GlueBall,
Hard words like yours, normally don’t fit in this forum.
Although I tend to agree with you - that retarding throttles is what one has learned in school to land an aircraft (an airplane, not an helicopter…) - I would like to add that I personally feel that Airbus concept of "non-moving throttles" (and non-feed-backing side-sticks) are wrong and a human factor nonsense.
I remember when, in the early 90's, I first flew a FBW aircraft, (A330 SN002(?) test bird), invited by Airbus Industrie, to promote communality and AI family concept, together with Capt Baldomero Monterde (Iberia) and Pier Paolo Rachetti (Alitalia) (who soon would be one of the seven fatalities of a crashed A330 flight testing at Toulouse Blagnac) we had a debriefing with the AI test pilots that flew with us. Questioned about the technology, when I had the opportunity, I told them that I thought that their FBW aircraft had two "concept errors": those
non-moving throttles (in fact they act as thrust limiting levers)and
lack of other pilot movement feed-back on the side-sticks...I was promptly interrupted by one of the test-pilots who told the "class":
Sorry folks, but Airbus Aircraft don't have "concept errors", they have "characteristics". (That must be the reason why, it took AI more than a decade to add that "double input" alert, to inform PF, that the PNF is moving his stick...
)
Well, one of the "
characteristics" of the A320 is that one comes to the Final with the levers on the Climb Detent while the engines are spooling up and down to cope with the Ground Speed Mini...
Despite of briefing the approach to Congonhas, and the DMI'd reverser, they failed to understand what was really going on during the landing flare and subsequent seconds...
Just imagine for a minute what were the conditions: an ex-Boeing Pilot Flying, being checked, DMI'd reverser, short and contaminated RWY, "tunnel vision" with the back-ground idea of imminent requirement to
pull only one reverser and in the mean time: both levers in Climb Detent and both engines providing near Idle Thrust (that is why you get the auto call out "
Retard, Retard, Retard!"
to remind you to retard your levers!) When he pulled ATS Lever One to Idle, the number 1 went to Idle and the number 2 kept giving forward thrust...the rest of this sad story is well known.
Easy to blame the pilots. But, could it happen on an Auto-Throttled aircraft? What prompts a pilot to make the wrong move, against all off what he has learned, against the nature of flight, itself?
RAD ALT ALIVE,
I believe your words on this subject were one of the best contributions I’ve ever seen on PPrune.
I fly Airbuses for more than 17 years and although I feel comfortable flying them, I still think that the concept of “non-moving throttles” and the “non-feed backing side sticks” is a mistake.
Is it “natural” to fly an aircraft that (in some situations) doesn’t give you the feed-back of what’s going on?
Can you hear the auto call out of “Double Input” in the middle of a stressing cross wind and variable direction gusts short final to Funchal (Madeira), Horta or Pico (Azores) Runways? And if you hear it, during flare, will you have time to cope with a double input? I believe that most of us, in an uncomfortable situation, would tend to “avoid ground contact” and interfere with the controls…and if you have a yoke, you’ll find out sooner, (that the other guy is “also afraid to die”), but with a side-stick, there is a much more
intellectual process, to understand the obvious…
And on the last seconds of our lives, .i.e., when facing a potential disastrous situation, we all tend to revert to basics…
Wasn’t much more user friendly the Auto-Throttle system, were one could “help” the AT, (when the system itself was a bit “lazy”) by overriding it with small inputs on the throttles to keep the speed on final?
You may feel quite comfortable with the Airbus ATS but, that doesn’t mean that one day you will not feel otherwise especially trying to land an A330 or a 340 in Madeira, on a rough rainy and windy night, after a 10 hour service from Caracas.
Airbuses are fantastic aircraft, but they could be better!
