Virgin Australia B738 at Melbourne on Jul 2nd 2025, speedbrakes not armed for landing
Last Update: December 8, 2025 / 14:32:17 GMT/Zulu time
Incident Facts
Date of incident
Jul 2, 2025
Classification
Report
Airline
Virgin Australia Airlines
Flight number
VA-882
Departure
Sydney, Australia
Destination
Melbourne, Australia
Aircraft Registration
VH-YFZ
Aircraft Type
Boeing 737-800
ICAO Type Designator
B738
The ATSB released their final report concluding the probable causes of the incident were:
Contributing factors
- The aircraft exceeded speed restrictions during the arrival and the crew did not take appropriate action to slow the aircraft in a timely manner. This resulted in the air traffic controller issuing instructions to reduce speed further and the crew subsequently not arming the speedbrake and performing the landing checks.
- As the aircraft passed 1,000 ft above airfield elevation, neither flight crew recognised that the speedbrake was not armed and the landing checklist had not been completed, resulting in the approach continuing despite the stabilised approach criteria not being met.
The ATSB analysed:
The flight crew used the autopilot’s vertical navigation path (VNAV PTH) mode and auto throttle to manage the aircraft’s descent profile and airspeed for the arrival.
On this occasion, and as per expected system performance, in a clean configuration, the autopilot was unable to sufficiently reduce speed such that it could simultaneously meet the descent profile and airspeed requirements of the arrival procedure. With no additional drag added by the flight crew, the aircraft continued to maintain an airspeed around 30 kt higher than the speed restrictions in the STAR, until the air traffic controller issued a speed reduction instruction and the flight crew modified the aircraft’s configuration.
The crew perceived the ATC instruction to be urgent and advised that this increased their workload. It is likely the crew focused their attention on monitoring the airspeed and ensuring the flaps were extended promptly, but within their operational limits. Wickens (2021) describes attentional narrowing as a focus on a limited set of information at the expense of other sources. This focus can cause steps in the linear sequence of a procedure to be skipped.
As the aircraft was decelerated to final approach speed and configured for landing earlier than normal, it is probable that the crew omitted to arm the speedbrake and call for the landing checks because their attention was focused on achieving the ATC-requested airspeed reduction. Compounding this, the captain perceived that their monitoring performance was modestly degraded due to a lack of recent flying experience.
During the final segment of the approach, while the aircraft was on the approach path and the speed had reduced to the required approach speed, the aircraft did not meet all the stabilised approach criteria since the landing checklist had not been completed, and the speedbrake was not in the armed position.
Aircraft Registration Data
Incident Facts
Date of incident
Jul 2, 2025
Classification
Report
Airline
Virgin Australia Airlines
Flight number
VA-882
Departure
Sydney, Australia
Destination
Melbourne, Australia
Aircraft Registration
VH-YFZ
Aircraft Type
Boeing 737-800
ICAO Type Designator
B738
This article is published under license from Avherald.com. © of text by Avherald.com.
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