Originally Posted by
Consol
You're not comparing like with like here. A LCY departure has flaps , v speeds and thrust settings determined by the runway length, obstacles and conditions. Typically most types would use a greater flap setting than on a long runway. Canary Wharf does not have to be cleared, there is an emergency turn to the right.
A BEG departure would have probably planned less flap, greater flex thrust reduction and speeds appropriate to this and so use a lot more runway.
I’m not trying to pin down exact performance to the metre here. I’m talking about whether there’s enough examples out there that from the perspective of an ATCO, it would seem
plausibly possible for the stated TORA to be achievable. Unless we’re also now expecting ATCOs to know what a pilots plannedflap and thrust settings are on top of everything else that’s been implied, they’re irrelevant to an ATCOs immediate expectation. If the pilot says they can make that, who are you to police it?
Again, from the ATCO perspective, Canary Wharf doesn’t
have to be cleared if it starts going wrong, but 99.9% of 27 deps will climb above it. In terms of plausibility the performance is there.
In the case of this incident, it seems fairly obvious that it was never going to work from D5 with the cockpit setup the way they did. I’m quite happy for the pilots to pin down whether it would actually have worked had it been done correctly. Either way I think far too much of this thread has been dedicated to a non-existent ATCO “moral responsibility” which only became apparent with hindsight and knowledge of variables an ATCO has no way of knowing.