Rainboe's last post touched on a point I made some years ago which was not widely distributed in the pre-pprune era!
I entlitled my letter to the editor of Flight, Attitude at Impact. I am unsure if it was printed as I didn't and still don't subscribe to the magazine.
In brief, the point of the letter was that we pilots are programmed to behave in certain ways in certain conditions due to our SOPs and our sim rides every six months.
At the risk of a fatwa in my criticism of Captain Haynes and his crew, I mentioned the DC10 crash at Sioux City and questioned the decision of the crew to attempt to land the aircraft on the runway. They had proved to themselves that they had a very limited amount of control over the aircraft. What did they think when they decided to try to land on a runway, 8000 feet long and 145 feet wide? They had the whole of Iowa to land on, a flat and fairly hard landscape, I believe.
Bear in mind that when they were cleared to land, Cpt Haynes replied, 'You want to make it a runway, huh?' I think he was a little late in considering the option of landing elsewhere.
Their thought process was inbuilt over many years of flying experience. My contention is that this subconcious wish to land on or return to a runway is misguided. Our attitudes need to be altered to accept that there will be situations where landing straight ahead is a far safer option than trying any 35 degree turns on one engine with an uncontained fire, or no flight controls, come to that.
I know this thread is not strictly dealing with this issue but it seems like a good place to bring it up!
Slings and arrows this way!