Experienced female pilot for the Smartwings maneuver over Skyros: In my 16 years of career, I have not met a pilot to whom this has happened

I would like to say in advance that I only know about it what was discussed in the media. I do not have a complete flight profile available. To sum it up, the airport is not entirely simple. There is an approach from only one direction of the runway and it is not completely in the axis of the runway. As I learned, the pilots were flying there for the first time and could not have had experience with this airport.

I don’t know why, maybe because of the wind, they decided to land on the opposite runway, which does not have a so-called instrument approach. This is normally done and there are two ways to get to the track. One of them is the visual approach chosen by the pilots.

At a certain height, when the crew is still on the instrument approach or on the arrival track, i.e. when they still have a specific navigation guidance, they will leave the navigation guidance and decide to do a certain maneuver only with the help of looking at the ground. For example, with the aim of getting on the opposite track.

They lost visual contact as they flew into the cloud. Now I’m just speculating, but they didn’t have to estimate the size of the cloud.

It is a well-known fact that when you are above a cloud that is “thin in height”, you can see down. But when you fly into it, you are no longer looking straight down, but forward, and the visibility is completely different.

But the primary thing is that if they decided on a maneuver that is visual, they certainly knew well that the necessary condition for this maneuver is not to lose contact with the ground.

Apparently, they had some “short-circuited” idea that the cloud would fly by and see behind it again. Unfortunately, that did not happen.

Another thing is that they could have tried to make a turn before the cloud. For such a fast aircraft, we are talking about a turning radius in the order of hundreds of meters, kilometers. They could also have underestimated the distance of the cloud and thought it would turn in front of them.

But these are speculations, unfortunately the cloud is not visible on the radar and we do not know exactly where it was.

If the cloud cover was below some level set by the airport, they would not be allowed to maneuver. But if we look at the weather that day, it doesn’t look so bad.

It was cloudy at three thousand feet, that should have been enough for this maneuver. They probably flew into some kind of cloud that was forming near the mountain.

It should be noted that the cloudiness over the airport is measured at one specific point. An air traffic controller is not qualified to look out the window and decide if he thinks it will work or not.

This is already a big crisis. First of all, the correct procedure is that as soon as you reach the cloud during the visual approach, you immediately start the so-called failed approach. This means you will start to climb. You don’t wait to fly through the cloud.

EGPWS is already the last rescue, it reacts seconds before the impact. In the sixteen years of my career, I don’t know a single pilot to whom this would happen during commercial flying, only on simulators.

I would agree with the first part about the investigation of the internal operator. European legal standards are set so that the office only supervises the internal safety management system. I don’t really know what punishment the pilot expected, but if the office was satisfied, then it’s probably fine.

I would strongly disagree with that. That’s like saying: He crashed, but the airbags worked, so everything is fine.

EGPWS is not really a system for daily use, but a system of last resort.

I think it’s a little inexperience. Director Jágr is a pilot himself, but in a different category of aircraft.

I believe anyone who flies large airliners would tell you that this is a big deal. The very loss of visual contact, whether there is a mountain or not, is a safety hazard.

The second aspect is that this did not happen by mistake or accident. The crew knew that they were going into the cloud, and they had to know that they should start climbing in the cloud right away, and not until the system sounds.

If this plays a role, then the office is not performing its role correctly. I don’t have confirmation that it was the chief pilot, but if so, the office should say that each captain might have had adequate additional training. But if it was someone so experienced and in such a role, it is definitely not enough.

The office should make it clear that this person is not a suitable example and should not hold this position. One of the roles of management is to promote safety in all circumstances. They can’t show that the company cares about security.

It is quite individual. There are authorities that like to hand out fines, there are authorities that believe that a person will correct himself – and that additional training would be fine with them.

In the legal regulation, there is no possibility for the authorities to recall someone, if they did not start the procedure to withdraw the license. It would probably happen that the office would openly negotiate with the responsible manager about the fact that the person in question should resign from his position – and he would do it voluntarily.