Too Close! Airplane Nearly Lands on HOTEL!

imagine sitting in your hotel room on a tropical island casually looking out through your window and then suddenly realizing that a Boeing 737 is coming straight towards you at an altitude of only 50 feet over the sea this might sound like a movie scene but it actually happened on the island of Saint Martin a few years back and the fascinating story of what led up to it is what I'll be covering today so stay tuned the story of WestJet flight 2652 started on the 7th of March 2017. around midday in Toronto International Airport and what happened on this flight is interesting for a number of different reasons the flight was scheduled as a normal passenger flight going from Toronto Lester B Pearson International Airport in Canada towards Princess Juliana Airport on the island of Saint Martin in the Caribbean Sea Saint Martin is a autonomous country but in the Kingdom of the Netherlands and it shares landmass with sand Martin which is a French overseas collectivity the island is situated in the southern part of the Caribbean Sea to the east of the Dominican Republic and it's a Tropical Paradise with fantastic beaches and Resorts but maybe the most famous feature is mahu Beach which is situated only meters away from Princess Juliana Airport the closeness to the airport means that beach goers will get super close to the landing and departing aircraft closer than almost anywhere else in the world and that has led up to some truly amazing photos and videos over the years something that we will see in this story as well but we'll get to that later now the reason that the airport is situated so close to the beach is not to Delight avgeeks no the real reason is the Steep terrain that rises on the other side of the runway causing some terrain clearance issues for the missed approach segment of the approaching aircraft and that fact will play an important role in this story the pilots that were scheduled to operate this flight were both very experienced the captain had been working for West yet close to 10 years at the time of the flight and had around 14 000 hours of Total time he had flown most of that time on the Boeing 737 which was the type that he was going to command during this incident as well the first officer was almost equally experienced with 12 500 hours of Total time and he had been working for the company little over seven years when this happened the flight from Toronto down to Saint Martin was scheduled to last 4 hours and 24 minutes making it a medium Hall flight but during very civilized hours and both Pilots were well rested before they met up at the airport around one hour prior to the flight the pilots started reviewing the briefing pack that they had received this included the flight plans no thumbs as well as unruled weather which all looked perfectly okay and when they started looking at the destination weather it also looked pretty decent the weather forecast indicated the wind from zero seven zero degrees at 16 knots visibility better than 9 kilometers in light rain showers and a few clouds at 1800 feet scattered clouds at 2 200 feet and another scattered layer at three thousand feet this meant that the visibility and Cloud base was pretty okay and that was important because there were only non-precision approaches available into Saint Martin thank you so what is a non-precision approach then well as the name suggests it's a type of approach with slightly lower Precision than a Precision approach like an ILS for example non-precision approaches are typically based on navades like VOR antennas or NDB beacons but they can also be based on GPS coordinates in which case the approach is referred to as an rnab approach what all of these approaches have in common is that because of their lower position the visibility requirement and minimums which is the lowest altitude that the pilots can descend to before they must see the runway or higher and that's to give the pilots more margins when they fly the approach these higher requirements means in practice that the weather must be better in order for these types of approaches to be flown in the case of Runway one zero instant Martin the available approaches for a VR approach and an ornav approach and the pilots of this flight were planning to use the rnab the minimum visibility needed to fly that approach was 3600 meters which with the forecast that the pilots now had looked perfectly doable provided that those rain showers wouldn't get much worse so the pilots completed their pre-flight preparation and they decided to carry some extra fuel in case they would need to wait for maybe a shower to pass they then call in that final fuel to the dispatcher and proceeded to brief their four cabin crew members who was going to operate the flight with them the aircraft that they were going to fly was an eight-year-old Boeing 737-800 the same type that I am also flying it was in good working condition with no technical snacks reported and once the crew had arrived to the aircraft the captain looked through the technical logbook and then went outside to complete the pre-flight walkaround whilst the first officer who was going to the pilot flying for the flight started setting up the cockpit the cabin crew meanwhile started boarding the 158 passengers who were booked on the flight and once this was completed the aircraft pushed back and started their engines without any type of issues at time 1137 Atlantic Standard Time the aircraft took off from Toronto Lester B Pearson Airport and started climbing down towards the southeast The Climb was uneventful and after about half an hour the aircraft leved off at its Cruise