CFIT

[Doc]

CFIT......."Controlled" Flight Into Terrain. Now, isn't that a nice warm and fuzzy term? Thank you Transport Canada for yet another "catch-all" term that relieves everyone of the tedious job of coming up with a "real" reason for an accident.

Lets dissect the term. Well, the "controlled" part of it, at least.
Controlled, at least to me, conjures up images of an aircraft under compete control. ie., it's where it should be, in time and space. The driver has complete mastery over his domain. He IS where he SHOULD be. Once he is below sector, or published altitudes, once he is off published headings during a procedure, he is no longer "in control" of his aircraft. Therefore, the aircraft is no longer in "controlled" flight. In my book, the way I look at it, most CFIT accidents are not a result of "controlled flight", but something very different. The aircraft is not being "controlled". It's pilot is wandering off smelling the roses, and taking the airplane along with him/her.
Transport Canada would have us believe that only an aircraft that hits the ground due to some catastrophic structural failure is not in "control". Or an aircraft that impacts mother earth in a spin, or inverted is not in "control". That's just too much of a catch-all term. To me, at least.
We've been trained to believe that every accident involving a.....botched go-around, descent below limits, overweight situation, icing, .. running, falling asleep at the controls, running out of fuel, buzz jobs, distraction in the cockpit, and a host of others, as long as the aircraft impacts the ground in a more or less wings level condition, "Controlled" Flight Into Terrain. I'm calling Bull Shit on the term.
Thoughts?

[Rockie]

Not disagreeing with you Doc, but CFIT is a worldwide term and I don't believe Transport Canada can take credit for it. Plus they had to have some term describing a perfectly serviceable aircraft being flown into the ground and there are just too many causes to simply name it "buffoonery", although as you rightly point out in some cases that definitely is the more apt description.

[Doc]

Not disagreeing with you Doc, but CFIT is a worldwide term and I don't believe Transport Canada can take credit for it. Plus they had to have some term describing a perfectly serviceable aircraft being flown into the ground and there are just too many causes to simply name it "buffoonery", although as you rightly point out in some cases that definitely is the more apt description.

"Buffoonery"!!! Now I've got to clean the coffee off my keyboard...thank you!

[FL_CH]

Being in "control" of something is not a guarantee of the quality of said controlling.

Once he is below sector, or published altitudes, once he is off published headings during a procedure, he is no longer "in control" of his aircraft.

Who is in control then? Who has the ability to recover from the dangerous situation by making appropriate control inputs?

"Controlled" Flight Into Terrain. Now, isn't that a nice warm and fuzzy term?

Not for me. It's actually a pretty evil term to my ears. Whenever I read an accident report, I always try and relate it to myself, and think if I am doing all I can to avoid one like it. CFIT usually means a whole lot of subtle errors that can easily happen to me if I'm not careful.

[pika]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled ... to_terrain

All you ever wanted to know about CFIT.

[cdnpilot77]

I guess the controlled part would have to simply be that the pilot is "controlling" or manipulating the controls of the aircraft.

From wiki: Controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) describes an accident in which an airworthy aircraft, under pilot control, is unintentionally flown into the ground, a mountain, water, or an obstacle.[1] The term was coined by engineers at Boeing in the late 1970s.[2] The pilots are generally unaware of the danger until it is too late.

That doesnt sound to me like a pilot/airplane in "control"

Buffoonery Flight Into Terrain - BFIT: rockie I think you just coined a new term well done . Have you seen the Transport video where the guys load up a 206 amphib several hundred pounds over gross and decide to chase around moose after their fishing trip and fly the airplane right into the trees and captured through a dash mounted video camera? Thats BFIT in full effect!

[pika]

I'll take a stab...

"Controlled" may be referring to the aircraft being within normal operating parameters. No excessive pitch or bank and appropriate airspeed.

[Doc]

I'll take a stab...

"Controlled" may be referring to the aircraft being within normal operating parameters. No excessive pitch or bank and appropriate airspeed.

Of course, that's exactly what it means (give or take). I just think it's too "catch all".

[CID]

Here's some little-known information for you Doc. Transport Canada didn't coin the term. It was NASA who did much of the ground work (pardon the pun) regarding this sort of accident. And CFIT wasn't NASA's first choice. The "C" in CFIT came from a very strong pilot lobby mainly from the unions representing them.

They did that to deflect direct blame for what they considered a deficiency in the terrain avoidance systems and not failure to maintain situation awareness.

For better or worse, the studies resulting in the development of better systems and eventually the upcoming mandate for TAWS in Canada due some time in December.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

Yes the term controlled flight into terrain is a world wide acronym.....but it really sanitizes what actually happened.

Maybe " inadvertent " flight into terrain would better describe it.

For sure these accidents are generally the result of poor decision making or just plain stupid decision making on the part of the pilot/'s.

[old_man]

Maybe " inadvertent " flight into terrain would better describe it.

