Mountain Explorer

Anyone know if AC has taken any actions whatsoever to prevent this from happening again?

Bohemian1

At 01:03 in the video, you can even see where PAL115 turned on their landing lights.

CZAMFlyer

AC nearly landed at the wrong airport in BC in 2003 when conducting a visual approach. Company-specific approach procedures to that airport were then written to prevent a similar occurrence.

AC nearly landed at the wrong airport in BC in 2003 when conducting a visual approach. It would seem they haven't learned much since.

Troopers

More info on NTSB website: https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-rele...R20180502.aspx

Mountain Explorer

Interview with the pilot makes many, many references to fatigue: Some examples:

"Prior to the descent, (the pilots) discussed any threats with the approach, as required in their SOPs . Some of the threats they discussed was that it was getting late and that they would “keep an eye on each other.”

"(The pilot) did not report the incident until the next day because he was very tired and it was very late."

"(The pilot) would have liked the lights to be a little bit brighter, for fatigue, as it was 0300 body clock time."

"(The night before, the pilot) fell asleep between 0200 and 0300 EDT. He has children in the house and was awakened at 0745 EDT the day of the event" He got no further sleep before the flight

https://dms.ntsb.gov/public/61000-61...112/614632.pdf

oopl

Scary video and yea I guess similar to honking the horn/ flashing lights at the last minute. What else could they have done?

longtimeflyin

I must admit that for the longest time I have sided with Air Canada and given them the benefit for the doubt but now I am more annoyed than ever at how close this ended up being.

This is not the fault of the pilot but I really feel there should be some way for a pilot to signal to the company that for fatigue related reasons that he is unable to operate a shift without severe consequences to his career. After all, I believe that is what ACPA is for, but then again I do know of an Air Canada FO for the 320 series jets (very close friend) that goes on and on about how useless ACPA is, so maybe this sort of incident will repeat itself which does quite frankly boil my blood. This is a case of two senior airmen flying for Air Canada who were well aware that fatigue would impact them, which then they both took steps to watch out for each other, and still they almost took the lives of hundreds if not thousands of people.

Something needs to change here but I suspect nothing will, until Air Canada pilots end up killing a bunch of innocent people which then impacts Air Canada stock price and then their management does something about this.

This is the same company that has two flight members operating on TATLs when US operators mandate 3 members. I have always flown Air Canada because of their safety record, but lately I have started to doubt myself.

I much prefer the service of other airlines but I have always ranked Air Canada's safety levels higher than those carriers and quite frankly while I do not fear flying at all, my fear level is higher when on an Asian carrier (say Asiana) as an example. I feel that this is now irrational, sadly.

kennycrudup

I watched this thinking the large white blobs were the lights of the other aircraft and thinking "Well it's bad, but he wasn't that close", then ...
... I re-watched this about 6 times trying to figure out what you were seeing here, and when I finally found it- upper left corner- ...!

The Lev

Huh? Whose fault is it that the pilot only got ~5 hours sleep (and failed to report concerns about fatigue prior to taking command of the aircraft)?

Reality is that pilots are often put in the situation of landing an aircraft past their bed time - it's part of the job and they need to come to work prepared to deal with it.

I'm not sure if one can ascertain from the pilot responses to their pre-landing checklist whether "fatigue" was a routine element typical of pilots landing at that hour on the west coast having flown from an eastern time zone or something where they were noting being unusually fatigued.

Transpacificflyer

Pilot fatigue: The safety concern pilots around the world keep raising and which is ignored by the airlines. It is time for the regulators to act.
Time to listen to the pilots and the safety experts and to do something now.

tracon

I'm surprised the pilot's name has been released to the public. Maybe we could start a thread.
Have you flown with captain........

Of course he was fatigued. He wasn't used to working.
Look at his work history.
This is some serious even by AC standards. Assuming he wasn't ill, he's averaged 25 hours flying per month with AC.

His date of hire was February 15, 1988 ...... He estimated he had about 8,500 hours of flight experience since being employed with Air Canada

Jagboi

You math is wrong. Date of Hire in 1988 was with Canadian. He estimates has 8500 hours with AC since the merger in 2000. Lets assume he gets 4 weeks a year vacation and counting stat holidays I'll say he flies 11 months a year. The incident was in July, so call it 16.5 years, and with vacation is 182 months. 8500/182= 46.7 flying hours per month. Consider a round trip YYZ-SFO that effectively takes 2 days gets you 11.5 flying hours, it takes a while to build up hours.

He may may underestimated his AC hours too, we don't know what the true figure is.

Mountain Explorer

Only 5 feet of separation!!

I've been pouring thru all the data that was released. From the flight data recorder, AC759 was at an altitude of 60 feet the moment it passed over PAL115. The tail of PAL115 is 55 feet high

Jagboi

Wow, they really did lose situational awareness, they thought they were at 400'. Near misses don't get any nearer than this.

flybit

LOL the pilot didnt turn up to work rested, and its the airlines fault?

Cearly the pilots unions need to get rid of pilots who dont sleep and then fly a plane.