@PZL104 Ok that is what I thought. Even though I selected the auto brake, I will still need to engage the reverse thrust on the throttle. I was just a little confused. Because the auto spoiler will deploy on touchdown when selected, somehow I though the auto brake was the same.
A problem is that the reverser animation is wrong, which means that it’s almost invisible when selecting idle reverse (what you mostly use IRL).
Selecting idle reverse IRL full opens the reverser sleeves, cowls, buckets, etc. indepent of the actual reverse thrust.
In FSX/P3D/MSFS the thrust reverser cowl etc. position changes with the application of reverse thrust.
To answer the OPs question, i do a test flight for each new aircraft to see how to set up landing, climb, max altitude etc. But that just me, maybe I’m brain damaged from watching the flight envelope sheet that came with “Chuck Yeargers Advanced Flight Trainer”… Finding out the limits of each aircraft - and breaking them, is fun!
I don’t fully get the flare. Sadly there’s no replay function (yet), so I can’t see what I’m actually doing, but isn’t the plane already landing on the let’s say ‘back wheels’ (in a pitch up attitude) when configured properly? At least that’s what I did observe in FSX in the Boeings.
If so, why is the flare necessary?
The flare is to reduce the rate of descent to a lower rate that is both comfortable to pax, safe, and reduces stress on the aircraft and landing gear structure.
No flare is quite literally thee equivalent of landing a Hornet on an aircraft carrier.
So despite the nose already being up, it has to go higher?
(I do come down quite hard always, despite me trying to flare 
Although I’m also wondering if the sim isn’t exaggerating the sound…)
Yes. Normal pitch attitude during approach is about 2-2.5 degrees. A further pitch increase is required during the landing flare. Roughly an additional 2 degrees.
Ok thanks.
I will do even more my best to make it more comfortable for my passengers a next time… (and hope I don’t fly off again)
The other thing the flare does is bleed off some speed to help land. It’s a lot of fun to practice.
Although there are people who are saying that it’s bad for the tires, bad for the air/ground switching logic etc. it’s of course nice if you can achieve a super smooth touchdown with the lowest possible sink rate.
IRL it’s simply very nice if you notice the touchdown only because the ground spoilers suddenly extend.
A smooth landing is satisfying, but you’ve very likely put yourself in an awkward aerodynamic/ground dynamic situation where your airplane is in a control limbo.
There’s a video floating out there of a pilot doing a touch and go at Buttonville losing control of his plane and crashing into a hangar (he survived with minor injuries but the plane was a writeoff). That’s what happens when you land too smoothly. Experienced it first hand myself too and that’s exactly what happened: a landing too smooth.
Firm doesn’t feel good, but it’s definitely safer, especially in a crosswind.
How can you possibly deduce that a controlled departure of the runway in to a hangar was due to a ‘too smooth’ landing? Ive made plenty of landings, smooth and firm, but I’ve never managed to get my controls mixed up and plough across a field in to a hangar.
I was actually talking about an autopilot assisted glideslope approach. The autopilot makes pitch adjustments while I make power adjustments. I think the autopilot pitch adjustments cancel out the airspeed increase or decrease that would arise from increasing or decreasing throttle (pilot action) which would then seem to have a direct effect on vertical speed. In the absence of autopilot assisting with pitch, then the pilot must control both pitch and power to fly the glideslope. This is how I understood it to be. I could be wrong.
With the A320neo, I suspect the autothrottle is reducing power when you pitch the plane down and increasing power when you pitch the plane up in order to maintain airspeed. That’s a reversal of the roles of the pilot and autopilot in the scenario above. Then pitch angle (pilot action) will seem to control vertical speed directly. ( I have to check the display to verify this. ) With both autopilot and autothrottle engaged as in autoland then I think autopilot is probably controlling pitch to follow the glideslope.
I was afraid the A32neo autothrottle will disconnect if i tried to control pitch so that didn’t even occur to me as a solution. I thought it maintained speed only when hands free of the stick. And pushing the stick forward without the autothrottle would have increased airspeed. Now I think its only the autopilot that disengages when pilot attempts to control the stick.
Manual landing:
Autoland:
Incidentally, do you reduce speed and engage the flaps since they should be engaged in certain speeds, or do you engage flaps and the speed reduces. I think you ought to reduce speed first and then engage flaps but in a smart airplane like the A320, I think if the command to extend flaps is received, the computer should figure the airspeed should decrease first before deploying the flaps. I don’t think the flaps are used to aerodynamically induce drag to reduce speed or is that the case? I think they allow the plane to fly at slower speeds by changing the shape of the wing, but are not necessarily the agents that slow the speed of the plane. This is again a chicken and egg question. In the autoland video, the speed was reduced before flaps. In the manual landing, the flaps were just engaged without reducing speed. In a not so smart plane, I think the flaps used in the this manner would just fly off.
Having too little weight on wheels means a crosswind will teeter your plane around the center of gravity too easily, which will cause the weight to shift majorly to the downwind main gear and the nose gear. Once that happens, your aircraft will have a tendency to turn towards the crosswind not by aerodynamic forces, but strictly by ground dynamic forces.
