Question to those here who drive the Big Iron: in a situation like this, assuming it's the FO's sector, would the Captain take over ? We know this was not the case with BA38 / 777 at LHR, but what's the standard procedure (if any)?
Well, I asked the same question to my pal who is a skipper on a widebody and he told me that he would be inclined to let his first officer fly the aircraft whilst he initially sat on his hands, quickly assesed the situation and then went through with emergency action procedures.
He said, (generally) flying the thing was the easier of the jobs, and that managing the emergency and making the correct command descions for the whole operation is where the cool head was really needed.
I guess when you get close to the ground, is where the capt. may want to take control? each situation will be different I guess and depends who is flying in the righthand seat, beacuse it could be a 300hr recent abinito or a 9000hour senior FO - your willingness to let them land the thing may well depend on this. In the BA incident, the FO was a high hour pilot.