Originally Posted by
mrdeux
Four plus minutes at FL380, with one engine at idle. It's a pity that the report doesn't include a speed trace. I recall looking at FR24 a couple of days after this happened, and if my memory is correct, the speed decayed to a point that it was interesting.
Just having a read and was looking for this bit. I actually went back through it as I thought I missed it. Surely they went into Alpha Protection.
I think the bigger story here is FBW saved the day. 5 minutes at FL38-40 at idle on the big girl, without FBW/Alpha saving the day the thing would have entered a spin. Either that or they were on the absolute verge of entering alpha.
I can’t say I’d have any confidence at all they would have successfully recovered from a spin going of previous behaviour here. Eyes were most certainly not on the airspeed which is even more disturbing as I assume speed was moving toward low 200s?
Automation is essentially just arse covering for poor check and training standards in the backwater operators in the far north west.
A good comparison of how well this can be handled was the Jetstar 787 Engine Shutdown near Darwin. A lot of operators globally use this incident for crew training.
This mob will most likely use this event as an internal training tool on how to successfully conduct this practice. After all their internal investigation said they followed procedure, so the cancer will spread to other crews and we will be back here shortly with another instalment of similar behaviour!