Manipulators
Since my favorite aviation forum turns out to have been run by idiots who just lost their entire message-center database and didn’t have external backups (and don’t apparently know about drivesavers.com) I’m going to post my $0.02 worth here.
I was uneasy with how quickly the crew were lauded as heroes, long before the flight data recorder had even been looked at. There is no doubt that they did an excellent job given the situation they found themselves in (something of a British Airways specialty, if you remember the 747 and volcanic ash incident), but I’m reserving my adulation until the cause of the situation is understood.
The first reports of complete loss of power implied a dead cockpit as well, I’m guessing this is an idiot reporter’s misunderstanding of what a pilot would mean by loss of power.
It is now fairly clear that the engines failed to respond to requests for additional thrust, both through the autothrottle and the manual throttles. That there didn’t seem to be any indication of the lack of response to the autothrottle requests is probably some kind of failure in the airplane’s system (or the system’s design). Had the crew been alerted to the abnormal response to ordered thrust increases earlier they may have had time to alter the glideslope, change configuration to extend the glide, or even possibly solve the reason for lack of thrust.
I do not believe the airplanes systems failed catastrophically, I.E. were not delivering orders or were ‘crashed’. It seems far more likely there was a problem with fuel contamination or icing in the engine. There is also a potential failure here of systems that should’ve warned of the icing possibility or contamination… or of the systems designed to prevent those problems.
If my postulations are correct some systems failures played a major part in the crash, and pilot skill played a major part in mitigation of the crash… BUT, what if the crew had been more hands-on with the approach? Would they have noticed the disconnect sooner? If they’d been monitoring engine performance the way a 2nd officer used to (instead of relying on the airplane’s systems to report a problem) might they have realized something was wrong? I don’t know… but I would like to.
I think they were aware immediately the autothrottle failed to respond to demand (and quickly reverted to manual throttle control).
Whatever the reason, 2 miutes out and 600′ does not give one a great chance at sorting the problem, all the time losing energy or height…
Dirty fuel pickup?
I guess I’m just concerned that procedure seems to be what I’d call ‘flying the checklist’ instead of the plane. Was just reading that standard practice is autopilot ’till about 250′ from touchdown… so it was possible for the crew to have noticed the problem even later (they noticed and took over at about 600′).
But I still can’t shake the feeling that if the pilot flying had been ‘hands on’ from much further out he may have noticed the lack of response in time to make changes.