Originally Posted by Basil
Quote:
What are the thoughts of those pilots on here about the Captain (I believe it was) REDUCING the flap setting after realizing their problem of maybe not making the runway?
A master stroke
The last stage of flap is almost all drag with little contribution to CL (coefficient of lift) so he immediately got rid of some drag.
The go-around procedure on, e.g., the B747 is - max thrust, flap 20 (jus' like that!) and you don't drop out of the sky but transition instantly to a high energy situation partly by getting rid of drag which has permitted you to keep the engines spooled up just for that eventuality.
Come on, flaps reduction is fine when high and far from the runway as it requires a speed increase (nose down) loss of altitude. Anyway, the flaps reduction technique to increase distance has to be completed by flaps extension during the flare in order to benefit from final lift increase, ground effect and speed reduction to allow low speed/low vz impact.
Since the plane was under AP flying the glide, retracting the flaps definitely increased the AOA to compensate the loss of lift and accelerated the stall. To me, retracting the flaps at low speed/altitude while the AP is desperately trying to fly a path passing 50 ft over the threshold is a weird technique while the only thing that matters is to make the threshold. For sure, the glide is not the best path to the threshold, as retracting flaps doesn't help when you're plane is 14 degrees nose up with almost no power and the AP in charge.