NASA · Aviation Safety Reporting System
Air carrier First Officer reported receiving an aircraft terrain caution during descent into RNO. The Captain immediately stopped the descent, the caution disappeared, and the flight crew continued the landing.
What is ASRS?
The Aviation Safety Reporting System is NASA's voluntary, confidential, non- punitive incident-reporting system, established 1976. Pilots, controllers, dispatchers, and maintenance technicians file reports describing safety- relevant events. NASA de-identifies every report before adding it to the public database. Reports are not investigated by NASA, the FAA, or the NTSB — they represent the reporter's perspective.
Pilot narrative
Verbatim from the de-identified NASA record. First-person account by the
reporter. NASA strips identifying details (names, company, specific time);
anonymization placeholders are ZZZ,
X, Y.
RNO night, weather was VMC. We set up for the 17R approach KLOCK transition. Reno Approach said that the longer Runway 17R was not available. Approach asked us what approach we wanted for 17L. We chose the RNAV 17L. By the time the Captain loaded the new approach we were already slightly above profile. We both identified this and the Captain started down while I made a PA to the passengers and finished the Before Landing Checklist. When we re-intercepted the path, we believe the pilot flying forgot to activate VNAV. So we continued slightly below path. This resulted in a caution terrain just after the fix WORTH on the RNO RNAV 17L. Captain immediately stopped the descent and the caution immediately disappeared. We continued and landed without further incident. Cause: Late runway change at destination. Pilot monitoring – me – failing to trap the Captain error of not re-engaging VNAV. Suggestions: Be more aware of what VNAV mode aircraft is in even during high workload phases of flight. Try to trap and correct all pilot flying errors.
NASA classification — Anomalies
- Deviation - Altitude
- Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural
- Inflight Event / Encounter
NASA classification — Assessments
- Contributing Factors / Situations
- Human Factors
- Primary Problem
- Human Factors
ASRS reports are voluntarily submitted, de-identified by NASA, and represent the reporter's perspective. The presence of reports on a topic cannot be used to infer prevalence in the National Airspace System. The authoritative source is the NASA ASRS Database Online at asrs.arc.nasa.gov ↗.