Mad (Flt) Scientist said:
There is already a nominal 67% planning margin between your "landing field length" and "actual landing distance". Unless a technique is going to make a significant impact relative to that 67% margin, it's not going to do much. That means a lot of redistribution of reactions, and that means a lot of tail load.
My understanding of the margins built in to the Landing Distance Required (for the B737 at least) are:
DRY RUNWAY: Actual demonstrated landing distance from 50 ft to complete stop multiplied by 1.67.
WET RUNWAY: (no more than 3 mm of standing water): Actual demonstrated landing distance (on a dry runway) multiplied by 1.67, multiplied by 1.15.
CONTAMINATED RUNWAY: (more than 3 mm but no more than 13 mm of standing water, compacted snow, ice): "Calculated" landing distance for either Good/Fair, or Poor reported braking action multiplied by 1.15. So the margin for error and variables is only 15%, not 67%.
Interestingly, our manual states that contaminated runway performance data is only "Guidance Information".
So with the contaminated runway scenario in mind, any technique that improves the actual landing distance by just 1.5% increases the safety margin by a whopping 10% (1/10th of 15%)!!
It's been a very interesting thread so far. Thanks everyone.