Re: Pulling a Stop to Runway Overruns
Re BLIP's Post
Book figures for landing are good for planning and inflight review (except for contaminated runway performance data).
Unfortunately when flight crews get it wrong, they seem to do it big-time, with or without CRM. Or maybe it's just that many of the variables are actually indeterminants. As OVERTALK said in his first sentence at post #1 on this thread, landing overruns are happening all the time. It's only when they have a nasty outcome that goes beyond embarrassment, lost jobs and muddy, scrubbed or flattened tires, that we get to hear much about it. The fact that the industry is (or was) unaware of the value of progressive backstick braking on nasty surfaces is unsurprising. Offhand I can think of numerous things that the industry was apparently unaware of:
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a. the dangers of certain types of wiring and neglecting wiring husbandry (EAPAS NPRM comments close 03 Feb 06)
b. the dangers of Concorde tire failures (court-case soon to begin)
c. the perils built into faux redundancy (two computers each empowered to take over from the other when it is assessed that the primary computer has failed) i.e. G-VATL's fuel transfer double-flameout.
d. the dangers inherent in forgetting to ARM spoilers (AA1420)
e. the lethal unpredictability of SLD icing (freezing rain)
f. the flammability of heated tank ullage
g. the dangers inherent in resetting CB's (because ensuing arc-tracking faults won't re-trip them)
h. the hazards of designing identical interchangeable fuel gauges for different models (ATR42/ATR72)
i. the hazards of sandpaper textured rime ice on supercritical wing sections. (CL-600)
j. the pitch-up illusion (GulfAir A320)
k. the flammability of metallized mylar thermal-acoustic blankets
l. the idiocy of having a take-off configuration warning horn identical to a pressn warning horn. One oft heard, the other rarely heard - and every chance that a hypoxic crew wouldn't make the right choice. Inaccessible hypoxic pilots behind an impenetrable reinforced door.
m. Software that can allow a fatigued crew to leave previous take-off calc figures in place (and operable) for their next departure (HFX 747)
n. A closed runway with lethal WIP that can be mistaken for the duty runway due to insufficient markings (no active alerting/just passive cues) SQ006
o. A bogus FMC fuel usage consumption that would suck in a crew transiting with the gear down (Hapag A310) or an FMC that allows a crew to enter nonsense take-off parameters (SIA 744 Auckland).
p. Fuel leakage scenarios and checklists that can sucker a crew into believing it's fuel imbalance
q. the ability to down a modern airliner by just bugging the pitot or taping over the static ports
r. A CRJ engine that requires a massive sustained speed increase to achieve sufficient fan rotation for an inflight relight
s. A rudder handling and RTL design flaw that allows a vertical fin to be torn off in the blink of two eyes. A rudder that can disintegrate in flight with little more than a shudder/shake (and no pilot input - Air Transat ex Cuba)
t. The design of a runway incursion system that is useless in rain and doesn't warn pilots directly (AMASS)
u. A Beech 1900 maint manual error that was ancient but would sucker engineers into fatally misrigging an elevator (Colgan and Air Midwest)
v. Standby horizons that are panel central nowhere near the scan of PF or PNF (aka "twinning, where any anomaly between roll or pitch-rate of an immediately adjacent STBY instrument and primary attitude reference is immediately apparent - KAL747F Stansted, Air India 747 Bombay and many others).
w. Using an a/c NAV configuration that is open to auto-resetting to a VOR operating on TEST (A320 North Africa)
x. Jeppesen databases that could dial up a distant NDB in error (AA 757 Cali) long enough to CFIT the crew
y. A speedbrake that wouldn't auto-retract in response to a full power GPWS response. (AA 757 Cali)
z. bits falling off shuttles and NASA conveniently assuming that high-speed light-weight foam was harmless (despite ample evidence over many flights that tile damage was occurring).
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etc etc etc. Yes we're in great shape. Unawareness is blissful ignorance. But this thread has adequately demonstrated also how some people will argue on quite specious grounds for their right to not know or be told.
The only sure thing is that nobody will be surprised at the next jaw-dropping fatal revelation.