To: Youwererobbed,

Curious about the type of machine you operate. I know that the airport I used to work from if you didn't do the numbers right, and were heavy, you would probably end up in the weeds. We used to get 727s come in, and they all used full revers thrust, or they probably would have ended up in the weeds. So yes reverse is efective, and very useful at not only limiting brake wear, but also stopping.

As a point of interest a well known British Airline introduced a policy of idle reverse unless conditions dictated otherwise.

It was discovered shortly thereafter that brake wear DECREASED using less reverse on the 747-400.

If you look at the thrust reversers on a B737-200 you will see that the buckets operate about an axis canted outboard by around 45 degrees. There is often a sooty mark on the upper rear fuselage as a result. I was once told that this was because they started with them operating about the horizontal axis but found that this gave a ground cushion effect under the wing which reduced the load on the wheels and thus reduced the braking force (=mu x weight). This meant that the aircraft took longer to stop with brakes plus reverse thrust than it did with brakes only. Incidentally, there may be other considerations in how much of each to use. I was recently on a B767 doing a demo flight to some people thinking of buying some for a specialist conversion job. The excited pilot announced that he was going to use full brakes and full reverse to show how well the jet could stop. It stopped in a comendably short distance - and the pax were well amused by the tray of glasses which slid on to the floor in the galley with a resounding crash.

M.Mouse:

The decrease in brake wear you cite is only applicable if the Autobrakes 1 setting is used. Rull reverse gives more deceleration than programmed for the autobrakes, causing the brakes to release and re-apply, therefore causing increased wear.

If Autobrakes 2 setting is used, reverse works properly/conventionally.