Spoilers, no spoilers?

Amine wrote:
On Feb 7, 3:35 pm, Dudley Henriques wrote:
Go around.


Well, let's play the devil's advocate... What if you can't go around?
(E.g. because of engine failure or in a glider). I mean, I understand
why you don't want to deploy spoilers if you're below minimums or if
you're flirting with stall speed. But if you're well above minimums,
with no risk of stalling, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't use
spoilers to bleed the extra momentum/altitude. The only disadvantage
would be that the final approach will be steeper and thereby would not
have the elegance of the perfect glide slope. But that's seems to be
more a matter of taste (and possibly performance) than an actual
safety issue.

After all, the "no-spoiler-in-midair"dogma isn't built in the design
of the pilot interface. If there truly was a physical reason why
spoilers should not come out in the air, it would have been an
engineering requirement to systematically disable their mechanism
unless, say, the gear is down and the wheels rolling.
The "go around" comment was meant as a general rule for any approach
situation that has the aircraft too high and fast for the runway.
Naturally, any approach situation ending with an accident assumes
something went wrong somewhere.
In the case of spoiler use, I can't speak directly to the DC8 scenario
as I'm not DC8 type rated, but obviously in this case, a spoiler
deployment scenario that had the POTENTIAL for problems had been noted
prior by the Captain (at least this is my understanding anyway).
In such a situation, with the first officer making the approach, the
scenario for an in-flight deployment error on the spoilers having been
noted, it would seem obvious to me that a go around call rather than ANY
attempt to use spoilers to save the approach would have been the prudent
call by the first officer.
I'm sure there is more to the story. There always is.
:-)

--
Dudley Henriques