Aspen Arrival

Overall thoughts on the Gulfstream III and the Aspen arrival at night were that of an incredibly intense situation. The contributing factors for this flight were as follows.

• Passengers delaying departure time
o Passengers that were not on time and not knowing the severity of their actions
• Upset and outraged passengers
o The “Boss” that had chartered the aircraft thinking that money can rule over regulations
• Pressure from having a passenger in the jump seat of aircraft
o Extremely unsafe practice to have a passenger in the jump seat during what was known as a difficult and dangerous approach
• Unfamiliar with approach during night/bad weather operations
o Very low clearances for Aspen reported by the ASOS
• Landing Configuration
o Spoilers were operational during last part of decent


The error chain was unfamiliar pilots flying a low clearance, night, bad weather approach, and into an airport nestled between high terrain. Not having full situational awareness of the approach is where the error chain broke down. These were very senior pilots with more time in that single aircraft then I have total time. Did they get complaisant during the approach? No, they were very meticulous with the actual approach up until someone dropped the spoilers during the approach and the first officers mistaking the airport for something else.

The ultimate question of what should they have done differently. The crew should have paid extreme close attention during the final approach section. You would think the FO would catch a full scale deflection from the VOR with being so far to the right of course when time of impact occurred. All in all, this crew should have keep on course and most likely would have had to execute a missed approach into Rifle.

How would I deal with a passenger if your job was on the line? Like we discussed in class this is a much different idea when you are faced with it. We all can definitely sit here and say we would not even let ourselves get close to a situation like this. We would just flat out change destinations and say tuff luck. But with having the passenger’s right in your face, knowing the charter company will loose money, and depending on your boss, you job might be gone as well. I don’t think any charter company has the right to fire a pilot over something he feels is completely unsafe, and/or goes against a regulations (i.e. arriving into Aspen during night arrival).

I would like to say in conclusion of “what I would do”, the right answer is to of diverted to Reifle and not to of conduced the approach. Along with telling the passenger we’re the pilots in command and this is the way it will be or go airline. Along with hopefully explaining how money can’t bend regulations…. Would I have changed the flight right at the beginning… no probably not… I would have been right there tracing the VOR/DME approach into Aspen. Holding a final approach track that would hopefully not lead to such an accident.