As oppose to all those times when pilots fly into terrain on purpose? (I see landing as flying onto terrain)

I, myself, have no problem with term. It describes the end result of a long series of actions, or inactions. I am always more interested as to why it thundered in. Call it whatever you want, I just want to know why the pilot turned his perfectly good aircraft into a lawn dart.

[Nark]

LSAFIT

Loss of Situational Awareness Flight Into Terrain was much to long.

[Big Pistons Forever]

How about ISBY (inadvertent suicide by airplane) ?

Personally I think CFIT is a pretty good description of what happened, the billion dollar question is always why did it happen. The possibilities are a very long list ranging from deliberate willful pilot stupidity, to some very subtle and ambiguous equipment failures and defy a one size fits all descriptor.

[Nark]

The important thing is that from these accidents, improvements have been made.

Case in point:
After the Cali Columbia in which a American Airlines 757 crashed 10 from the top of a mountain.
After combing through the information, the pilot knew something was wrong, applied climb thrust and tried to climb out of the valley. The compounding problem was the spoilers were out (deployed) because of the approach they thought they were on. (They were high when they accepted an NDB allowing a quicker arrival).

The investigators surmised that had the spoilers been stowed, they would have cleared the mountain top.

Now, fast forward a few years, the Engineers at Embraer designed the spoilers to automatically stow in the event of three things:
1) Thrust lever angle is greater than 70* (
2) Flaps are selected greater than 2
3) If airspeed falls below 180

Basically, if a go-around is needed, they'll auto stow/retract.

This marvelous system stemmed from that crash.

[iflyforpie]

'Controlled' means capable of control. It seems pretty unambiguous to me in context. I suppose that taking it too literally, every landing is a CFIT.

Is this something we need to 'dumb down' Doc?

[Rockie]

This marvelous system stemmed from that crash.

Not really Nark. Airbus had it long before that crash.

One of the annoying things about your Embraer is the spoilers retracting automatically when the wheel speed is below 45 kts/5 seconds. There is no reason for it and that feature probably contributes to the lousy braking on a wet runway toward the end of the rollout.

[KK7]

IMHO, Controlled refers to the state the pilot/crew is in, that is they believe they were in control at the time of the crash. You're right in reality they were not in control as they had lost situational awareness, but in the crew's mind, they were not in control. In the case of the A330 over the Atlantic crashing in a stalled condition, I bet the crew did not believe they were in control. Someone skidding off the end of a wet runway and crashing into a ravine probably didn't think they had control. Turning to an incorrect fix, or descending to to the wrong altitude, the crew were not aware of the mistake, and believed they were in control until the last second or less.

I think the term makes you think. When you're flying along and you feel confident that you are where you are supposed to be, just remember that many lives have been lost on the same thought.

[Nark]

This marvelous system stemmed from that crash.

Not really Nark. Airbus had it long before that crash.

One of the annoying things about your Embraer is the spoilers retracting automatically when the wheel speed is below 45 kts/5 seconds. There is no reason for it and that feature probably contributes to the lousy braking on a wet runway toward the end of the rollout.

I stand corrected.
The older 135/145 doesn't have this. I was jumpseating one day when the guys got slam dunked, then leveedl off. Captain said "man this thing is sluggish" "the boards are out..."

I think your right about wheel speed, but I need to dig in the POH when I get home.
There's also something funny about the brakes, but my memory is cloudy, when it comes to landing as well.

[Nark]

RE: 170/190

After digging into a cheat-sheet binder I have, the spoilers retract at speeds below 45 knots for 5 seconds.

You can land standing on the brakes, as they are inhibited for 3 seconds after WOW. Also anti-skid is disabled below 10 knots. I blame all flat spots on the captain...

I don't know much about the A320, but by comparison the 170 series is copied after it, with a tweak here and there. I'd like to see how much different the A320 NEO will be, other than the engines.

I'll end the the thread hijack now...

[GoinNowhereFast]

What does it matter what they call it? The point is why did it happen and how do we prevent it from happening again?

[CID]

There has always been a great deal of focus on the role of the spoilers in the Cali 757 accident. I've hear all the debates between the Boeing and Airbus camps but all it does is take away focus from the cause of the accident which is simply loss of situational awareness. Even the fact that they contacted terrain inadvertantly is secondary.

The whole thing started with an ambiguous nav-aid ident and a failure to validate the navigation information given. If they weren't in a mountainous region there would have been no crash and no loss of life but there would still have been loss of situational awareness.

TAWS was a techincal solution to improving protection against one specific catastrophic result of loss of situational awareness. Just don't tell that to the lawyers representing pilots unions.

[Rockie]

The most surprising thing about Cali is not that the crew got "lost", but that even after realizing they weren't where they thought they were they continued the descent into known high terrain for a considerable period of time until it was too late.

[iflyforpie]

Just as the Cali incident might have been avoided if it were a digital Airbus product, Air France 296 might have been avoided if it were an analog Boeing product.

But in both cases critical errors were made well before the crash.