Originally Posted by
Takwis
It's been a year, with lots of conflicting information. But I seem to remember Boeing (and many hotshot pilots) insisting that if the Airspeed Unreliable checklist had been done, they would have been home free. Is that correct?
It's not really quite that simple. There are a couple significant issues with the Airspeed Unreliable NNC. First, being somewhat generic it does not provide a lot of specific guidance on how to execute this procedure during takeoff - particularly in regards to guidance on when to retract the flaps. Second, there is little information regarding all the various annunciations and warnings that can occur with a bad AOA or airspeed input. As we have seen, there are a bunch of them. Finally, I seriously doubt that the accident crews ever had a chance to practice this malfunction in the sim. An analogy would be the likely performance of an aircrew that experienced a V1 engine failure with a balanced field and high terrain consideration if they never practiced this maneuver in the sim.
If the accident crews had regularly been exposed to takeoff Airspeed Unreliable (and Runaway Stab, for that matter) malfunctions during training, then there is a reasonable argument that the outcome may have been different. However, it seems that some "memory items" are not considered to be as important than others.