An A320 Captain reported his First Officer flew a high; fast; unstabilized approach to a landing when they should have gone around. The reporter cited fatigue as a factor.

Date: 2010-07 · Aircraft: A320 · Phase: landing

Anomalies: deviation-discrepancy-procedural-published-material-policy|inflight-event-encounter-unstabilized-approach

Synopsis

An A320 Captain reported his First Officer flew a high; fast; unstabilized approach to a landing when they should have gone around. The reporter cited fatigue as a factor.

Narrative

Approach Controller kept us high at 7;000 feet on downwind leg. Followed by a descend clearance to 4;000 feet and turn for a base leg just past abeam the marker. Our speed was 210K. ATC reported fairly calm winds on the ground but winds were quartering tail winds about 16 knots at the altitude. My First Officer tried to slow down and go down but the tailwinds made the situation worse. He configured the airplane and started doing S turns but approach was fast and high. We crossed the outer marker 1;300 feet high. Sink rate was more than 1;200 feet per minute. Weather at the time was VMC. I can tell the aircraft was approaching the correct flight path; however airspeed was excessive and more than Vref+15k. First Officer started reducing the airspeed after catching the glide slope. I came very close to calling the go around but I didn't since he got the situation under control and was correcting rapidly. The runway was fairly long. Landing was normal. Threshold height was okay. However airspeed was more than the target. I think we didn't meet the stabilized approach criteria. I failed to call go-around. My First Officer displayed very good flying skills and situational awareness on the previous flights. I think that made me complacent. This was also last day of 4 day trip. Every day was very early get ups with long duty days. I think sleep deprivation and fatigue were catching up. I debriefed the approach and the landing with my First Officer. We reviewed the stabilized approach criteria and we decided it is okay to go around.

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