MD-80 Reverse Thrust Modifications

😳 It's amazing how much you can customize this Sim.

HMMMMM! Maybe I should tinker with the 737's thrust reverse. It would be nice to be able to back away from the gate on my own. I know the MD80's and 83's do it regularly.

leadfoot,
"Shift" + "P" (press a second time to stop it) and your aircraft will back up, you can press 1 or 2 to "steer" the craft.

Radarman. Virtually all the t-tail jets--- lears, cessna citation 10 esspecially, MD80s and 83s, 727s can back up on their own with thrust reverse alone. The MD80s series do it the most, and quite regularly I might add. It takes less time than waiting for a pushback tractor, and frees up ground crews in the process. Time is money in the airline bussiness.

Didn't know that, I thought that they all had to get a pushback, I guess the pilot doesn't have a "Shift and "P" key does he. 🙄
They probably didn't program that into the sim aircraft, maybe some designer has or would.

I thought that the FAA stopped all aircraft doing that because of the danger from debris being injested into the engine

🤔Was'nt the Air Florida crash caused by the pilots using r/thrust to free itself from snow?

The t-tail set ups are not as prone to debri ingestion due to the their engines being mounted relativly high on the fuesalage. The 737 pilots really have to sweat it though, look at where their engines are mounted. Practically on the GROUND for Gods sake. Real vacuum sweepers. The airlines are the ones who get stinky around the edges about ingestion damage on low slung setups like the 737s, 777s, etc. It is more of a maintainance issue with the airlines than a safety issue with the FAA.

I had read somewhere that there was a significant risk, with most aircraft, of having the plane topple over on its tail, nose in the air, when you apply the brakes following self-powered pushback.

What the pilots do after pullback is to stow the reverse buckets and let the forward thrust stop the plane. They usually don't go more than 5mph in reverse anyway, so tipping back is not a problem. If an airliner were to tip back doing this procedure I would not let the plane leave the ground for it would have to be loaded out C.G. limits anyway. The rear gear is set behind the center of lift. If it tipped back on the ground, it would surely go nose up and stall immediatly after liftoff and kill everyone, not unlike a King Air C1900 did recently. I forget where it happened.