level flight level 350 which is approximately 35 000 feet during the cruise segment the crew received a few updates regarding the weather at Saint Martin from their aircraft communication and Reporting System also known as a cars the weather report showed continuing easterly winds great visibility some towering cumulus clouds and a temperature of 25 degrees Centigrade this was exactly what the pilots were expecting given the forecast that they had received earlier so it likely didn't cost them any concern during long flights like this we Pilots typically take some on Route weather for airport we will be flying close to in case something would happen but apart from that it's all about doing regular fuel checks fill in and verify times over certain waypoints and talk to our traffic control so that's likely what these Pilots were doing as well about three and a half hours into the flight they started getting close to the top of the sand which is the point where the aircraft's computer calculates that The Descent should start in order to make a nice low drag descent down towards the destination when we're about 100 nautical miles away from this point the pilot monitoring typically starts trying to listen into the destination 80s which stands for automatic terminal information service the 80s will give a weather observation for the airport that we're flying to which we use them to plan set up and breathe for the approach that we're going to fly these automatic weather observations normally updates every 20 to 30 minutes and every new update receives a code letter following the alphabetic order alpha bravo charlie and so on this is so that we can keep track of which information we have listened to and if there has been any updates since we last listened to it when the captain listened to the frequency he was given information Mike recorded at time 1501 the weather was just as they expected where the wind from 0-60 degrees at 18 knots unlimited visibility few clouds at 1400 feet and no other significant weather this was great news for the crew so once the captain had finished writing down the 80s information he took back the radio communication and the control from the first officer in order to let him set up and breathe for the calming approach given the great weather the first officer was planning to do a visual approach into runway 1-0 in Saint Martin a visual approach is flown based on outside visual references and quite often hand flown for practice it's a type of maneuver that most Pilots love to do but like the name suggests it requires the runway and the surrounding environment to be fully inside during the entire maneuver the pilots did remember that there was a risk for rain showers and some slightly worse weather at the time of their arrival so they decided to also prepare for an ornav approach the one I mentioned earlier the minimas were set to the ornav approach Minima of 770 feet likely with a 30 feet correction on top of that and then the routing via the ornament point avaki lessor and mapon was verified in the FMC now I won't go into all of the technical details you need to know whether to fly an RNA approach but there are a few things that are special with this particular approach normally an ornav approach will get vertical guidance from a three degrees digital Glide slope all the way down towards the landing Runway this will give the pilots good guidance from the flight directors after they have disconnected the autopilot but this was not the case on this particular approach now remember how I mentioned the high terrain on the opposite side of the runway in Saint Martin well because of that terrain this Arnav approach didn't have this vertical guidance all the way down to the runway instead the approach procedure finished a few miles out from the runway at a point called mapon also known as the missed approach point from that point the pilots were required to see the runway in order to continue visually and the reason it was constructed this way was the very strict terrain clearance margins that every instrument approach needed to fulfill including the missed approach segment so what were the consequences of this then well if the pilots didn't have the runway clearly inside the automatics disconnected and the flight directors recycled when the aircraft passed mapoon the flight directors would start giving instructions for a right hand climbing turn to four thousand feet as part of the missed approach procedure and of course in that case the approach would not be able to be continued now the crew knew about this Quirk because WestJet had created a specific route brief that highlighted this difference to the crew and this fact will soon become important but before I continue I just want to say a few words about something completely different as a pilot I know firsthand how important it is to have a reliable and secure internet connection when you're traveling and that's why I really recommend you to try out today's sponsor nordvpn with nordvpn you can easily connect to servers all over the world which is perfect for travelers who want to access local content that might be restricted from their current location nordvpn is incredibly easy to use whether you're a tech expert or a complete beginner you can 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ready for descent the controller responded that they could expect to send instructions as soon as they got closer to an ornament Point called slugo and he then also informed them that the active ate this information in Saint Martin was Mike which was the same whether that the pilots had just copied at time 1523 the crew was cleared to