Page 20 - Volume 18 Number 6

such you cannot get in the slot next time around.
Getting there
If we agree that a safe landing requires the pilot to have the airplane in the slot on short final, then what does he or she need to do to get it there?
The Flight Safety Foundation’s (FSF) Approach and Landing Accident Reduction (ALAR) Briefing Note 7.1 – Stabilized Approach nods to the fact that “stabilized” means different things to different operators, saying,
An approach is stabilized only if all the criteria in company standard operating procedures (SOPs) are met before or when reaching the applicable minimum stabilization height.
FSF’s Briefing Note calls unstabilized approaches those “conducted either low/slow or high/ fast.” It provides a recommendation that the airplane be stabilized within 1,000 feet of the ground in IMC or 500 AGL in VMC. FSF cites unstabilized approaches as being a “causal factor in 66 percent of 76 approach-and-landing accidents and serious incidents that occurred worldwide from 1984 through 1997.” The airline pilot chat lines – filled with commentary by pilots whose work evaluations hinge on whether an approach is stabilized – show that even the pros are confused about what the term “stabilized approach” means.
The FAA’s Airplane Flying Handbook (AFH) provides this definition of the stabilized approach:
A stabilized approach is one in which the pilot establishes and maintains a constant-angle glidepath towards a predetermined point on the landing runway ... the point on the ground at which, if the airplane maintained a constant glidepath and was not flared for landing, it would strike the ground.
The AFH is giving us a light airplane (less than 12,500 pounds
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18 • TWIN & TURBINE
JUNE 2014