David Megginson writes: > Curtis L. Olson writes: > > > So did one of the pilots think they saw the runway and let > > themselves decend too low and by the time they realized that wasn't > > the runway they were too low, too slow, out of whack, maybe a > > little ice??? > > Not if they had a serviceable DME, unless they completely lost > situational awareness.
Of course this is all complete speculation, but I hear it is common practice that one pilot has his eyes inside the cockpit and the other watches outside. There is a VOR/DME at the airport, but no ILS. Since this is a non-precision approach, it's unlikely that you'll pop out of the clouds directly in line with the runway. Also (again this is speculation) this is up on the MN iron range so there are significant iron ore deposits around. I have no idea if that could have factored in, but it can't help if you are trying a last minute DG adjustment. So anyway, if the pilot looking out the windows *thought* he saw the airport, and they headed for it visually... No one really knows of course, and other planes flew in the area before and after the crash, so the conditions weren't unreasonable. Weather was crappy that day across the whole state, and the ceilings were close to minumums, but that should have all been within the capabilities of the aircraft and the pilots. Did they break out of the clouds and have to dodge a flock of geese? It's that time of year here where they are heading south. It's all too wierd. It seems similar to driving by an automobile accident and trying to figure out a set of circumstances that would have led up to the vehicles getting to where they were. I guess whatever happened, whether it was mechanical, or pilot error, it happened too late in the approach and too close to the ground for them to successfully recover. In that sense, weather couldn't have been helpful. It's all very sad. At the very least you hope that they are able to figure out what caused the crash so we can prevent anything like it from happening again. Curt. -- Curtis Olson IVLab / HumanFIRST Program FlightGear Project Twin Cities [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Minnesota http://www.menet.umn.edu/~curt http://www.flightgear.org _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
