Why would an airplane miss the tarmac by 4 miles out?

Have a look at Juan Browne on Youtube Blancolirio channel for informed comment.
not a good trend at SWA for sure.

 

Pilots not paying attention to the instruments in marginal weather. Southwest has had a few of these lately.

 

Bad habit (for the pilot flying) to look out the window when on an instrument approach until you are at the DH/MAP. You get distracted and easy to screw the whole approach (speed/altitude/glidepath).

 

I didn't watch the video. So the controllers called out a visual approach?

 

Yeah, but at least their computers didn't go down last week......

 

Correct.
If it did, we would hear about a lot more of these 'instances'.

 

I get what you’re saying but there is a difference between VMC and VFR. They were in VMC as they flew a visual approach to a segment of a highway…and a pretty good one at just about a 3 degree glide path to the part of the road that stands out visually. Obviously a huge misidentification error. They do not need VFR mins to fly a visual approach on an IFR clearance. So no rules broken from a clearance standpoint. Still, probably company rules (and basic airmanship “rules”) broken not backing up their visual approach with course and range info from a readily available published approach. Big pooch screw regardless.

 

There are minimums and there are a couple of ways IFR traffic can fly to a runway without flying an instrument approach. If controllers keep IFR traffic on published approaches the horizontal separation minima would make managing traffic in reasonable weather unnecessarily tedious. Visual approaches are based off of controllers having a reasonable estimate that weather is 1000’ and 3sm vis and requires the pilot to call the runway in sight. Controllers will often ask preceding aircraft to report conditions along the path to the active runway, as they did in this vid with the plane just before reporting the rain. If a pilot can’t see the runway but they know where they are they can request a Contact Approach which only requires remaining clear of clouds and 1sm vis. Strangely, these are still IFR operations. I will admit it’s been a long time since I’ve flown IFR operations frequently enough to be doing these things…I’m sure an air carrier person here will know better than I do.