Originally Posted by
tdracer
BTW, yes I agree that if contact with terrain is imminent, I have no problem with a pilot intentionally overboosting (over thrusting) an engine. I recall concerns during the early days of FADEC that allowing the EEC to protect thrust limits could be a problem during an emergency such as wind shear. But analysis at that time concluded that the ability to overboost/over thrust was only of minor benefit in such an emergency. 25 years later I'm unaware of any accidents where the ability to overboost/over thrust the engines would have made a meaningful difference.
Thanks TD. I posed the original question because of what you are discussing now. As you know, there have been a couple of 747's that crashed with the initiating cause being two engines on the same side having departed the aircraft. The more well known case was in Amsterdam.
While I realize that there were other contributing issues to the final loss of control, I had always wondered if this situation was encountered at low altitude(could be a birdstrike) on departure at heavy weight, one could be in a situation where they could not maintain altitude, could not reduce weight fast enough to be able to maintain altitude and the only way to stop the descent in this desperate situation would be to add more thrust from the good engines(assuming aircraft control could be maintained). Extra thrust above max allowable limits would be gained by selecting the remaining EEC's to Alternate.
When I read about engines going to idle due to overspeed, it got my attention.
Any comments?