Lakeview Bill wrote:
Just kidding, but...

I just heard that the NTSB has recommended that pilots no longer be
allowed to include thrust reversers when they calculate landing
distances, following the Midway accident.

Fortunately, the FAA usually manages to override this sort of
bureaucratic BS...

The Southwest accident at Midway was the reason for the proposed rule
change. Basically air carriers don't/can't use the decelleration of thrust
reversers for computations for takeoff and landing distances (they DO use
them, they just can't compute for them). Any decelleration produced by the
rerversers is just "money in the bank". Certain operators, however, have
authority in flight to use reverser decelleration in their computations of
stopping distance for landing "only" with contaminated runways. Southwest
did that. Their computations showed they could stop barely within the
runway length. On the actual landing for whatever reason the reversers
didn't get deployed until near the end of the landing roll. That's why
they went off the end of the runway resulting in a fatality.

The NTSB recommendation will only effect those users who have authority to
compute landing distance (in flight) using reversers on a contaminated
runway. It would have no effect on most users and minor effect on users who
had that authority before. I think it's a good idea.

--

Darrell R. Schmidt
B-58 Hustler History: http://members.cox.net/dschmidt1/
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