El Al aircraft briefly "malfunctioned" over London

[Mahesh]

Umm, is this common? Very comforting ....

El Al aircraft briefly malfunctioned over London - report
(c) 2006 M2 Communications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

09-28-2006 12:46 EST

A British aviation authority report shows that an aircraft operated by Israel's El Al briefly went into a dive over London earlier in the year.
The aircraft, which was carrying 450 passengers, reportedly plunged 2,800 feet because of a glitch in its electronic landing system. According to the report, the Boeing 747 was 10 miles east of London's Heathrow Airport when the incident occurred on 10 January. The aircraft was apparently flying on autopilot toward the airport when the descent from 4,000 feet started.
The information was disclosed by the authorities on 27 September.
A spokesman for the Department of Transport said the computer system recovered and crew members noted the incident in a log. No incident report was submitted after the aircraft arrived at Heathrow. Due to this, investigators did not find out until weeks after the incident, according to The Associated Press.
It was reportedly concluded that the problem was caused by a failure of the aircraft's glidescope, which is part of a system that tracks flight path and angle of descent during landing.

[TFaudree_ERAU]

Sounds like FS needs a flight dynamics tweak. Let me open up the aircraft.cfg file and see what I can do.

And why do people insist on calling the darn thing a glidescope? Its not something you look through to see the glidepath to the runway for goodness sake.

[Fly4Pay]

Originally Posted by TFaudree_ERAU

And why do people insist on calling the darn thing a glidescope? Its not something you look through to see the glidepath to the runway for goodness sake.

Next thing you know, terrorists will take over the airport and change the "glidescope" so that airliners fly into the ground in the fog.

Hey--it worked in Die Hard 2!

[BobDDuck]

I dunno about ya'll but the second I see the flight director takeing a dive or a hard bank when I am going down the ILS, George stops flying the plane and I start. Nothing wrong with a raw data approach anyways. I don't know enough about coupled landings and heavy jet systems to comment on the mighty 747, but in the little ol' CRJ reversionary landing control is just a thumb click away.

[TFaudree_ERAU]

I guess before I start slamming the pilots for allowing the airplane to dive 2800 feet, I need to know what the weather was like, and whether they were shooting a CATII or III. If it was CAVU, there's no reason to not be able to flick the bic and fly it by hand like Bob said.

[FlyChicaga]

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/a...don/article.do

Sensational reporting if you ask me.

[TFaudree_ERAU]

Originally Posted by The Stupid Reporter

Seconds later a warning of "glide scope failure", which gives the height of the jet, appeared on the cabin screen with the warning "no auto land".

I KNEW those lazy bastards didn't land the plane themselves. Gosh, how do they make so much money for just letting the plane auto land every time. And they sit back in the first class cabin to boot. What a life.

[mrivc211]

Always wear protection and never do it Raw data baby!