Stretching the glide
There have been numerous references to them stretching the glide out in order to reach inside the field boundary in this thread - and I've been puzzling over this for the last couple of days. The site seems to be having a quieter moment so I can finally ask someone whose aerodynamic engineering is much better than mine to put me right...
I know full well that a swept-wing heavy jet is NOT a light aircraft and things handle differently, and I only have experience with the latter, but we're all taught when we do our PFLs or glide approaches in the circuit to maintain the best glide speed and emphatically told NOT to try and stretch out the glide.
Now I have no idea what the optimum glide speed is for a 777 with everything dangling out, at that weight, but isn't it fundamentally still true that you'll have the best glide ratio at the point where the induced and parasitic drag curves intersect on the speed vs drag graph? Once you get onto the back side of the curve you are surely reducing the distance you'll get to as you have more drag; so this alone wouldn't help you.
I get the whole "reduce the airspeed to reduce the kinetic energy at the time of touchdown" and that you'll want it to be stalling as it hits the ground thing, just not the glide stretching attempt. Someone put me right please!
Paul.