Isn't this just improper procedure? I don't see how conditions played a part. If the PIC was on instruments, airspeed should have been in the scan and the aircraft in a stable decent. When it is time to decide, one should look up and decide. I would think it should not take more than a second to decide. That should not be enough time to slow to stall speed. If you don't see it, go missed. I'm still studying this, so please let me know if this is not typical or most of real ifr flying...
That's the theory, but in practice it doesn't always happen that way. Transitioning from instruments to visual can be disorienting, and in low-is conditions, the runway is rarely as easily visible as it is when you're just on the hood until mins, take off the hood (remember, vis is probably 10+ miles and bright sun when practicing), and suddenly the runway is clearly there.
This is where two-pilots can help a great deal in enhancing safety. One is heads down on the instruments, dedicated to that. The other is heads up looking for the runway, dedicated to that.
The point I'm trying to make is that in the situation you've described the crash didn't happen because the pilot hadn't set personal minimums higher than the published ones, it happened because the pilot lost control of the airplane. I submit that if the clouds were 200 ft higher and the pilot had applied a 200 ft buffer to the published mins, the outcome would have been the same as it's unlikely that another couple hundred feet would have resulted in a successful recovery from the LOC.
I think it's a bit of a chicken and egg question. I certainly agree that couple hundred feet wouldn't have been enough to recover from a loss of control. But the question is why the pilot lost control in the first place. I think most would agree that it would be unlikely that the pilot would have lost control on a visual approach on a bright sunny day. This was a very cloudy, low vis, night approach, and the pilot did lose control. So somewhere in between A and B is the threshold where the pilot went from able to handle the situation to not.
Yes, the NTSB report will likely list the cause as "The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed on approach." The human factors question is "Why?"
That's not how personal mins works unless you divert anytime the reported weather is below the PMs and the reports are always accurate. Otherwise you're left with two possibilities, either of which results in the pilot looking for a runway while flying close to the ground. One has the pilot leveling off in IMC at some altitude above the published mins, and the other has him/her continuing to the published mins in IMC when the clouds are lower than reported.
Weather report accuracy is a big question. At my old home drone it wasn't uncommon for them to report OVC020 and break out at 005. But that's pretty rare overall.
When I was new to instrument flying, I didn't want to fly if it was forecast to be below OVC008, assuming I had an ILS that went down to 002. Yes, it would mean that I would divert or otherwise specifically choose my airports accordingly.
Nowadays, I have no qualms shooting approaches to minimums, at night. I'm sure you're the same. We are also significantly more experienced than the low-time folks.
It is indeed possible that diverting to an airport with a better approach when conditions are close to published mins might reduce the chances for a mishap but even that's not guaranteed. If the pilot is going to lose control on a NP approach slogging along at the 400 ft MDA, why is he any less likely to lose it searching for the runway on an ILS. IMO ILSs aren't any safer or less risky than a VOR approach as long as the airplane remains in control and at a safe altitude.
I don't know what the accident statistics tend to say about that, so I can only guess on conjecture. I would tend to suspect that an ILS or LPV approach would be significantly better than a step-down as far as safety, simply because your plane should be set up for a descent at a given airspeed to stay on the needles and you're going to be lined up well with the runway, plus better lighting (typically). All that helps in the human factors.
Now, many folks will fly a non-precision step-down as just that. They will step down from altitude to altitude, and each time will require some level of power change. Let's say that power change is inadequate and the plane starts slowing down while maintaining altitude, or drops below the published altitude. These configuration changes may be required multiple times.
As for me, I've always found precision approaches easier. Now that the 310 has WAAS and non-precision GPS approaches after the FAF have vertical guide bars, I think that definitely has made flying those approaches easier and safer.
And IMO the thing that adds difficulty on any approach isn't the airplane's proximity to the ground but rather the effects of poor visibility.
Agreed.
That's what leads to pilots letting the plane get slow and/or low when they're trying hard to see a runway or lights. IME a ceiling 25 ft above the published min with 10 miles vis below is a piece of cake compared to a much higher ceiling with visibilities in the half to 1 mile, especially when the approach lighting is minimal or non-existent. Yet when most folks talk about setting personal minimums they tend to think only about altitudes not visibility limits. Now if a pilot adopted a policy of diverting to an approach with a decent ALS whenever the visibility was reported to be less than 3 miles I could see the potential for an improvement in safety.
And that should be part of personal minimums.
I think we're in agreement overall, just looking at it slightly differently.
