Perhaps you're right, Picky. But, just perhaps, there's a little window of AOA where the outboard gear is dangling but still a foot or so above the inboard gear which itself, along with the tail, is only a foot or so off. Just think what might be anybody's gut instinct as the berm looms up in the lights. Do absolutely anything to get over it, right? i.e. pull up even more.
Assume for a minute that might have happened. Desperate yes, but by this time could you expect anything but? It would get the nose and the wings up higher but it would put the tail down, right? And it would put the inboard gear, which is slightly aft of the centre of lift, down as well, right into the berm.
There have been a few posts that seem to suggest the impact of the rear fuselage with the berm should have destroyed the berm. I've forgotten most (sorry, all) of my physics but there are many more tons of earth and concrete in that berm than there are in the tail of an aluminium 747. An aircraft which, granted, can take a lot of punishment but of an entirely different sort.
You whack that centre gear up into the fuselage on a protrusion like the berm and you break the aircraft's back. The rear, with elevators still trying to raise the nose, pressing the tail down, hits the berm and that's it.
This was the result of actions taken or not taken minutes before, as the aircraft prepared for takeoff. I humbly submit that the real issue, and whatever lessons are to be learned, lies in those actions, not in all this discussion of the berm which, as I think I mentioned earlier could, at other airports around the world, well have been houses.
P.S. something that occurred to me a few days ago but thought not worth mentioning. If you're sluggishly airborn and seriously needing speed, what do you do? Get the gear up!? Suppose retraction was initiated before the end of the runway. How does a -200's gear cycle in retraction? Do the outboard bogies fold in first or do they all retract simultaneously? Do the outboard bogies first - or simultaneously - correct the angle of the dangle, so to speak, to bring the wheels into the wells? I am going wildly off track perhaps but if I were designing undercarriage I would try to ensure that the "gear up" sequence" first reduced drag by aligning front and rear wheel sets in the bogie before folding them up into the wing.
IF that's the case, it might be an explanation for the lack of outboard gear tracks up the berm.
Last edited by broadreach; 2nd Dec 2004 at 21:05.