Originally Posted by
mustafagander
tdracer,
How come then many airlines SOP is idle reverse and use the brakes to stop?
We were told the opposite - reverse costs way more than brakes due temp cycles and fuel burn. We plebs flying the beast have no idea, it's their train set so we play with it their way.
During the development phase of the 777, I ask the question - part in jest but also part seriously - why don't we just get rid of the reversers. They're heavy, maintenance intensive, and a T/R malfunction was blamed for the recent Lauda 767 crash. I was told the use of reverse reduces brake wear so much it saved between $50 and $100 on every landing..
I joined Ryanair in 2005 and was surprised that their SOP was to use full reverse after coming from a few operators that had used idle reverse for a long time before. So that might imply that they for one believed reverse (and autobrake)was the better option to save money. As you say, we just comply.
tdracer
I remember reading a really interesting response to a thread by a man (I’m sure his surname was Green) on an aviation forum in the nineties. The conversation was about how best to deal with a reverser deploying after take off, as it’s a possible failure in the simulator. He had been( maybe still was) a Boeing test pilot. He gave me the impression that unless you were very very lucky, this was one failure that would end in a crash. I seem to remember him saying that they’d investigated the 737-400 and saying that the results of a failure of a reverser on that variant was pretty frightening. It of course had the sleeve type reverser, rather than the bucket type on the -200, which was even worse.
edit: He said that to have any chance you’d have to get the engine shut down very quickly, as well as getting above a certain speed (V2 + ?).