One thing that makes me wonder is if this aircraft did stall for whatever reason did the crew at any time attempt to get full thrust?
I wonder because after looking at accident details of the 73 going into the Potomac I always wondered at the time why no-one firewalled the thrust levers. It clearly wasn't flying so why not slam the thrust levers to the wall? This has always made me wonder that if as operating crews we lose something after sitting on a modern jet for many hours.
Obviously after V1 no-one has their hands on the thrust levers and hands don't go back on them till after rotation and climbing away. I remember early in my training on Jets being told by a trainer that I was putting my hands back on the thrust levers too soon after rotation. I was told there was no need to put them on so early, it wasn't required. I remember thinking - what if I need extra thrust??? What if the thing doesn't fly? Does this breed a mindset to leave the thrust levers alone?
However, a while back my company as part of the recurrent sim check did a V1 cut at a hot and high airfield. Several knot split on V1 and Vr and unless you toga'd the thrust levers the thing really didn't want to fly. Sounds like everyone did firewall it.
Also whenever we seem to run windshear stuff, particularly soon after rotation people do toga it. Is this because we make the connection - eng fail - need thrust. Windshear - need thrust. But what happens outside of these cases where you aren't getting flashing lights and bells but the thing isn't flying??
Can't help but wonder if you find yourself in a very unusual situation as these chaps did. Not seeming right but you aren't sure as nothing is clearly wrong, realise little too late that its taking way too long to get to speed, you are eating up runway, thing not getting airborne then stalling - you are going to be stressed and maxed out. As capacity shrinks do you have the capacity to think "f*ck me - firewall the donkeys" or do you grip the control column with both hands fighting it into the air?
I am not by any means saying keep hands on after V1 as we all know exactly why we do that. This event being extremely rare it would never justify it but do you think we do possibly lose that connection between struggling to fly (at very early stage after rotation etc) and slapping some extra thrust on?
This could potentially now be 2 cases where application of extra thrust may have saved the day. Unless of course these guys did do that and it still didn't fly!?!?
Guys that have been on jets for a while, what do you think? Do you think we do lose that instinctive connection or not? Particularly when maxed out due to a VERY abnormal situation? I would personally like to think not but.....
In no way thinking this is cause or contributing factor but this accident has made me wonder. Might be thread creep (might however be relevant) but do you think that unless it falls into a nice pigeon hole failure some crews may not realise in enough time that they need extra thrust? Sorry actually not working on a Sunday seems to have got my mind wandering!!
I'm not a TRI/TRE so don't see many people in the sim, be interesting to hear from you guys what you think as you see a lot of crews doing this stuff.