ackattacker
Client 9
- Joined
- Nov 14, 2004
- Posts
- 2,125
If the nose was below the horizon and the crew never disconnected the auto-thrust, then idle thrust would have been commanded with the trust levers in the climb detent. That is the difference between moving them to TOGA and leaving them in the auto-thrust range.
The climb thrust detent is an auto-thrust active range setting. If the nose was down and the speed higher than the speed target the system would command idle thrust. Moving the levers to TOGA would send a signal commanding full thrust to the EECs. There is a possibility that the #1 engine may have been capable of producing thrust but it was never given a command to do so. This is the point of most posters.
Personally I don't think it would have made a difference but we may never know for sure.
The FDR data shows the N1 target and N1 command by the EEC along with the actual N1. You can see that the N1 target remains constant until the TLA is reduced, but the actual N1 on both engines drops dramatically. Airspeed remains at or below speed at impact.
I think the FDR data shows that the EEC's did NOT roll back the power. The EEC's were still commanding climb thrust but the engines simply could not comply and the EEC's will not simply dump more fuel into an engine that refuses to spool up. If they did, the engines would have simply melted, the EGT's were already at 900C...