Originally Posted by
Smythe
What is your airline SOP,?...rev thrust or braking?
Aside from all of the FOD risks noted above, this is an engine cycle that is counted for maintenance. Most airlines tend to want to reduce rev thrust cycles and time, to reduce maintenance cycles on the engines.
Brakes/replacement are far cheaper than engines.....
At least in the Boeing world, most of what you wrote is simply wrong. Deploying the reverser is not counted as an 'engine cycle' - only a takeoff is counted as an engine cycle. Max reverse N1 is significantly lower than max climb, so it's not really taking anything significant out of the engine, and FOD damage risk is almost non-existent above 80 knots. It is counted as a reverser cycle, but the Boeing MPD tasks assume one reverser cycle per flight cycle so in most cases you'll be doing the reverser maintenance regardless. According to the Boeing R&M types, appropriate use of the reversers on the 777
saves ~$100 per landing in total maintenance costs (not to mention the costs of going off the end). Brakes aren't cheap either.
If you respect the FCOM recommendations on reverser usage - getting them to idle by 60 knots, and stowing by taxi speed, the risk of re-ingestion and associated engine damage are minimal.
The key is to respect the FCOM recommendations - reverse below 60 knots doesn't do much aside from killing the forward idle thrust - so there is really no reason to use them unless getting the aircraft stopped in time is not a sure thing (in which case abusing the reversers is probably preferable to abusing the airframe).