Originally Posted by HotDog
I can not understand why anybody has a problem with retarding both thrust levers to idle on landing
Nor can any of the rest of us, HotDog - but the fact remains that (according to the FDRs, anyway) it has happened on A320s not once, but three times; at Bacolod, Taipei, and now Congonhas. All of them with 'one reverser inop.' Four times if you count Phoenix.
In each case the CVR recordings alone prove that the pilots were utterly confused as to what had happened. The Taipei CVR transcript is typical of the others:-
"1959:37 CAM1 No brake
1959:37 TWR (communication between
TWR and UNI831)
1959:39 CAM1 No brake
1959:40 UNI831(communication between
TWR and UNI831)
1959:43 TWR (communication between
TWR and UNI831)
1959:44 CAM1 No brake
1959:46 CAM1 No brake
1959:47 UNI831(communication between
TWR and UNI831)
1959:50 CAM1 No brake at all
1959:50 TWR (communication between
TWR and UNI831)
1959:53 CAM1 Brake
1959:54 CAM2 What’s going on sir
1959:55 CAM1 I have no idea
1959:57 CAM1 Wow
1959:57 CAM (sound similar to impact)
1959:58 CAM (sound similar to impact)
1959:59 CAM chime (single chime)
2000:01 CAM2 Uh
2000:03 CAM1 Wow
2000:03 CAM (sound similar to impact)"
So I for one am very pleased that Airbus have finally started offering an additional warning, and that TAM (and hopefully many other airlines) intend to install it ASAP.
PBL, I tend to agree with you that statistical analysis cannot really help in this area - but for a different reason. Airline travel is statistically so safe, whatever sort of aeroplane you're flying in, that it would be half a lifetime before the figures alone showed that one particular type was significantly any less safe than another.
On the other hand, though, I once had the job of chairing the monthly meeting of the Accident Committee in a town I helped to build. No shortage of accidents there (well, fewer than most towns, as the roads were newer). But if we detected an accident pattern (at a particular intersection, maybe, or on a particular stretch of road) we discussed it, thought about it, often a couple of us physically went out there and walked or drove repeatedly along and around the stretches of roads concerned.
We usually found something simple - a misplaced or obscured sign, a tree that needed trimming or felling, an awkward bend or turn that would be improved by putting in an island, things of that sort. By those means we usually found a way of reducing the number of red crosses on the monthly map in due course; in those locations anyway.
An unscientific approach in the extreme. All I can say is, it tended to work surprisingly well, surprisingly quickly, and surprisingly often.
I very much hope that similar methods (crude and empirical though they may be) are being tried by devoted people at Airbus and at the HQs of the various airlines operating A320s - flying and re-flying 'one reverser inop.' landings on simulators - or even in real aeroplanes - 'chewing the rag' with pilots who've had to carry out the manoeuvre; doing whatever they can think of to find out not just WHAT happened, but HOW on earth it could POSSIBLY have happened.