design the 4 000 feet and soon after that the controller informed them that there was another aircraft on approach in front of them and that the pilots of that aircraft had reported rain showers on the approach he then clear the aircraft to continue directly to watch the initial approach Point avaki as soon as they had descended through eight thousand feet now even though the controller had now alerted the pilots of rain showers there was no attempt by the crew to check for a new 80s information there is a possibility that things were a bit busy in the cockpit around this time the pilots would be making sure that the cabin was Secure as well as completing some descent procedures so I kind of understand why the captain might have been reluctant to leave the active frequency and check for a new 80s update in any case about one minute after that initial call as the aircraft was descending through 9800 feet about 25 miles away from the airport the controller again called up the crew and advised them that they were now moderate rain showers over the airport but the crew did not acknowledge this information so why didn't they well we can't notice for sure either they missed this call completely because when the aircraft descends to 10 000 feet there are quite a few checks including external lighting pressurization and recall checks that needs to be done and the pilots might have been in the middle of doing them when this call came in there is also a chance that the pilots thought that this information was redundant since he had already told them about the rain showers earlier in any case the controller did not give them the update of the actual visibility now unfortunately we cannot know for sure exactly what was going on in the cockpit at this point because the cockpit voice recorder was not preserved for any part of this incident what we do know is that during the time that this was happening a new at this information had been released information in November in that observation the visibility had dropped to 2 000 meters in moderate rain showers over the airport now those of you who have been paying attention up until now should react to that visibility because do you remember what the minimum visibility for the ornav approach was yes it was 3600 meters so with a visibility of 2000 meter that was now reported it would not be possible to start the rnab approach but the pilots were not informed that this new 80s had been issued nor about the exact visibility of the airport the only thing that they knew and at this point could see with their own eyes was that they were indeed Showers of the approach and Airport and with that in mind they decided to abandon the plan of flying a visual approach and instead focused on the or another approach which they thought was still an option to them at time 1527 and two seconds the controller again told the crew to proceed toward shavaki and a further minute later he cleared them to descent to 2600 feet which was the initial approach altitude for the ornam approach this time the crew responded and read back the clearance as they passed around 15 nautical miles away from the airport the crew selected flaps 1 and flaps 5 and then started reducing their speed they completed the approach checklist and as they were descending through 4900 feet they were cleared by the controller to start the rnf approach into Runway one zero now you might be wondering why the controller cleared them to start the approach in the first place if he knew that the visibility was below Minima well it is actually up to the pilots if they want to start an approach or not the controller can only give them the weather conditions and it's then up to the pilots to follow the rules but in this case The crucial information about the visibility had slipped between the cracks at the same time down on the airport the tower controller was looking outside up until the last few minutes the weather had been fine so the runway lights had been turned off and the only lights who have been active were the populized who gives the aircraft visual descent guidance for the approach the poppies had been set to 30 intensity but as the visibility was now dropping dramatically during the rain shower the tower controller decided to turn on the runway lights the way that he did so was by selecting an automatic night setting on his control panel what this did was to turn on the runway lights at six percent intensity but at the same time the populites which are typically among the first things that we pilot see was reduced back to 10 intensity this was likely not the controller's intention during poor visibility conditions in daylight the intensity of both the runway and the population would have had to be increased significantly well above those levels but there was no guidance in the controller's procedures for what intensity he should be using the aircraft was now about 12 nautical miles out and descending to 3700 feet the controller had again informed the pilots about the moderate rain showers at the airport which the crew had acknowledged but they still didn't know just how bad the visibility actually was at this point the pilots would have set 800 feet as the lowest descent altitude on their mode control panel they would have also selected v-nab Port as their descent mode and made sure that the speed in the event Button had been pushed to enable them to control the speed manually as they were overflying avaki the aircraft started to descend and that was followed by the crew selecting flux 30 and completing the landing checklist now the full Focus from both Pilots was on the approach and trying to establish visual contact with