I really didn't want to re-open the N110AA tragedy except to point out to the Count that his comment was nonsense.
However, now that we are talking about this tragedy, I would like to make one comment.
I keep hearing that if the crew had stuck at V2+10 and had not reduced to V2 like they were taught then they would not have crashed. It is quite true that largely as a result of this tragic accident, we went on to a system that if you were at V2 when the failure happened, then maintain V2. If you were at a speed above V2 then maintain that speed. That is entirely logical but it was not the thinking at the time. In other words, if your aeroplane is still flying at that speed, then stick to that as a minimum. Not all of us are test pilots.
In any event, claiming that they crashed because they reduced to V2 does not really bear inspection. The fact is that the damage caused by the pylon and the engine going up and over the wing caused massive hydraulic leaks apart from the retraction of the slats on the left wing. (There was no manual reversion on the DC-10). Even if they had survived the reduction of speed to V2, they would have died anyway about 5 minutes later due to loss of control due to loss of hydraulics.
We re-ran this scenario in the AA simulators at DFW and it was not survivable.
Now, before the promising hysterics on this forum get started, this disaster bore no resemblance to the Sioux City tragedy. In that case they had lost the centre engine (No.2) and still had the wing engines which could be used for pitch and yaw. Had they lost one of the wing engines (like N110AA) they were equally doomed.
I think it might also be worth considering that the difference between Flaps Zero/Retract and Flaps Zero/Extend depending on weight was between 60 and 70 knots.
In other words, the difference in stall speed between Slats Extended and Slats Retracted was between 60 and 70 knots.
So, to have no slats on one wing after take-off was going to be pretty disastrous and 10 knots would not have made much difference.
Last edited by JW411; 9th Feb 2012 at 14:15.