Excellent post from Skallas.However...
Of course all this doesn't mean this logic caused the accident - the biggest hole in the cheese was of course a human mistake. But lack of "retard, retard" shouts *has* to be the second biggest, preventing them from diagnosing the nature of the problem quickly.
Cant agree that repetition of retard would be a fix.The only valid fix is to deny the pilot use of his good TR.Having one engine in TR and the other producing forward thrust makes no sense.Its bad design.
Its a triple whammy..AB compound the above by having the engine in forward thrust(if the pilots forgotten to retard) actually accelerating to CLB and then deny spoilers and braking.The pilot can
hear the TR and thinks retardation is proceeding as normal(in this case he was only expecting to see 1 good TR anyways) until he sees/feels that speed isnt decaying.These valuable seconds on a short wet runway are what cost lives.On a Boeing if you havent quite retarded one of the TL's then you wont get TR and you will either quickly overcome your "finger trouble" or decide to abort the landing.You havent been lured into reverse thrust with forward thrust still being produced(or actually increased as in AB) and so the option to GA is still there.How quickly you overcome your finger trouble and how short/wet the runway is will determine what you actually do.As it turned out,the skipper in SWA's overrun made the wrong decision but at least it was his decision to make.And thats the point.If you're going to go off the runway and crash and burn,you at least want to be able to say is "Holy sh**,I made the wrong decision but the aircraft tried to protect me."You dont want to disappear off the end of the runway saying"My God,what is happening here?"Its the difference between good design and poor design.
Add to this the problem of considerable swing with one engine in rev and one in forward thrust and increasing.This will only complicate an already lethal situation by distracting the pilot.Not only is the poor pilot stuck half way between a landing and an abort but now hes got a severe control problem as well.