Originally Posted by
vilas
If the rat doesn't deploy you go in mechanical backup. Have you done approach and landing in mechanical backup?
That is a difficult way of arguing in itself, because it includes the premise that any other redundancy might not work either. So why not abort a takeoff after a V1 cut? After all, the other engine might stop working soon after as well and then you are even worse off.
Yes, the RAT isn't used every flight, unlike both engines. And yes, that does not instill confidence that it works. However, as a last ditch redundancy barrier we have to believe airbus that it does not fail. Same as all other redundancy barriers we do have on that plane.
And to answer your question, yes, mechanical backup was not part of the official syllabus in my typerating, but we trained it nevertheless in the simulator. As far as i know it hasn't happened in real life yet.