D Ramapriya wrote in news:c8a37c1e-7561-4bc0-
:

On Jan 18, 1:37 pm, Dylan Smith wrote:
On 2008-01-18, D Ramapriya wrote:

Albeit that they aren't always fully reliable in such matters, eye-
witness reports seem to indicate that in the final moments before
landing, the 777 had a distinct nose-up attitude.

A normal landing in a B777 is distinctly nose up. I wouldn't like to
wheelbarrow one of those.


But this wasn't a normal landing. The 777 was reportedly circa 500 ft
when the pilot noticed that the engine wasn't responding to greater
power. My Q is that once it was known that power was off, shouldn't
the pilot have pushed the nose down a bit to increase the airspeed to
be able to land as further down as possible since a nose-up attitude
with idling or shut engines can only sink the aircraft faster? As it
transpired, it came down some 300 meters from the runway edge.

Yeah, but inside the airport perimiter. whatever he did as far as
hanling was concerned, it would have been a lot worse had he landed
somewhere even shorter. That runway end is littered with roads, hotels,
bus stops, BA offices , all sorts of nasty things to hit. Whatever
happened he got it down without killing anyone. The injuries were
probably mostly in the evacuation.


Wheelbarrowing is just not on, I'd imagine. If there was that much
airspeed, why'd he crash-land short in the first place?



Why would hae have "that much airspeed"? At 500' he would have been back
to Vref+5 or maybe a bit higher. Pushing the nose down might have got
him some speed but at the cost of altitude and glide. The tiny bit of
surplus speed he had was worth sacrificing to avoid hitting something
nasty.
In any case, the "any landing you can walk away from" rule applies.


Bertie