My company SOP is to fly 160 knots to 4 miles at all airports, not just Heathrow, and then reduce thrust to flight idle in order to reduce speed below the full flap limiting speed, take full flap, then increase thrust to maintain the calculated approach speed (an increment on reference landing speed) minus 5 and plus 10 knots. This is to be stabilised at 1000 feet agl in instrument met conditions or 500 radio altimeter in visual met conditions.
So in my own operations it's quite normal to be increasing thrust to maintain that approach speed at 2 miles and if I found that there was nothing there at that point I would consider it highly unlikely that I would make the runway in most cases. And many other runways I land on do not have the clear undershoot area available that 27L at Heathrow does.
Gets you thinking about the what ifs doesn't it?! The sooner the experts at the AAIB can figure out why engine thrust didn't increase when demanded the better. But who knows, maybe they'll never know. Maybe the system of computers and wiring between those thrust levers and the engines will function perfectly when they test them. It's happened many times before with electrical systems, just have a look at the AAIB report released this week on the BA Airbus 319 over London in 2005. How many times have you powered something off and on to clear a fault?
Last edited by TDK mk2; 19th Jan 2008 at 16:03.