Originally Posted by
Mr Optimistic
(pax). A bit disconcerted by the talk about using the gear to slow the thing down. Is that really an option in day to day ops and if you do it aren't there subsequent consequences since you shouldn't have been in that state anyway ( well so I assume). Thanks for your patience, I only sit in the back.
It really is an option, and whilst I’ve only had to resort to it a couple of times in Europe it was something that I have had to do quite often at some airfields in Asia, normally due to political or terrain issues coupled with ATC requirements. However, all of these were pre-briefed and we were expecting to do it to capture the glide slope from above. Not, however, at Karachi, where in my experience the ATC service was one of the best on the sub continent. As a caveat, I fly Boeing, not Airbus, and haven’t been to Karachi for about two years, but the principles of descent planning (3 x height plus 10 for top of descent and 3 x ht and 5 x ground speed for an ILS approach) work for every type I’ve flown, and the fact that it so basic a principal for gross error checking for every captain or f/o that I’ve ever flown with or trained makes this accident so difficult to understand. But as has been said we won’t really know until the CVR and FDR is read.