say they also get some surrounding area people in and need 34,000 doses (around 17,000 people).

Each box has 975x5=4875 doses, 34,000/4875=6.9 boxes, round up to 7 boxes.

Each box has a weight of 70 lb, total load 490lb/222 kg

Hardly can justify a 737 for that job.