Originally Posted by
ONE GREEN AND HOPING
ALPINE FLYER........I suppose I was thinking about that four engined Airbus that left somewhere in Australia for the Middle East having set a too low assumed temperature - or what ever system they used for less than rated t/o thrust. They got airborne ok that time, but not without collecting a few twigs and airport souvenirs in the process. My last modern type was the 744 twenty years ago, so I'm not up to date with technology. When I began as junior trash, it was a case of working speedily through several fine printed pull-out graphs with added interpolations and corrections. Ironically it was probably simpler to avoid gross errors than reading off numbers from a table and twiddling knobs.
Slightly OT, but no system is fool-proof obviously, and there are ways to mess up the Embraer's performance calcs for sure.
I'm with you on the speed advantage of the graphs, for a regional jet operating on non-limiting runways most calculations were as simple as checking that max. FLEX was possible and reading off three V speeds. Now we type lots of data into a computer to get much more accurate results in much more time. There are error messages to warn you of potentially inconsistent data but some of them (such as GW < MZFW) pop up for every calculation which results in them being clicked away as a matter of routine.