Originally Posted by
HPIC
I assume you’re referring to the Skylease 747-400 in Nov 2018. Had the crew used auto land, the landing distance would have likely been increased by 1,000ft…per the autoland performance calculation requirements. How would this have helped?
The problem was that after touchdown, the #1 thrust lever was advanced to a position that disabled the auto brakes and auto speed brakes and the thrust reversers were not utilized correctly. The end result was a severe lack of deceleration that caused them to run off the end of the runway. Of course, the lateral drift on touchdown and rollout didn’t help the situation…and perhaps autoland would have remedied that…but I seriously doubt it would have prevented the overrun.
There were a lot of poor choices made…but I don’t think that utilizing an autoland would have resulted in a better outcome. The thrust levers are still controlled solely by the PF after touchdown and would likely have resulted in a similar end result.
Auto land with flaps s full instead of 25 would have shortened the landing distance some 700+ feet. Not being high or fast, with auto land, would also have shortened the landing distance still further.
The very firm & not longitudinally straight touchdown would not have occurred with auto land either. The advancement of #1 throttle likely being the unintended consequence of it.