Very good theory.
I must add that pilots don't "feel" trust but rather hear noises and feel accelerations. So for me it's obvious that they heard the noise of spooling up and assumend that it was the reverser. What they felt was the missing deceleration. That's why they concentrated immediately to the available means of breaking, i.e. spoilers, reversers and breakes (auto and manual). In this order, since it is to be checked according SOP.
My theory goes this way: The captain had a plan in his head: I must go assymetric, 1 in revers, 2 in idle. He knew that there would be an assymetric power constellation on his pedestral. In time stress of the flare towards the short and slippery (?) runway he got it wrong: instead of 1 in revers 2 in idle, he did 1 in revers, 2 in clb. Which is just one little mistake for the hand, but one huge error that killed them.
I think in real life I would go both in reversers, although AI doesn't recommends it, but you avoid such assymetric manipulations. It's been proven by the junior captain one sector before. I do the same in OEI cases as soon as the failed engine is secured and stopped. AI is generally biased towards "double protection" (e.g. switching of a transponder on gnd altough it's connected to WOW, or putting out the nose light altough its off if gear is retracted, aso). This is also one of these cases. Makes technically sense. But is a possible cause for errors for some pilots not completly sure about SOPs.
Dani
Last edited by Dani; 8th Sep 2007 at 17:22.