approach technique
Hi John
Your question seems highly relevant to me as a mere glider pilot. The professionals are fully gened up on the details. It seems to me your question reveals that the normal commercial practice is fundamentally not failsafe regarding total loss of power at low level. with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight if they had retracted the gear they would have been better off (assuming it was even possible). But of course they hoped to restore power asap. As you rightly point out landing a glider is very safe because the airbrakes give you a huge range of gliding angles so you can land wherever you like within reason. I seriously doubt that the whole method of landing heavy aircraft is going to be changed because of this one incident. The fact that no-one was killed makes this all the less likely. I can envisage an approach where the glide slope is increased dramatically as the gear is lowered. This would presumably bring all sorts of new problems like ILS would not work, engines at idle could not respond quick enough if a go-around is required and so on. Personally I feel much happier with no engine and airbrakes well open that I can put away instantly if I need to.
Rory