Heavy landing in Airbus A320

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ed
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The worst Ive witnessed is on a corporate jet. My shift opposite took the aircraft to Jersey for registration as it was new, as it touched down to return the junior pilot pulled back on the throttle and hit TOGA the throttles pushed forward, he panic'd retarded them again and did the same.

The more experienced crew member then took over. The result was a rather fancy bouncing of the nose gear down the runway and a whole load of heavy landing checks.

My mate was green when he came off the flight :) I was so pleased it was his turn hehe.

It always feels worse than it actually is, take a look at some of those videos when they tested the 777 and 747 with extreme crosswinds. Some of those landings are amazing. Forget the name of the airport.
 
Ed said:
;)

I know the A320 is an advanced piece of kit with auto land facilities that control roll, pitch, yaw and trim but it felt too violent to be automated. I can't imagine any pilot letting the machine try and land it under such circumstances.
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technical crap: autoland's got a limit for cross-winds.. something like 15 knots? (and does gatwick have cat iiic? :p) well i dunno but I can say that they'll probabaly opt for a visual approach as they like to get as much manual flying as possible... I will if I ever get there :)
 
Ed said:
;)

I know the A320 is an advanced piece of kit with auto land facilities that control roll, pitch, yaw and trim but it felt too violent to be automated. I can't imagine any pilot letting the machine try and land it under such circumstances.
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Those are the circumstances when they let the plane fly itself down to 200ft (or further depending on the ILS CAT). A lot of company SOP's insist that the aircraft is not hand flown in certain meteorological conditions.


Coming into Gatwick you were probably behind a B744 or an A343 on tight spacing, hence wake turbulence making the approach interesting. It is even more likely as you say it didn't get rough until on final approach. That's why the approach was continued. Had there been significant windshear they'd have performed a go around.
 
Every Ryanair landing I've had at Blackpool's been rough, bar none.

On the last one we hit the ground with such a thud, everyone in the cabin gasped and my mate gleefully declared "Textbook!" :D
 
You say he landed on the left wheel first, this is normal procedure for landing in a cross wind. My friend is a pilot who has just obtained his commercial licence, I remember him once telling me that when there is a significant cross wind they touch down on one wheel first. I have seen this put into practice many times when watching the planes land at my local airport.
 
SoSolid said:
You say he landed on the left wheel first, this is normal procedure for landing in a cross wind. My friend is a pilot who has just obtained his commercial licence, I remember him once telling me that when there is a significant cross wind they touch down on one wheel first. I have seen this put into practice many times when watching the planes land at my local airport.
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Commercial pilots generally DON'T do this. Touching down one wheel then the other in a crosswind means that you are using the wing-down method to keep aligned with the runway. The very LAST thing you want to be doing with under-slung engines which only have a handful of feet clearance from the ground at the best of times is to lower one of the wings!!

Nearly all commercial airliners that I know of use the crab method and so crab into the wind and then in the flare (around 10-20ft in a jet) kick off the drift......

tis all good fun tho!
 
Blinkz said:
Commercial pilots generally DON'T do this. Touching down one wheel then the other in a crosswind means that you are using the wing-down method to keep aligned with the runway. The very LAST thing you want to be doing with under-slung engines which only have a handful of feet clearance from the ground at the best of times is to lower one of the wings!!

Nearly all commercial airliners that I know of use the crab method and so crab into the wind and then in the flare (around 10-20ft in a jet) kick off the drift......

tis all good fun tho!
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Mate I know a spot by my local airport where I can get an excellent view right next to the runway and on windy days I have seen this "wing down" method a billion times, particulary on landing easy jets.
 
We dont use the wing down method. We sideslip to maintain the runway centreline, then straighten up with rudder just before landing. If there is any roll on touchdown it may be induced from the yaw before there is time for either the pilot or the yaw-roll coupling from the flight controls to reduce it. Or that there is a small amount of drift if the aircraft floats a little before landing, once the yaw has been kicked out. It not a standard technique on the Airbus though certainly. Mate.
 
Ed said:
I've just returned from a fantastic week in the Canary Islands and am properly sunburnt and extra fat.
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Cause....

Ed said:
As we head for London Gatwick and make the last turn for final approach the plane started to wobble so I assumed we had a stiff crosswind....

As soon as it looked like we were about 10 feet off the ground, the yo-yo effect kicked in and we started to lose height fast. We literally hit the tarmac with an almighty thump, more than any I can ever remember and with the wobble having sent us leaning to the left, that wheel touched down first.
....
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and effect. :p
 
I remember when I went to Canada we had someone die on the plane, for the first half of the trip I think they needed a doctor so we got half diverted to the Azores from Heathrow, almost made it there and I think they passed away, so then I think by law you have to stop at the first available airport, so we stopped in Nova Scotia, the most desolate airport I've ever seen.

Flight was supposed to be 8 hours, ended up being double that.

Thats my plane tale.
 
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