Thanks Barry, that's good to hear. Maybe the Guam crash was the tragedy that brought the forces for change that were already moving amongst the people at KAL to critical mass...if the audit was unbiased and correct and the airline is back on the DOD list (re Gander crash), than KAL must have undergone a complete cultural change...

How back from touchdown were you?Without being there it's hard to tell, but my only thought is that the aircraft was below the electronic glideslope or its vertical descent profile... hence the application of engine thrust which caused the noise.I was sitting in the back of a 747-400 and during a step climb, it was quite noisy and the aircraft did rattle quite a bit as as the power came up.

Reversers cannot be deployed in flight.Only when something's 'broken', e. g. the yellow reverser isolation valve warning light gets flickering... Then you maybe have a problem. That was the case on May 26[supth[/sup] 1991, LaudaAir B767-300ER 'Mozart'. They were flying from Hong Kong to Vienna. Don't wanna tell you the whole story, but in short: The aircraft handbook didn't let the pilots do anything (the light I mentioned was flickering), because it said something like 'Additional system failures may cause inflight deployment. Expect normal reverser operation after landing"... They weren't warned. The reverser of the left engine deployed inflight. The lift on the left wing was dramatically decreased and 27 seconds after the deployment they crashed.Nobody suvives.I don't think you'll lose much lift if the thrust levers are at idle and a reverser deploys accidently. But hey - I can just agree, that were most likely the speedbrakes.Cheers! :-wavehttp://members.lycos.co.uk/fs2k2/avsim/sig.jpg... under short final 25L [email protected]# 99744757

Yesterday when i was coming back from LEIB shortly before we landed there was a loud bang as the flaps went full i know it doesnt really have much to do with this but still that happened

Hi,You are quite right, the DC-8 could (and did) use in-flight thrust reverse on the inboard engines. I've experienced it myself on a trip Copenhagen to Lanzarote. I could see it wasn't the spoilers, so I wondered about about the noise. On the intercom, the skipper (american, though it was a european carrier (Sterling)) announced the use on thrust reversers. I'll admit I was sceptical, but I have later found out it was true, from some of my collegues here in SAS.BRGDSSven Sorensen, EKCH

The C-17 can deploy TRs in flight...they use it for assult landings. The pilot was explaining this procedure to me the other day. He said they can up drop to 10000feet min...he said make sure you buckled in before you try it lol.http://www.avsim.com/posky/images/banners/gary_ban.gif

The sound you heard was the spoilers being deployed the reason for the loud noise was the disruption of airflow over the wing. This is common and happens on almost every flight it just depends on how much the pilots deploys the spoilers to knock off speed. John

I had a similar experience on a dc-8 back in '77.... The pilot warned us ahead of time (ours was a charter full of 200+ H.S. and College students)... I believe the dc-8 was allowed to do this using the inboards only... Very odd feeling--that of almost stopping, midair (which was intensified because we were over a cloud deck, with no visual cues as to our speed).-John

Concorde also uses "reverse thrust" in flight, actually it has some different kind of thrust reversing system than modern airliners high by-pass ratio turbofans. It uses "clamshells" that deflect the thrust at the end of the engine. Now actually Concorde deploys the reversers on it's descent with engines in idle. Which means that there isn't much reverse thrust so to speak ; it's more the clamshells that act as speedbrakes....