> But there's a difference between “computer deviation handled simply with little danger” and “plane was skimming the rooftops before recovery”.
That really diminishes the risk here. Calling it "computer deviation" downplays the IRL deviation of the (very real) aircraft. "Little danger" ignores the (very real) environment in which the deviation happened and contributed to. "Handled simply" ignores how close it was to not being able to be handled.
The aircraft, at an altitude below 4500 ft. and descending, was flying directly towards a mountain peak at height 3140 ft. It would have reached the peak in just over a minute. If the pilots hadn't reacted quickly (14 seconds), this could very well have ended as "plane was skimming the rooftop" of Tai Mo Shan. A similar incident with Air France flight 953 almost hitting Mount Cameroon was narrowly avoided simply because the captain (under severe low visibility conditions) rolled the dice to climb. Some incidents have had unrecoverable sealings of fate in less than 22 seconds of total time.
The margin of safety here is not to be overestimated.
Indeed, as evidence, you can see Section 4.2 of the investigation report (Proactive Safety Actions taken by VAA), particularly bullet (2) of subsection 4.2.1 where the flight operator (Virgin) clearly advises its flight crew (how) to stay safe of the high terrain. From asking for a different runway to outright aborting landing "outside of half-scale LOC deflection". That's a super small margin of error, when compared to how much deviation happened in this incident.
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BTW, "plane was skimming the rooftops before recovery" is still considered an extremely serious incident in aviation. Even if it results in no loss of life or damage to aircraft. Less than 1000 ft. of vertical separation between the aircraft and anything that's not the landing runway (extended to 3 NM) is considered safety violation.
In general, aviation safety strongly avoids a glass half-full "Phew! Nothing bad happened." mentality and focuses on keeping a glass half-empty "That could have been really bad!" mentality. Because danger can gang up. Multiple things can go wrong simultaneously. And danger has to succeed only once, while humans need to succeed every time.
Still, the article only states plain facts and does not play up the incident. Nothing about the wording of "deviated from localizer and descended below minimum safe altitude" (or the body of the article) is made up or overplayed. It absolutely does not deserve a label of "sounds worse than it is". There's no way it could have been worded to sound better without leaving out key facts about what actually happened.
That really diminishes the risk here. Calling it "computer deviation" downplays the IRL deviation of the (very real) aircraft. "Little danger" ignores the (very real) environment in which the deviation happened and contributed to. "Handled simply" ignores how close it was to not being able to be handled.
The aircraft, at an altitude below 4500 ft. and descending, was flying directly towards a mountain peak at height 3140 ft. It would have reached the peak in just over a minute. If the pilots hadn't reacted quickly (14 seconds), this could very well have ended as "plane was skimming the rooftop" of Tai Mo Shan. A similar incident with Air France flight 953 almost hitting Mount Cameroon was narrowly avoided simply because the captain (under severe low visibility conditions) rolled the dice to climb. Some incidents have had unrecoverable sealings of fate in less than 22 seconds of total time.
The margin of safety here is not to be overestimated.
Indeed, as evidence, you can see Section 4.2 of the investigation report (Proactive Safety Actions taken by VAA), particularly bullet (2) of subsection 4.2.1 where the flight operator (Virgin) clearly advises its flight crew (how) to stay safe of the high terrain. From asking for a different runway to outright aborting landing "outside of half-scale LOC deflection". That's a super small margin of error, when compared to how much deviation happened in this incident.
----
BTW, "plane was skimming the rooftops before recovery" is still considered an extremely serious incident in aviation. Even if it results in no loss of life or damage to aircraft. Less than 1000 ft. of vertical separation between the aircraft and anything that's not the landing runway (extended to 3 NM) is considered safety violation.
In general, aviation safety strongly avoids a glass half-full "Phew! Nothing bad happened." mentality and focuses on keeping a glass half-empty "That could have been really bad!" mentality. Because danger can gang up. Multiple things can go wrong simultaneously. And danger has to succeed only once, while humans need to succeed every time.
Still, the article only states plain facts and does not play up the incident. Nothing about the wording of "deviated from localizer and descended below minimum safe altitude" (or the body of the article) is made up or overplayed. It absolutely does not deserve a label of "sounds worse than it is". There's no way it could have been worded to sound better without leaving out key facts about what actually happened.