Ignition Override,
I assume you’re adding ½ the steady wind and all the gust, not to exceed 20kts on to Vref, per the Douglas manual? I’m sure your airline runs a safe operation, it would be unconscionable to think otherwise.
When overruns start becoming prevalent in the industry (AAL 1420) there is a call for reduced approach speeds, and when accidents happen that are attributed to microburst events then there is resumed talk of increasing speeds. There has to be a happy medium and you really already addressed this in your post about the dry runways. To answer your rhetorical question, just because I’m line and not management, I’ll answer 3.
Safe flying in your turquoise pizza heater.
Along with the loss of lift created by shifting winds in a microburst, wave type winds excite the phugoid frequency of transport category airplanes, additionally degrading performance. The phugoid, a resonant frequency of the airplane, is a low frequency longitudinal instability. The phugoid instability will cause oscillations in the aircraft’s airspeed and height, which may result in the airplane stalling, or impacting the terrain at a higher airspeed then stall.
Examples include:
ALG 121: A DC-9-30 crashed in a 10 degree nup attitude with engines producing 1.86 epr, flap at 15, gear retracted. Go around initiated at about 160 kias and low altitude, between 200 ft and 100 ft agl. Impact at 156 kts. They gained around 300 feet of altitude and their slowest speed was 120 kias.
DAL 191: An L-1011-385-1 was at 175 kts 2 secs prior to impact, 167 kts 1 sec prior and first hit was at 169 kts (corrected airspeeds).
USAir 1016: A DC-9-31 also hit at relatively high airspeed, about 150 kias.
PAA 806: A B-707-321B went in at 140 kias
EAL 66: A B-727-225 was at 150kias, then dropped to 140kias and in at 135ish, within 20 seconds.
In landing configuration, or go-around for ALG 121 and USAir 1016, these speeds are not extraordinarily slow. A NASA research paper (TN D-8496) states it this way: “it was found that positive wind shear can cause the phugoid to become aperiodic and unstable.”
Oh yea, more reasons to avoid microbursts.