I'm really sorry about this, but lots of you seem to be banging on about flap extension above 20,000 feet.
Where exactly does it say that the crew extended flaps above 20,000 feet? Where exactly does it say that the crew extended the flaps at all?
Read the link in post number 2:
Therefore the crew requested a lower level and was cleared to FL320. The captain selected the bank angle limitation from auto to 15. During the descending turn the speed fell to about 220 KIAS, the first officer recommended to extend the slats, the maximum slat speed was indicated 270 KIAS, so that the captain ordered the slats to be extended. Upon selecting the slats down the indicated maximum slat speed dropped to below 220 KIAS, so that the captain ordered the slats to be immediately retracted. At that point the airplane began to buffet and the autoslat extension alert activated. The crew requested further descent and was cleared to FL290. The buffeting ceased when the airplane descended through FL300.
OK, fair enough, they are talking about
slats, not
flaps.
Yet for someone who claims to have been a captain on the DC10, why don't you enlighten us on the answer to one of your own questions:
For that matter, where exactly does it say that flaps cannot be extended above 20,000 feet on the DC-10?
As you can read in the related story, slats were extended well beyond the max ext speed of M0.51 at M0.59.
Perhaps that magical 20000' limit (applicable to all jets I've flown so far) has something to do with that...?
