I have to disagree; the handling of the return was a badly analysed.
The best option was to land on the longest runway available without auto-brake and using as few braking as possible in order to transfer the deceleration onto the reversers. As such they would have walked away from it.
Under CAVOK conditions the A 340 is very well equipped to shoot a non-precision approach and bring the aircraft right in slot for landing on the 4400 m. Any pro with some common sense, can see that immediately. The LDA numbers from QRH were not valid under the given circumstances and on top of that wrongly interpreted. Maybe Davies should have elaborated a bit on that. One can argue for days on the legal aspects of the interpretation of those nombers but common sense would wipe sush a discussion from the table.
The reason for that is that EK does not want to spend any money on decent simulator training and does not have a good non-normal management model. You can not expect Airbus to do that for you. It's common sence not to use autobrakes with a crippled gear.
Also on the low thrust ratio of the A 340 the report wrongly states that they increased the thrust by going no bleed. They did not; they went no bleed in order to reduce EGT and increase the assumed temp for commercial reasons only.
The recover from this f***-up however was excellent with loads of luck on their side.
The report is a publicity stunt from the SAA and UAE CAA and their subtle attempt to blame Airbus. Terms like the award winning Airline do not belong in this report and undermine the credibility of the investigators.
May I add that the report is only 68 pages and there are no transcripts related to information that played an essential role in the decision making process.
The A 340 is a fine aeroplane and you have to f**k it up with inadequate training to get into sush a sh**.
For years EK has been making a mockery of other Airlines during their CRM training sessions. Today EK is the role model of how not to do things.
Last edited by Streamline; 20th Feb 2006 at 09:01.