Read the report again.
The PILOTS recognised the error and initiated a go-around BEFORE the aural warning.
It was due to the ‘sink’ that normally occurs during a go-around that the warning still sounded.

Yes the gear should have normally been down by then and the investigation should establish why it wasn’t.

SBH, a 767 would normally be doing 700 ft per minute descent rate so they were about 60 secs from the runway.
Go-arounds are routinely practised from 200 ft, simulating not being able to land from an instrument approach.

I know enough about planes to know that throttles don’t need virus protection but I have trouble putting the 700 feet bit in context. 700 feet is about 200 meters and I’m in an office building that’s about that tall. There would be, I guess a couple of dozen buildings this tall in each city. As it’s cup week punters will know that the home straight at Flemington is about twice that long. Laid out flat 200 meters doesn’t seem very large.

The east west flight path has to come in long to get over the humps of Hurstville, Rockdale and finally Arncliffe. The North South not so much. We lived at Rockdale and based on the height of my office block, planes were at about the 200 meter mark when they passed over head, maybe a bit lower. Rockdale is about a minute or two flying time from KSA.

For context are you able to tell us how far away from the airport the 767 would have been and how much flight time was left?

I challenge a pilot from Qantas to say that on record, as opposed to someone from the spin dept who has just had Ground Proximity Warning System explained to them this morning.

While the GPWS did a job and prevented an accident It is a very serious issue when the very last layer of defence catches the crew before an accident. This is the case when GPWS, TCAS or PWS catches an unsafe condition that the crew have missed.

TCAS is Traffic Collision Avoidance System and PWS is Predictive Windshear System, which like GPWS use vocal warning to alert pilots of unsafe situations.

In this case no big deal. Safely detected missed check list item at 700’ and initiated go around even before aural warning sounded. Pilots acted in accordance with their training. No actual danger to aircraft or passengers. Why bag Qantas over this? What is the agenda here?

Seriously, the system worked!

Putting down the wheels is normally one of several essential steps including lowering lowering of flaps, aligning the aircraft with the runway and reducing speed an aircraft is going to land.

To assist pilots in this regard there are mandated checklists and in addition there is generally a pilot and co-pilot as an additional risk management contingency, especially if one is asleep or negligent. One can only assume that the pilots did not have their minds on the job, or possibly had their minds on some other job. I would leave possibilities in that regard to the reader’s imagination.

The reason for putting humans in the cockpit with checklists and procedures is for passenger safety. Otherwise we can use computers for this end and leave the pilot on the ground. It would appear that the only thing that saved everybody in this instance was the final risk management facility, a recorded verbal warning linked to ground proximity radar.

If the ATSB has any enforcement capability left, and by all accounts this capacity is subject to some question, the pilots concerned should be sacked as they are not fit to have responsibilityseveral hundred people’s lives, notwithstanding their own and the rest of the flight crew.

Left to its own devices, Qantas will do little or nothing to punish these pilots because to do so will will reflect badly on internal competency. As with the recent failures to undertake mandated pressure bulkhead maintenance it would appear that the regulators will do nothing, as they appear to be beholden to commercial and political interests, with passenger safety coming a poor second.