No, the left main was not on the ground after touchdown for some time. The aircraft will not auto-deploy the spoilers nor autobrake until it senses weight on weels. It also locks out the thrust reversers. All for obvious reasons.
The left wing was lifting because they came in way too fast. 30-40 knots above final approach speed. That's why they landed so flat - if they had assumed correct flare AoA the airplane would have flown away from the runway.
This is the definition of trying to "horse it onto the runway".
Disclosure: Pilot on small GA aircraft but not ATP and not jet rated so YMMV. FWIW small airplanes are the same: if you're too fast they don't want to land. Bad things happen when you try to force them.
> The aircraft will not auto-deploy the spoilers nor autobrake until it senses weight on weels. It also locks out the thrust reversers. All for obvious reasons.
While I agree the obvious course of action would be a go-around, a manual override for when you know doing the stupid thing is the least unsafe thing to do would be handy.
I disagree, the situations where you are not fully on the ground but still want those things are minimal, thats a go around need at that point. I bet it would be set off way more accidently then it ever would be on purpose. The systems are also highly redundant so its extremely unlikely they would fail and there would be a valid reason to override the computer.
Plus even in this case it wouldn't have saved them, it was too fast too far, plus Im sure there would be some unpleasantness if both engines went full reverse while one landing gear was still not on the ground, thats gonna be some yaw right there :p . Its kinda like saying what if I need to override ABS?
Spoilers have full support for manual deployment, as they are sometimes used to manage your energy during descent.
Deploying the spoilers manually would have brought the wheels down and that could have allowed thrust reverser deployment.
Note that it took them 7 seconds between first wheel touching down and first application of the brakes, which they were doing manually. If they had applied spoilers at the same time, they still only had 10 seconds of runway left. I think this still would have been a runway overrun even in that case.
True. I think if they could have applied spoilers and thrust reversers sooner, perhaps before touching down, they could have turned that botched landing (that should never be a landing in the first place) into one without casualties.
Part of the problem is they got into this mess because they were behind the airplane and had been behind it for a while. That means less time to do your normal procedures putting you further behind. That raises stress and causes mistakes. That cycle feeds back on itself making everything worse.
They'd have needed the mental bandwidth to notice on the EICAS display that the spoilers weren't deploying to even know to manually trigger them. Given how far behind they were noticing that would be highly unlikely. Under high stress you revert to your training or habits and manual spoiler deployment is just not something you need to do.
Their bank angle (for lack of a better term) was probably not enough to notice unless they had the mental bandwidth to pay close attention.
This is a common thing in these sorts of accidents: if you have the mental bandwidth to deal with these problems you'd have been properly setting yourself up for landing 30 minutes before you started and you wouldn't be in this mess to begin with.
This also represents a safety margin during normal flights: If everything is done by-the-book and going well then you are calm, collected, and you have the mental resources available to do quick instrument scans after touching down and potentially notice spoilers did not deploy - and you have the extra runway to account for the few seconds of delay it takes to notice then manually deploy them.
The left wing was lifting because they came in way too fast. 30-40 knots above final approach speed. That's why they landed so flat - if they had assumed correct flare AoA the airplane would have flown away from the runway.
This is the definition of trying to "horse it onto the runway".
Disclosure: Pilot on small GA aircraft but not ATP and not jet rated so YMMV. FWIW small airplanes are the same: if you're too fast they don't want to land. Bad things happen when you try to force them.