15 minutes ago, 2reds2whites said:

You absolutely do not cross control a jet airliner into a sideslip to lose height/speed, at least not in real life.

Well, this is a sim, so you can do anything you like, although you will note that I did say there was the option to go around too.

In any case, try telling Captain Bob Pearson he can't sideslip an airliner, because indeed did do it in real life with Air Canada Flight 143 (a Boeing 767) when it ran out of fuel and he landed it on a disused runway in Manitoba, by sideslipping it in when it was too high on approach. Any aeroplane can be sideslipped, it's just not necessarily always approved of. 😉

14 minutes ago, Chock said:

Well, this is a sim, so you can do anything you like, although you will note that I did say there was the option to go around too.

In any case, try telling Captain Bob Pearson he can't sideslip an airliner, because indeed did do it in real life with Air Canada Flight 143 (a Boeing 767) when it ran out of fuel and he landed it on a disused runway in Manitoba, by sideslipping it in when it was too high on approach. Any aeroplane can be sideslipped, it's just not necessarily always approved of. 😉

Agreed, that was quite a side slip too in that incident, insane angles from what I recall. 

14 hours ago, RichieFly said:

Here's another speed brake note: With the Airbus, the speed brake will only deploy 1/2 of full extent with the autopilot on.

Another one: The speed brake on the BEA 146 looks funny.

That only applies to the A320, the A319 and A321 do not have this restriction. Also at full flap the computers will retract the spoilers, I think that applies to every FBW AIrbus. Probably a good idea, don't really want to be in a low energy state near the edge of the envelope with a ton of drag and lift reduction in an airliner.

Fokker 100 had the same spilt tailcone speed brake as the BAe 146, very effective even if they do look a bit like something of out of the Alien film franchise!

Here's another one: The HS 121 Trident was authorised to use reverse thrust in-flight (the reverse mechanism is all internal) which meant a descent rate of 10,000 fpm was safely possible, although terrifying for all aboard!

Edited June 10, 20223 yr by ckyliu

Not much to add that has already been stated, but the 737 is indeed a very slippery aircraft. The speedbrakes do help in slowing down the plane but it's not drastic and the plane won't slow on a dime depending on your descent rate. The way I see it is, if you think the speedbrakes do nothing in the aircraft, fly the plane up to some altitude, and descend it manually in clear weather. Use level change to maintain maximum descent rate given the speed. Once you see the rate sort of stabilize, deploy the speedbrakes, if the rate increases, then the speedbrake is fine. Whether it's realistic or not, I'll leave that to PMDG and their irl 737 pilot beta testers. The 737 has been a product of theirs for what... almost 20 years, so I would have to think that it is at least fairly realistic in terms of the speedbrake authority.