vilas
Don’t get me wrong; I sure enough don’t dare excluding any manufacturer. With the complex aircraft we fly, as a pilot it would be preposterous to think we simply know better.
Experience however should keep us alert. FBW is not the wonderful saviour the industry likes us to believe. There are still traps involved and, worse, reluctance to correct them due to some engineer’s pride, but mostly due to the deplorable pack of wolves called litigation lawyers especially from the USA. Any change, even of the most obvious design flaw, would have them backtrack any former incident involving the design, ensuing an avalanche of lawsuits.
The thread starts with the question of thrust reduction in case of overspeed:
Is it ok to go to idle, or should we follow the manufacturer’s advice to only go halfway and use speedbrakes.
Some say follow strictly manufacturer’s FCOM/QRH/SOP, others are quite reluctant to extend any speedbrakes.
We can debate for hours, but here’s the problem:
1. Aerodynamically it makes basically no sense at high altitude to destroy something we are normally struggling for, namely lift.
2. Overspeed at high altitude has not caused an accident in recent times, low speed (or low lift) has.
So why would any manufacturer want lift destruction to counteract high speed??
One of them because his FBW would climb in case of massive overspeed and I hope we all agree that this is undesirable. Another one because he wants thrust levers only halfway back due to its engines unusual long spool-up time.
In both cases I raise the ominous “Gretchenfrage”, the core question:
Why does the manufacturor not cure the sickness and simply fights the symptom? I say:
Get the FBW or EEC logic right before you suggest manoevers that put us in a worse situation to counteract the flaw!
That is what I mean by not unconditionally trusting manufacturers, FCOM/QRH and SOPs. They have an agenda that is called profit. I have one that is called survival, in the economical and physical sense.
They do not always match!