In regards to John Sampson's editorial on CRM and the Swissair accident, I think it was more a lack of experience and ability to make a judgement call often brought about, in my opinion, from "ab initio" style airline training. The crew of flt. 111 chose to follow so closely to what they've learned regarding panding PROCEDURE and rules that they completely missed a golden opportunity to land that aircraft, albeit a few thousand over gross landing weight. Seriously, if it means burning up over the Atlantic or punching the gear up through the wings, I'll chose the overweight landing. On to the math. A simple calculation of ALT TO LOSE (in flt. levels) divided by distance to travel yields a descent angle. I can't remember the actual numbers, but it was around 10 degrees nose down to Halifax from the point of the PAN declaration. Not comfortable, but not extreme. For the proper VSI, simply multiply the degrees by 100 and then multiply by the groundspeed in NM/min. Simple and effective but a departure from the "cast in stone" procedures learned in European-style ab initio training. Without a few thousand hours of real flying (most FOs in ab initio programs begin flying in jetliners at around 300 hours) I feel a pilot is nothing more than a well-behaved button pusher.

Robert Artac