An initial report into the crash-landing by the Air Accident Investigations Branch (AAIB) found the jet's engines failed to respond to demands for increased thrust from the crew two miles from touchdown.
The AAIB is now investigating "the range of aircraft systems that could influence engine operation", and a more detailed analysis of the flight recorder is also taking place.
i didn't know that... i thought everything related to landing was pretty much controlled either by the plane or by the captain. i didn't know that the plane got instructions (wtf?!) from the ground to increase thrust. did that mean the captain couldn't increase the thrust manually!?
I read those paragraphs as:
The crew on board the aircraft could not get the engines to increase thrust (from the cockpit, I guess) when the plane was two miles from the runway.
The AAIB is now investigating why the engines wouldn't respond to the cockpit controls.
There's another
article that states:
At approximately 600ft and two miles from touch down, the autothrottle demanded an increase in thrust from the two engines, but the engines did not respond.
Following further demands for increased thrust from the autothrottle, and subsequently the flight crew moving the throttle levers, the engines similarly failed to respond.
Given the big stink over the 787's passenger network being connected to the cockpit network, I would expect that I would've heard something in the news by now if aircraft towers did get control of planes on touchdown...that seems like a massive vulnerability to terrorist attack, given that there would be the possibility that somebody could sit out in a field and overrev the airplane's engines to crash it into the terminal. Or take full control of the aircraft and fly it over to the nearest target of opportunity.
I hope the FAA isn't that stupid.
