atakacs makes plain, simple and unemotional statements and immediately gets shot down in flames.
He was asked what he would have done. The point is there was not much could be done given the time and circumstances. Raising the flaps gained 50 metres. It is claimed that Boeing test pilots could do no better but I have seen no details of what they tried and what they achieved. The main contentious issue is the AP being allowed to fly the aircraft to the point of stall before the aircraft hit the ground with insufficient energy remaining to arrest the high rate of descent.
So apart from instinctively raising the flaps with no other ideas or options was there not a great element of luck involved in the outcome?
The accident has, on the face of it, had a detrimental effect on Peter's whole life.
Just great words and from a pilot who flies the same AC type.
Sorry if you felt that I was emotional, it was not intended to come out like this, (it's hard to read into peoples feelings on threads such as this) but atakacs previously made some pretty good points in his posts, it was the last post I just did not understand in the context of his other ones. In all survival accidents there is always an element of luck, some in the high degree category and some in the low degree category. Sully said himself that he was lucky that day the Hudson was flat and calm, it can be a pretty windy rough patch of water more days than not. My post was not just aimed at atakacs but others as well. My reasons are;
1. Since the BA038 incident the British press never left the issue alone, in many cases quoting almost directly from Pprune, sometimes skewing the reasons for the incident towards the crew, it must have been hell at times for Peter and John!
2. Probably the same reason as you, the incident did change Peter and his families lives. I am sure this will be well explained in his book.
3. Every comment (some just plain stupid) from people who tend to cloud the pilot handling issues of that day may contribute the Peter finding it hard to get a new job! I know from many PM's I have exchanged with pilots who know Peter well worry about this issue.
And while the big boys squabble about the unarguable, the elephant in the living room is being ignored. For the most part and with a few, notable exceptions, the discussion as to why
two, high bypass fan jets with enviable reliability records, mounted in
the same world class aeroplane with an enviable safety record, suddenly decided not play in BA038's garden - probably.
For me one of the best posts for a long time since PB wrote his long informative post after the report came out. The report has not convinced me RR and Boeing have explained enough about their findings, but this has nothing to do with the way PBs crew as pilots handled the situation which they were faced with that day! (as M.MOUSE explained so well in his post.) For me there are two issues that have emerged now,
1.The great handling of the situation the crew were faced with, ending in a great result considering BA038 was an unprecedented situation for all well trained pilots.
2. The murky technical issues neither RR or Boeing have explained to my satisfaction possibly pointing to hidden commercial pressures of some kind.
3. May be it is time to split the thread on these two issues.
Finally,
If this situation ever happens again what would have going full flaps right as they were about to hit the ground have done? Just wondering if it would have broke the descent rate.
A good question, but a question of timing, Trippe 7 flap movements take time, so it is my view with all the chaos going on in the cockpit even if the crew decided to go F25 (which they did) then somewhere in the diminishing seconds they had left, go to the full flap settings again is a timing issue that probably would not have changed the outcome too much, only my point view, would be interested in M.Mouse's point of view.