PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - TAM A320 crash at Congonhas, Brazil
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Old 30th Sep 2007, 13:28
  #2554 (permalink)  
3Ten
 
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Portugal
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After seeing the pilot's photos posted here, I finaly knew that they aren't the ones I flew with a couple of weeks before the accident.

This discussion is very complex. I think the pilots here can enlighten the non-pilots on some airmanship concepts. I think an important concept here, that's beeing overlooked, is that flight progresses through "gateways". In final approach, the primary gateway is to stabilize the approach in the desired profile, speed and configuration. The following gateway is, if no go around is performed, to touch down, and retarding the throttles is part of the process to this gateway. The next gateway is to control and deccelerate the a/c on the rwy, and reverse thrust is part of this gateway. So retarding and reverse, although normaly acomplished in sequence, are not part of the same process, in the mind set of a pilot.

Introducing another RED WARNING in this stage of flight is probbably a bad strategy, considering that it's procedural to overlook temporarily the warnings, below 400 feet AGL, and postpone actions untill the landing is acomplished. So this so much discussed warning, would probably be overlooked for a few seconds, after touchdown, untill the a/c was controlled, so it would miss it's objective, both pilots attention could easily be "distracted" by the task of the landing itself. These few seconds are a lot of time in a landing.

If AI wants to introduce something usefull, perhaps they should design a way that, if one thrust reverser is deployed, the other engine is automaticaly commanded to idle. Care should be taken, so that in case of uncommanded TR deployement airborne, this idle action shouldn't occur, based in a/c air-ground logic. Although all this software stuff still gives me the creeps.

Don't forget that in aviation, the "KISS" rule strongly applies: KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID

Regards
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