Originally Posted by jonesthepilot
Surely fuel costs and engine wear would make this an expensive way of speed control? Any ideas?
He was probably already at idle thrust when selecting reversers, so there would be no additional/extra fuel flow or engine wear.
Edited to ad a question....
I fly a jet a/c with tail mounted engines. We (well, actually the captain) often select one reverser only during taxi to save wear on the brakes. The reason we select one reverser only is that if we were to pull both reversers that would also deploy the lift dumpers, which of course we're not really interested in during taxi.
So far so good....
Single engine taxi is, according our SOPs, not allowed (although that would save a lot of fuel...). I asked our technical pilot why, and his explanation is that single engine taxi will create a yaw moment which will adversely affect our nose wheel tire or perhaps even the entire nose gear. I'm not sure if this is a fact supplied from the manufacturer or if it's just out technical pilot thinking outside the box...
So here's the question.... Wouldn't taxi with one engine on idle thrust and the other reverse-idle create an even larger yaw moment than taxi with one engine at idle/low-thrust and the other shut??