An interesting comparison with the Midway accident (alph2z, #146).
What has happened since then … the industry objected to proposed regulatory action – the FAA only recommends a 15% distance margin above the unfactored landing distance.
If the FAA had aligned US contaminated ops with EU requirements, then many of the assumptions and risks in calculating performance would be highlighted – see CS-25; AMC 1591.
There could be significant risk if the contaminated performance is based on the use of reverse.
Reverse is not normally considered for dry / wet landings due to reliability issues – the need to minimise risk (maximising the distance margin) for all landings. However, for contaminated ops where reverse is used, the EU contains the risk by assuming (and warning) that these operations should be infrequent and at best avoided. The risk with small safety-factors is that if reverse fails then an overrun is most likely; there are similar pitfalls with reverse and the use of lower autobrake settings.
Whilst many US operators have suitable performance data, the difference appears to be that contaminated ops are not ‘infrequent’ as in EU, they are accepted as the norm as an economic operation depends on them. This is also the background to the objections against regulation / higher factoring on contaminated runways. Thus if reverse fails on a limiting runway you will most likely overrun the end.
The ‘nay sayers’ might be encouraged by the ‘safe outcome’ arguing that more runway or safety areas will ensure lives saved. This is very short sighted as it can only be a matter of time before a US operator suffers a ‘big one’ – Jamaica was very close, who will be next.