That's funny. The last quip that is.
It might be that I spent too many years with companies that were on the verge of bankruptcy. So much of the time was spent trying to limit aircraft wear. I did also say words to the effect that in today's world such practices would be unacceptable.
Anyway, starting with the fact that you have gone to an aircraft that really is out of the remit of this particular thread. As for the merits of ‘washing off' the energy by holding off, well, that would certainly require a surplus of concrete, but when engineers ask you if you've had a tire change down the route, because your tires look like new after a week, then I felt convinced at the time that we were doing something right.
As I implied, one mistake is a career-buster if you go out on a limb.
I'm sure that on an aircraft as big as the one you describe, landings are almost by definition, performance critical. Clearly, I'm not extrapolating to high-end large wide-body kit. The original post was not about aircraft in that bracket.
The thread really was about some simplistic handling principals, and the ability to practice the handling to the limits of the envelope are what Davis, and indeed I, were trying to get across. The frustrating...indeed stifling rules about what and shouldn't be considered valid practices. I concede entirely, that crew have to adhere to manufactures research and flight test findings when dealing with the flying hotels of today. I've said many times on these forums, that it is unrealistic to throw hundreds of millions of dollars worth of kit around just to give the crew handling practice, yet, there will be times when many pilots of any types, find that all of the numbers are meaningless.
Sadly, when thirty years after reading my copy of Davis one of my crew showed me the late edition -- with this plea to the industry in general -- I knew that it was financially a non starter. Who was going to pay? Not the cash-strapped airlines, that's for sure. What I was, and have always, suggested, is that crews use every opportunity to really get to know the kit they are flying.
Some of the strangest things that have happened to me have been in perfectly clear conditions, although I'm sure the wind was causal in one of the most dramatic. On a perfectly normal take-off in a 100 seat T tail aircraft, we had reached c 150 feet, when the aircraft shook, was thrown sideways 100 yards or so, showed 280 kts on one ASI and zero on the other. For a moment, we were sitting in a lump of metal. No numbers, no rules, no checklists in the world would give us any instruction on this one. Another notch of flap and aiming at a dark gap in the hangar type buildings was instinctive. I've no idea why, other than I had been lucky enough to be able to practice extremely steep descents and approaches on this type, I had nothing left but a bit of barn storming.
There are countless other tails of incidents that aircrew face every year and are, more often than not, handled with the skills needed. However, I've occasionally found myself beside – in either seat – someone who's skills end at that paragraph in the book. There was nothing left for them to call on.
I spent months as a training F/O while I was in my late twenties. Flattering at first, but soon some of the new captains were so bad that I could scarcely keep up with things going wrong. Nobody would listen. I could either try to keep up...or give up. I've had people unexplainedly drop the nose (while I was looking at the overhead) only to see fields filling the windshields. Slippery modern jet at g-limits with 90 pax in the back.
Fighting to take control in the Innsbruck Valley in a 4 engine turbo prop. Our man had taken the Westerly route and turned west. He would not be convinced. We were on top of stratus with peaks sticking up out of them; the stuff of bad dreams. The walls of the valley were too high to get over. We'd been warned, time and time again, that turning west would be fatal. Now I found myself twisting the arms of my skipper and flying with the sides of the valley sliding under us like a runway. I'd had the very good fortune to have been trained by a fleet manager that made us do things that would be unthinkable today. The confidence he gave us was priceless.
There have been more than a few stories like that from the ‘good old days'. As I've said on the fun thread, many of the incidents were hilarious, but many were deadly, deadly serious.