Danny Dot wrote:
In about 1990 Airbus did low pass at the Paris airshow and lost the plane.
I recall it had something to do with the throttle software thinking the
pilots were in landing mode and "refused" to go to high power for the
go-around.

Anyone remember the details???

Danny Dot

This really comes down to a simple difference between the way the
autothrottle operates in Boeing airplanes vs. Airbus.

In the Boeing model, if you shove the throttle handles forward, the
engines respond to the throttle setting. If autothrottle is engaged,
it will start to retard the throttles back to the commanded setting and
the pilot will see the throttles moving, realize that autothrottle is
engaged and trying to do something different than what he wants, and he
will grab the throttle handles, shove them back forward and push the
autothrottle disengage button on the side of the throttle handle. This
takes only a second or two to resolve.

In an Airbus model, if you shove the throttle handles foward, the
engines do not respond to the throttle setting (when autothrottle is
engaged), and the throttle handles will just sit there in a position
that differs from what the autothrottle is doing. In the meantime, it
can take a while for the pilot to realize what is going on and the push
the TOGA button to disengage the landing mode and get the computer to
respond to the throttle handle position. This is what happened to the
pilot involved in this accident. By the time he realized what was
going on and pushed the TOGA button, there wasn't time for the engines
to spool up enough to miss the trees.

This is why the difference between a chainsaw and an A320 is 100 trees
a minute.

Dean