But still, four (captain, first officer, F/E and a navigator) well trained persons in the cockpit, managed to make a rookie mistake when it comes to calculate fuelburn. Were they trained enough?
Which begs the question were they up to the job?
And I'm not quite sure they even had the time to read the emergency checklists since those engines died so rapidly...the chain of events happened too fast.
Which brings us back to the original point that they shouldn't have been in the situation where they "suddenly find" they have no fuel left. I don't know how civvy airlines do "routine" checks, but certainly you would expect a fuel check fairly regularly, and before descent a check that there is enough fuel to complete a relevant procedure and another...
You have a different mindset when going into the simulator, it's just the way it is. Sure you have the mechanical skill to deal with emergency landings after simulator sessions, but question is do you have the cerebral fitness to be able to do it when shit happens in real life, like the avianca incident.
An interesting one. Whenever I go to the simulator I treat it as if I was flying the aeroplane for real. I will wear all the correct kit (gloves, helmet etc) and will strap myself in exactly as if I was in the aircraft (giving me less chance of having a cognetive failure and forgetting to do something correctly when strapping in for real). The whole point of the simulator sessions we have is to develop the cerebral fitness to cope with (multiple) emergencies, doing the vital drills from memory, then backing them up if time permits using the flight reference cards (whilst navigating, flying the aeroplane etc)...
To be fair though, as we've said before, running out of fuel on an approach is a fairly terminal emergency...
