I recently saw something strange; A B757 was on short final, and the co-pilot was the "pilot-flying"..........

Question

......... When the main gears touched down, the captain did turn on the reverse thrust. So, why does the captain make that?

A similar case: The co-pilot is flying the aircraft, but few secondes before touch-down, they go around, and not the co-pilot, but the pilot, gave thrust to go-around. Why is that?

I always thought that the pilot-flying makes these kind of things?

Answer 1

When flying the pilot and co-pilot operate as a team. One may make all the radio calls while the other does something else. Every pilot has his own prefrence on how the cockpit is handled but safety is the most important factor.

Answer 2

Are you a pilot too?  I'm curious about how you would be able to see these things happening?  As the previous posters said, the pilot flying usually pushes up the thrust levers for a go around, and the pilot monitoring sets the go around or climb thrust.  It depends on your airlines procedures, but usually the pf pushes them up and calls for go around thrust, and the pm pushes them the rest of the way and fine tunes the thrust.  Then, the pf will ask for flap settings, or anything else that he needs the pm to do.

Where did you see this stuff?

Answer 3

So the person flying the aircraft can concentrate on flying the aircraft.

Answer 4

First off, think of it this way: Pilot flying and Pilot monitoring not Captain and First Officer.  Most multi-crewed cockpits view flying this way.  Both pilots trade off responsibilities on different "legs" of flying.  One flys while the other monitors and works the radio.  Still the senior pilot, the Captain, has overriding authority on any decision that is made.  

  In regards to the first part of your question, it doesn't make sense that the Captain who was not flying would engage the reverse thrust.  The reverse thrust levers are forward of the thrust levers so it is hard to imagine that the pilot monitoring would stick his hands up there to possibly interfere with the pilot flying.  There might be a company that does something different but generally Boeing pilots operate the same way. Frankly, I can't answer that question.

   A "go-around" can be called for by either pilot flying or monitoring.  Occassionally, the pilot monitoring may see something that the pilot flying does not and he may call for a "go-around."  If the pilot flying does not respond to the "go-around" call then the pilot monitoring needs to take over the controls.  Safety of flight is a call made by either pilot not just the Captain.  Believe or not Captains do make mistakes as well but that is why there are two pilots in the cockpit.  Hope that helps.

Answer 5

the pilot flying would give the initial increase in power, then the pilot monitoring would fine tune the power to the appropriate setting.  it is probably company policy that the captain or the pilot monitoring puts the reverse thrust on.  every company is different.

Answer 6

The pilot is always in control of the throttles. Always!