I see this as very strong evidence that he was referencing altitude by the radio altimeter only and ignoring the barometric altitude. Again, this is similar to the A320 demo flight over Habsheim, in that the Pilot Monitoring, in that case a pilot who was a captain in his own right, was calling out the height but not empowered to take control when the aircraft went dangerously low.Just over a mile west of the runway, there was a hill with a tree. In 1970, the first officer was clearly in a position of being subservient to the captain. Charter pilots might or might not be more used to flying into underequipped airports; the investigation report for this accident will be interesting.None of which mitigates the effect of having someone in the cockpit who wasn’t involved in flying the airplane; I hadn’t realized that “sterile cockpit” procedures were developed later, or that a captain would not have told the interloper to shut up even without prompting from the more-subordinate co-pilot of the time. The minimum descent altitude for Huntington was 1,240 feet above mean sea level or 400 feet above the runway height. FULL POWER! ]about How to Become a Certified TapRooT® Instructor a previous aircraft reported that they broke out of the clouds right at four hundred feet and were able to land. This would require the airplane to level off and turn around. The big question from the pilots’ point of view was whether they’d be able to get into the airfield at all.The weather was 300 feet scattered, 500 feet broken, 1,100 feet overcast, with a visibility of five miles in the rain and fog. On the 14th of November in 1970, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 crashed on final approach to the Huntington Tri-State airport in West Virginia, killing all 75 on board. At 19:34, the flight passed the Outer Marker, and they cleared to land.
Even in VFR conditions, an unfamiliar airport raises the level of the challenge and in IFR conditions with an approach that only gives horizontal guidance the level of challenge rises further.Like so many crashes, it’s easy to second guess in retrospect but it sounds like communications and distraction played a major role. Worse, he seemed not to care that the approach needed the pilots’ full concentration as he chatted to them, talking about picking up fuel in Huntington.The lack of focus becomes obvious when the captain said, with surprise in his voice, that he had captured the glideslope. A very traumatic event that took the air out of Marshall University for several years.Just a minor pick. The Charter Coordinator still hasn’t learned when to shut up.Following procedure, they can descend another two hundred feet and then they continue to fly at 400 feet above the ground until they make visual contact with the runway.A few seconds later, the first officer called out “Four hundred”, which presumably was meant to that they had reached the minimum descent altitude of four hundred feet above the ground.This sounds to me like the captain was asking if they reached the minimum descent altitude, which they had. In 1970, it was still very expensive for an airport to install Instrument Landing Systems (ILS) for their runways and non-precision approaches were much more common. Perhaps most striking to me is the fact that it was a unfamiliar airport. Though I realize your audience maybe mainly Europeans.Oh, no, that’s a good point.
The flight then proceeded to Huntington, West Virginia, without incident. For this approach, the barometric altimeter makes a lot more sense.
The captain Nevertheless, by the time the aircraft was two miles out, they were 300 feet below the minimum descent altitude. On the 14th of November in 1970, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 crashed on final approach to the Huntington Tri-State airport in West Virginia, killing all 75 on board.