the runway to be able to disconnect before mapoon and that last visual segment that I mentioned before as the boot is ending the aircraft which had just landed ahead of them reported that they had encountered reduced visibility in the rain during the approach but that they had been able to establish visual contact with the runway just before the missed approach point mapoon this was good news for the pilots who had now entered the rain shower and therefore almost couldn't see anything outside of their windshield they were transferred over to the tower controller who cleared them to land but did not inform them of the status of the runway and populates this wasn't something that he was required to do unless the pilots actually asked about it at time 1532 the aircraft descended through 1600 feet with all checks complete they were established in landing configuration and descending with around 700 to 800 feet per minute a perfectly stabilized Approach at this point the pilots could see the shoreline in front of them and to the left but a much more intense shower seemed to be sitting right over and in front of the airport based on the fact that they could clearly see the shoreline and the earlier report from the preceding aircraft the pilots expected to shortly get the runway inside so they decided to continue the approach visually just before reaching the missed approach point the first officer disconnected the autopilot but kept the outer throttle connected he then asked the captain to recycle the flight directors off and then on again as per company procedures and when you do that the flight directors will disappear out of view but they will still be armed in case of a missed approach this also caused the outer throttle to go into armed mode and in that mode the pilots would need to move the throttles manually but again the outer throttle would be there in case of a missed approach almost immediately after the disconnect the first officer lowered the nose slightly from about half of the green nose up to one and a half degree nose down this increased The Descent rate to 1100 feet per minute and as The Descent increased so did the speed the first officer must have noticed this because the trust was now reduced from around 62 percent and one back to 52 to try and reduce that speed now at this point it's worth telling you a bit about how we humans maintain situational awareness basically how we try to accurately perceive the world around us this is typically done in three different stages the first stage is perception this is where we use our senses like sight to perceive our surroundings that's Then followed by the second stage which is comprehension which is when we try to make sense of what we see often based on previous knowledge or training once we have hopefully accurately comprehended the situation comes the third stage which is projection and in the projection stage we start planning how to act based on the situation as we have understood it a great example of that is the way that you interpret your GPS when you're out driving with your car if you see a complex Crossing coming up you will quickly need to try and figure out which one of the roads that you need to take then plan your driving accordingly and also eventually turn now I'm going to guess that there might be more than me out there who have taken the wrong turn in such a situation and ended up having to take a U-turn and go back again well this just goes to show that all three of these stages are prone to different kinds of Errors who can lead this astray and if the error happens in the first stage the perception then it will be really hard to rectify that error until some kind of new stimuli happens that proved that the first perception was actually wrong on the perception stage we are also very prone to something called expectation biased that's When You're Expecting for example to see something at a given point and when that doesn't happen your brain will automatically start looking for something that looks kind of like the thing that you were expecting to see this also happens to pilots and what happens next is a great example of that the aircraft was now dropping slightly below the 3 degree standard Descent Part but since the flight directors were recycled there was no guidance on the primary flight displays of the pilots that could highlight this fact there was also Novena path guidance on the navigation display because since the aircraft had passed mapon the rest of the approach was supposed to be completed visually as I explained before now this obviously begs the question were the pilots not visual at this point since they had elected to continue well it turns out that they thought that they were as the aircraft overview mapon the first officer had identified what he thought was the runway a much brighter whitish silhouette just passed the shoreline in the area where he expected to see it the aircraft was inside heavy rain at this point and it would have been quite hard to make out the details between the Viper Strokes when he identified Runway shape it had been slightly off to the left of the current track so he turned the aircraft no slightly toward it in order to align properly with what he perceived as the center line he couldn't see neither the runway lights or the populites but he didn't ask for the brightness to be increased as he was now concentrating on the runway in these very tricky weather the aircraft was still descending with a higher than normal decent rate and when they passed 500 feet the controller called them up and gave them the final wind 0-60 degrees 14 knots costing 25. now those of you who have followed