Rockie wrote:
I didn't know that. I'm only talking about commercial operations and haven't considered private flights, especially ones carrying no passengers. I haven't thought about that aspect enough to render an informed opinion, although at first blush I don't see why private should be any different. We all operate according to rules we might not agree with but are in place for a reason. This one is clearly safety.
You are living in a 'one size fits all' kind of world, and thinking everybody lives in the same corner you do. I've been around the block in aviation over the years, seen lots of different types of operations. Done floats, done offstrip, done scheduled pax, done scheduled freight, medevac, ad hoc charter, the works. I left aviation full time many years ago, then did 15 years part time for a commercial operator while I built a business in another field. Aviation is NOT a one size fits all world, not by a long shot.
I really think you are WAY off base suggesting the regs need to be changed in a way that would prevent me from even attempting a perfectly safe approach, just because that way doesn't fit into your big jet mindset. I've been around the block enough that my self preservation instinct will trump any aspect of 'get-home-itis', and I dont have the cowboy 'get-er-done' attitude that takes folks into dangerous places with an airplane. Far to little to gain, far to much to lose.
If you want to play the safety card, then do so properly. It would have been dirt cheap for AC to slap a garmin 530 into those airplanes, then put a big sticker on the panel that said 'not approved for IFR', no big expensive STC processes required. Situational awareness problem solved, and those folks would have known they were a mile short of the runway. Maybe instead of trying to hamstring the rest of the industry by increasing minimums for approaches, you should be directing your wrath internally and suggesting that under equipped airplanes should not be doing non precision approaches into marginal conditions at airports where the folks driving aren't really familiar with the locale. The lives of paying passengers are at stake, and it's only thru the good grace of who knows what that nobody died during the incident in this report.
But to come on here and suggest limits need to be changed that will prevent me from doing a safe approach attempt in a well equipped airplane, simply because a couple of AC folks banged up an airplane that wasn't equipped with modern navigation equipment is just wrong. I can safely execute an approach into marginal conditions, the little map on my panel will show me definitively where I am in relation to the runway, and I am quite capable of looking out the window while auto drives to see if there is a runway out there. And I certainly wont let auto blindly drive me into the ground well short of the runway, I have to much to live for to let that happen, it's why the bucks were spent on fancy map displays that show where the airplane is in real time.
I'm no longer involved in the industry as a training pilot, stopped doing that a few years ago, but it is my understanding that recent changes suggested one can no longer do a PPC ride on a 703 airplane not equipped with GPS. I wonder if that is the real change behind the scenes that came about from this incident, and if it also applies in the 705 world. If so, it makes your pandering on increased vis minimums irrelavent, because if gps has become required, then the type of 'loss of situational awareness' event that ended up with a busted airbus in halifax wont happen anymore. With gps on board, this would have been a non event.
