No brakes...no problem

[chevy83]

I am very new to FSCaptain and already, my experiences have been very interesting. I fired up a routine cargo flight in a UPS MD-11 flying out of Louisville to Toronto and encountered a brake issue right before I was cleared to takeoff from Louisville. I climbed out to about 31K set the cruise which was a relatively smooth flight. As I prepared for the descent into Toronto, I realized the issue dealing with the left brake and had to adjust my strategy a bit. I decided to risk it and opt out in setting the auto brakes (critical) and was prepared to hit the reverses right upon landing with the auto spoilers armed. Had I used the brakes, the aircraft would have made a drastic shift to the right with a possible belly roll right down the airfield, similiar to the FEDEX crash that happened years ago. I made a smooth landing and probably used all of 6R at Toronto/Pearson to stop 490,000 Ibs+ of big brown MD-11. I made the exit so smooth, meaning the last runway exit on 6R that I would bet no one would have noticed. I hoped they would give me some leeway on the vicious tail winds that accelerated me >250K below 10. Thanks to those tail winds, I had an excess of fuel.

Chevy83

[peter]

Hi Chevy83,

nice story, and good airmanship (except for taking off with a brake issue of course )

Cheers,
Peter

[chevy83]

A 3 series mechanical issue should off resulted in a CANX flight, I was going to deliver that cargo with or without brakes.

Chevy83

[Travis]

Normally we don't like forcing a Captain to not make a flight - we prefer to leave that to the Captain's discretion.

However I could see an option which would force a flight cancellation if certain equipment failed before takeoff.

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Just last week I had a cousin who was departing KORD and the aircraft had to return to a gate to do some "paperwork."

Now who among us would like to have that happen in an FSCaptain flight?