B767 Undifferentiated or Other Model
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 45; Flight Crew Type 513
Situational Awareness
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter Unstabilized Approach
Flight Crew Became Reoriented
ATC Equipment / Nav Facility / Buildings; Human Factors
I was pilot monitoring on a flight to LHR. On approach the captain flew a very standard Continuous descent approach (CDA) into London with the LHR ATC director calling our speeds throughout the entire approach segment. We were told to maintain 160 kts until 4 DME to runway final. We were at flaps 15 with the gear up at 1500 AGL without landing clearance. There was another aircraft in front of us which delayed our landing clearance. Within 3 DME to landing I made the 1000 foot call and indicated no landing clearance. The captain was configuring gear down and extending the flaps etcetera between 1200-500 ft. We then received late landing clearance right about the time that the flaps were at 30 degrees and at around 500 ft AGL. The Relief Pilot had noticed that we were slow in configuring and prompted the captain to configuring around 1200 AGL. The landing checklist was completed and the decision was made to continue to landing as the approach was stable with airspeed; flaps correct and favorable VMC day weather at LHR. The captain asked us all if we were all ok to continue to land and we all agreed that this was acceptable since we were configured around 500 ft AGL. We debriefed the approach errors on the flight deck and all agreed to file a report due to being right at the lower limit of our SOP (500 ft). The captain handled the situation extremely professionally and we thoroughly debriefed the factors that led to the slower than normal configuration.Fatigue was most certainly a factor seeing that it was [early] on our body clocks and we had just completed an eight hour flight. An additional contributing factor was the late landing clearance into LHR from the tower and our fixation on the landing traffic on final in front of us. The main reason for filing this report is the fact that fatigue and late configuration lead to us conducting a landing right at the lower limit of our SOP.
B767 First Officer reported an unstabilized approach into EGLL after configuring late due to ATC requirement to maintain 160 knots and 1500 feet to 4 DME.