B737 NG First Officer reported landing safely following an unstabilized approach to SFO during which they encountered wind shear.

Date: 2022-08 · Aircraft: Commercial Fixed Wing · Phase: approach

Anomalies: inflight-event-encounter-unstabilized-approach|inflight-event-encounter-weather-turbulence

Synopsis

B737 NG First Officer reported landing safely following an unstabilized approach to SFO during which they encountered wind shear.

Narrative

On the visual approach into Runway 28L at SFO; everything was very routine until around 2;500 ft. We were following Aircraft X and trying to avoid his wake. We entered a headwind shear where we went from a stable 170kts to what I saw a peak of 195kts. The CA (Captain) was flying and I was monitoring. Because of this shear the airplane became high on the glide path and the autopilot was reluctant to descend because of the high airspeed even though the shear was subsiding; so the airplane being high issue was getting worse. The CA then clicked off the autopilot and pushed the nose over and called for gear down and flaps 15 around 2;200 ft. Once speed allowed the CA called for flaps 25 and shortly after that we passed 1000 ft. and accomplished the normal callout. Flaps 30 was called for shortly after and we were stable and able to meet the 500 ft. gate and landed normally.The fixation on trying to get the aircraft slowed down and back on profile led us to not realize we passed through the 1000 ft. gate without being fully configured and landing checklist complete. We completed the 1;000 ft. callout more out of routine muscle memory instead of evaluating the current configuration. We debriefed and came to the easy conclusion that we should have gone around as soon as we realized we could not meet the criteria of the 1000 ft. gate. Overall a busy traffic environment; gusty wind day; automation not doing what we needed; led us to lose some situational awareness and turn threats into errors.

Source: NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (public domain). Reports are voluntary submissions and are not verified by NASA.