bubbers44 wrote:
I guess Boeing pilots got spoiled knowing that on a short slick runway no matter what the airplane wanted to do you could always go manual ground spoilers, manual brakes, manual reverse and if a throttle stuck half way up you could shut the engine down and not have to worry about if the ground spoilers would retract or not deploy. I know this realy annoys some people but I always liked it that way. Just my opinion.
It's a strange concept in this american airplanes, which still leaves the pilot in control. Unbeliavable...
Even in the old fashioned A310, I recently had a failure of ground spoilers to deploy on a landing on a relatively short rwy (2.300m) following an approach with moderate to sev turb. After touchdown, "no spoilers!", hand on lever, manually deployed the speedbrakes, 8 panels deploy instead of 14 (normal system operation), and we have a non event, using aprox half of the rwy lenght for that landing. Maintenance report, end of subject. I REALLY missed the computer thinking for me to perform those actions.
Cheers