Flight Safety: It seems to me that if you're going to land and you KNOW ahead of time that your stopping margins are going to be NARROW (due to tailwind, short-contaminated-sloping-wet runway, etc), then you KNOW the landing and stopping has to proceed correctly. Since TR deployment is the commitment point, what is so hard about making sure that events prior to TR deployment have happened correctly?
It seems to me you will KNOW if you touched down long or not, or if you bounced the airplane or not (and thus have to brake late). Once down you can quickly know if the spoilers deployed or not, and if the brakes are slowing the aircraft or not. If these things don't happen correctly, then go around because you KNOW the stopping margins are NARROW. Since a NARROW stopping margin landing is an "alert and focused crew" landing, you will quickly know that touchdown, spoilers and brakes happened correctly, then you can deploy the thrust reversers.
This seems very straight forward to me, or am I missing something? Why not treat TR deployment on landing, something like V1 is treated on takeoff?
While jumpseating during my former employment, Isaw a technique for slippery runways. Land with the autobrakes set to medium. If you don't feel the deceleration at touchdown apply thrust and go somewhere else. Only apply reverse thrust after confirming that the brakes are working. During aircraft certification, there is no performance credit for R/T giving the pilots some margin. However in operations, some operations eat up this credit leaving no margin.
Dick Newman