my channel for a while know that an unbreathed descent rate exceeding 1000 feet per minute below 1000 feet is normally considered an unstabilized approach and should lead to a go around but the captain who had been monitoring the approach must have also been looking outside at this point to try and make sense of what it is that he was seeing it is also very possible that the bad weather and marginal visual references had increased the workload severely for both the captain and the first officer leading to degraded situational awareness and a bit of tunnel vision and this might be why the captain didn't call for a go around anyway the aircraft continued to descend and when they passed about one nautical mile away from the runway they suddenly exited the rain shower and the visibility sharply improved that's when they realized that the runway that they had been aiming towards was actually a wide painted Hotel on the shoreline just to the north of the actual Runway the shape of the hotel with a long rectangular front part pointing in the runway Direction and a higher part of the poor and indeed gave it a similar geometric shape as the runway especially in poor visibility and on top of that it's white color meant that it stood out visually much more than the actual Runway did since the runway lights were at low intensity this meant that the crew now recognized that they had deviated laterally from the approach part but since they were over the opaque water they weren't immediately able to assess their true height the first officer initially increased thrust to about 75 and won and started turning towards the real Runway still descending with a descent rate of about 860 feet per minute at time 1534 and 3 seconds the aircraft was about 63 feet of the water when the first too low terrain caution was issued now this is still not a hard gpws pool up warning and in the WestJet manual as well as in the Boeing Guidance the crew was still allowed to try and Visually assess the terrain in threat and then adjust their position the first officer did so and pitched up to about four degrees nose up but the aircraft still continued to descend leading to another too low terrain caution the aircraft was now at 49 feet over the water and when the crew finally decided to go around the lowest radio altitude recorded was 39 feet that's about 12 meters over the sea surface this descent and go around was captured on camera by several people both on the famous Beach and also from inside of the aircraft and that made for some quite spectacular headlines in the days after the incident the pilots now executed a normal go around and then entered a holding pattern in which they stayed for the next 45 minutes after that the visibility had increased enough for another approach with loan this time the aircraft landed safely and without any further issues now you might be wondering why the gpws system took so long to issue a warning well this is because of how close the aircraft was at the time of the incident to The Landing Runway you see to avoid nuisance warnings close to The Landing the EG PWS has a kind of cone that extends from The Landing Runway within which no warnings will be issued in the case of a non-precision approach this area is known as a Terrain clearance floor or TCF if the aircraft detects that it's descending below the TCF it will start to issue a warning which is exactly what it did but in this case they were so close to the runway that the TCF was very low this event was reported by the crew but it wasn't initially assessed as a serious event by WestJet and because of that the aircraft continued to operate and both the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder was sadly overwritten fortunately though the quick access recorder the qar was able to record and keep the same data for much longer and it was still available to download when this investigation started as a result of the investigation into this incident WestJet published information about the event to all of their Crews and they also included it in the recurrent training a new briefing was made for Princess Juliana Airport including risk for false visual identification of the runway and a proposal for a new ornav approach with full vertical guidance down to the runway was submitted to the authorities at Saint Martin they were also recommendations to give the ATC Tower controllers more guidance on Runway lighting intensity to use during different visibilities as well as some words to the airline and Boeing to consider implementing the EG P WS manufacturer's guidance as always initiate a claim if a gpws caution is initiated rather than the current guidance which allows pilots to try and rectify the situation according to their own view this was a fascinating story to research and it just shows how vulnerable we humans are to visual Illusions and misinterpretations you can check out more videos in my series up here and I hope that I've earned a subscription from you if you want to support the work that I do then consider sending a super thanks get yourself a t-shirt or a mug using the link in the description below or you can also join my fabulous patreon crew I hope to see you in one of my patreon hangouts very soon have an absolutely fantastic day and I'll see you next time bye

Channel: Mentour Pilot

Views: 1,075,948

Keywords: mentour pilot, full episode, story, story telling, full episodes, documentary, boeing 737-800, boeing, boeing 737, 737, sint maarten, island, low, approach, hotel, roof, close, toronto, pearson, ontario, close call

Id: 218DQqAVkoQ

Length: 28min 11sec (1691 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 25 2023