Just a minor contribution...
Looking at the approach plates for EGBB, the NDB approaches are offset by a few degrees.
Looking at his lateral track which is (in the later stages) a very straight line, on the runway centreline, it's obvious this is not a hand flown NDB approach. It is autopilot-coupled and was probably flown with a GPS in the OBS mode and with the course pointer set to the runway heading.
Had this been flown on the ADF, he would have been doing well to be within 20 degrees!
The vertical profile is pretty bad, but he salvaged it at the end.
His approach may have been a shambles..... however, ask yourself.....
If you flew a shambles of an NDB/DME approach, which you managed to sort out and stabilise towards the end, then couldn't make contact with the tower, then became visual at 600ft, would you land or go around?
I'd land. Call this continuation bias if you like, call it inexperience, call it failure to diagnose the mis-dialled frequency, call it any of the things that the AAIB report goes on about. But in that situation my priority would be to get the aircraft and my passengers safely on the deck. I would not fancy climbing back up into the muck to try another NDB/DME approach without comms, especially if I'd just demonstrated to myself that I wasn't exactly tip-top at flying such approaches.
In the pilot's mind, the situation when he can't get hold of the tower is something approaching an emergency. He's flying a difficult approach, he doesn't have the capacity to set a transponder code or diagnose the radio problem. Aviate, navigate, communicate. He only has capacity to aviate, so that's what he does.
Assuming, of course, that we believe him when he says he didn't see the Q400. I think this is totally plausible - it's a similar colour to the runway surface beneath it and he's not looking at the starter extension, he's looking at the touchdown zone. On very short final, it probably disappears beneath the nose.
Either his lawyer wasn't very good, or there is more to this that we're not hearing about. What is obvious though, is that he was out of his depth, and he doesn't win any brownie points for this.
Has the CAA really pulled IRs?
What do you have to do to get it back?
Reading through the report and looking at the position plots it is apparent that the approach was a shambles from start to finish, selecting the wrong frequency was just another hole in the cheese. Had he been a UK pilot he would almost certainly have lost his IR as well so I think he got away very lightly.
7600 is your get out of jail card.........
Did he squawk 7600 ?
No, the report just said he 'considered' it. 7600 would have mitigated everything I suppose.
Did he squawk 7600 ?
Then it seems he was prosecuted, for just selecting the wrong frequency, as per the title of this thread, and possibly perhaps not quickly trying COM2 or flicking back to approach to sort out the comms issue. I'd hope I could get myself off the hook on this one, and would certainly expect a lawyer to put up an even more robust defense.
If this happened to me, I think I would just give up flying altogether :-(
I too think most pilots, on a comms failure on final, would go around (because of the overwhelming respect for the need for a landing clearance - think of how often you have gone around from just above an empty runway because somebody was reading out War and peace to ATC at just the wrong time) but that isn't what the lost comms procedure says you should do.
It says you fly the approach and you land.
There is also a pretty good safety case for landing on a runway you can see in front of you, compared to flying a missed approach, hoping that somebody somewhere is watching you on radar and realises what you are doing, etc.
The idea of the lost comms procedure is that the destination airport expects you there at the filed time, and expects you to fly the approach and to land.
You do wonder if there was another aspect in this prosecution. Maybe the guy was rude in his meeting without coffee and biscuits. There are 4 official safety actions stated, and all of them are directed at the CAA or NATS, and the first one (2011-073) shows that there is a conflict between what the pilot is likely to do in this situation (want to land), and what ATC think the pilot will do (go around). And, their MOR database shows that some pilots do land, so I wonder if all of those were prosecuted (GA or Airliners), and if not, then this prosecution would seem quite unfair.
If I didnt know the comms failure procedure for IFR procedures or this UK airport specifically, I'd like to think I would go around, get into a hold, check the frequency again, try COM2, press some buttons on the audio panel to make sure they were set properly, make sure I set 7600, and failing all that call 121.5 or the previous approach frequency to see if my radio is working. But as I say, I havent been IR trained so if it is OK to land without a clearance, then I dont think he has done much wrong (besides than being fat fingered and careless perhaps), and under marginal conditions maybe he just wanted to be on the ground. I'd be miffed if I had to cough up £5k :-(
