Hi IGh:
Perhaps you are used to speaking or writing with multiple abbreviations, being under the assumption that everyone surely knows the meanings of such references. If I may, here is a suggestion … it would aid the readers if you were to indicate what it is that you are using when you abbreviate terms … e.g. it would have been helpful to have indicated that the “ALAR Task Force” or the “ALAR Standards” referred to the Flight Safety Foundation’s “Approach-and-Landing Accident Reduction” efforts. It took me a while to locate the appropriate references.
Additionally, you cite sentences supposedly contained in a letter from an official in the FAA’s Flight Standards Service, but don’t give the reference(s) where one can read the entire letter, including the referenced sentence(s), to learn the context in which it(they) were(are) used. Additionally, you claim to know a lot about the exchanges that took place between the respective FAA offices and the offices at American Airlines; you suggest that you understand the motives behind some of those exchanges; and you seem to be certain of the failure of some of those exchanges. I understand if your anonymity is necessary to provide this information without incurring recriminations, but, please understand the awkwardness in which your readers are finding themselves in trying to keep up with your allegations.
I continue to suspect that you believe that 1) American developed a procedure that ultimately turned out to be inappropriate – and 2) the local FAA office is complicit in accepting (or approving?) that procedure. However, I cannot understand why you believe this is true. You cite an example of a flight crew flying an approach that is contrary to the procedures that American stated was the appropriate and approved procedure. If I’m reading the American procedure correctly – they required a “stabilized approach,” which they described as having the airplane at the proper approach speed (Vref + additives), on the proper flight path, at the proper sink rate, and at stabilized thrust. Apparently, the FAA office agreed with the procedural description provided by American. I’ve attempted to provide a rather universally practical understanding of the term “stabilized thrust,” that does not imply a rigid, unmovable throttle position at any power setting. Rather, the throttle setting has to be in a range (indicating that movement is logical and is to be expected) appropriate to the airspeed and rate-of-descent desired due to glide slope angle, configuration, and weight – and, I was hopeful that anyone would understand that such a “throttle position range” would not be “idle thrust” – hence the descriptive term “spooled and stable.”
I believe that you think there was a sinister effort on the part of either American or the FAA to provide American crews with an incoherent description of how an approach was to be flown – and it was this incoherent description that caused confusion and resulted in the flight crew mishandling the approach. I would submit that your conspiracy theory is just that – a conspiracy theory – that has no place in a legitimate discussion of approach procedures. Unless you can provide any information to the contrary, I would suggest that you cease with the non-specific allegations of wrong doing on the part of the company or of the FAA – heaven knows, the FAA in the SW region has enough of its own problems without having to deal with conspiracy theories as well.