PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - TAM A320 crash at Congonhas, Brazil
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Old 8th Aug 2007, 20:28
  #1350 (permalink)  
Clandestino
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Correr es mi destino por no llevar papel
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I understand that this mean that in a runway like Congonhas (they probably are in their limit) is not possible to stop without ground spoillers, right? Or pilots have to react very soon, right?
Now there's food for thought. MEL for my A320-214 states that in the case of total spoiler faiure required landing distance (RLD) increases by 45%. Since RLD is simply calculated by adding 67% to actual landing distance (ALD), I assume this means that ALD also goes up by 45%. ALDs for my bus, on wet runway, zero winds, without reversers, crossing the threshold at VLS (that's Airbusspeak for Vref), for 62t landing weight are: 1220m using manual braking and 1240m using medium autobrake so it seems that with quick application of manual braking, loss of spoilers doesn't necessarily turn into overrun.

However at Congonhas, spoilers didn't deploy because they were faulty but because they were inhibited by the non-action of the pilots. Had they simply pulled both thrust levers to idle - and that's a must during landing, spoilers would have deployed with probability verging on the edge of certainity.

I have seen no practical difference between the A320 and B757 in terms of recognition and response to braking effectiveness
Apart from the big yellow speed trend arrow on 320's speed tape (737NG, 764 and 777 have it too) - the third thing I look for after touchdown as PNF after 10 green christmas threes meaning that we have spoilers and yellow REV showing reverser doors unlocked. Now if there were no arrow or if it were too short, that wold make me scream "BRAKES!", probably followed by a couple of expletives.
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