To resolve this, you:
- Apply slight opposite rudder and crosswind inputs to firmly plant the upwind main gear on the ground
- Raise the flaps if needed
- Once your weight is firmly established on the main wheels, realign with the centerline of the runway.
Of course, to prevent this happening in the first place, you have crosswind inputs established as soon as you land…and you have firm landings (or landings where the aircraft’s body angle is high enough so that when you lower the nose you know your wings are generating too little lift).
All this is lessons learned personally as well as input from various CFI’s that have seen this happen to students over the years.
I’m not questioning the physics and inputs required to perform a crosswind landing.
I’m saying that the bloke in that video at Buttonville ended up in the Hangar due to pilot error. He over-corrected and didn’t release what appears to be full right rudder input until after he had departed the runway at a 45 degree angle, pointing at a hangar. His accident wasn’t a result of a smooth or soft landing.
As for the original post, the A320 under normal law attempts to maintain the current load factor. If you’re on approach and you reduce the power, you’re going to lose speed, but the pitch of the aircraft will have minimal change, since it’s maintaining a neutral stick load of 1g. You’re rate of descent will begin to increase, but this is because your angle of attack is now increasing as your speed gets slower.
Realistically, pitch control on any aircraft controls vertical speed. The adage of power controls rate of descent is misleading in my opinion. Pitch gives you the attitude to descend, power subsequently maintains the desired speed. If you were to touch the power alone without changing pitch, you will descend, but this is because your speed is decreasing, increasing your angle of attack.
Correct. The autopilot will disengage when you make a control input yourself. Overall there’s generally three normal ways of flying an approach in the A320.
Both autopilot and autothrottle engaged
Autothrottle engaged, manual control inputs
Manual control and throttle inputs.
It would be uncommon to have the autopilot engaged but be manually controlling the throttles in an Airbus. There are aircraft however that do not have autothrottle, where this is performed.
The A320 is designed for efficiency and is generally flown as efficiently as possible to minimise cost. The aircraft will typically approach an airport at 250 knots, reach it’s calculated DECEL point (think of this as the point where the aircraft can still be far away enough to comfortably slow down, but close enough that it won’t waste time flying with the flaps/gear extended burning fuel - fuel is money), then begin slowing. Flaps are generally extended as the aircraft decelerates on profile in managed mode, e.g. the aircraft slows to the Green Dot speed, flaps 1 selected, aircraft slows to S speed, flaps 2 selected etc. This profile is for safety and efficiency. You can extend flaps below the maximum flap extension speed and still maintain a high speed, but this is not efficient.
The article here has a section on ‘Managing Speed During Approach and Landing’ which shows how the approach phase of the Airbus series is generally flown. The whole thing is a good read for some background knowledge though.
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Trying to understand this concept. So are you saying that everybody on board should always feel weight corresponding to 1g or their normal weight? By reducing the speed of the aircraft, it descends reducing the acceleration due to gravity ( like an elevator going down ) and so the plane pitches up to try to maintain the load factor at 1 g?
Is this why there is a pitch down on banking? I think I read that somewhere.
So this is true for bigger aircraft because of the programming (its actively pitching to maintain load factor in response to thrust and speed reduction) ?
In the A320, Reduce power → Pitch up.
In the Cessna, Reduce power → Pitch Down (Just the way aerodynamic forces work).
I have to overcome the reflex of “reduce throttle to descend” and replace it with “pitch down to descend” for the A320 when doing a manual landing approach.
I think the Airbus is managing to hold the speed on Approach when I make pitch corrections. I am doing better landings but it will take some practice.
I notice that on a short flight, the Perf page is already on Approach Phase. Is the activation of the phases of flight dependent on distance from runway?
I fully agree that trying to do a greaser in serious crosswind conditions isn’t the brightest idea, I wouldn’t try to do that even without crosswind in gusty conditions.
The complete idiot with the runway excursion is an entirely different story. This had nothing to do with a too smooth touchdown and crosswind.
But it explains why e.g. the aviation-safety.net webpage usually lists multiple GA crashes each day.
That’s a dangerous sequence IMO.
Letting go of the throttle during a strong crosswind landing while balancing the aircraft on the upwind wheels and shifting the view inside the cockpit to retract the flaps, before all wheels are on the ground and the aircraft fully aligned, is a recipe for disaster and/or at least a runway excursion.
No. It’s a bit more complex on the real A320.
IRL the A320 increases the pitch attitude when banking to maintain the flight path.
Airbus calls this ‘flight path stability’.
In MSFS the A320 unfortunately starts dropping the nose.
This is a normal aerodynamic effect. As you bank, you reduce the vertical component of lift generated by the wing, but also the vertical component of the tail down force generated by the horizontal stabilizer. This causes the aircraft to descend due to a reduction of lift, and the nose to drop due to the reduction in the ‘opposing’ force from the tail that effectively holds the nose up at the cruse attitude.
This is why all aircraft require aft stick input in an banked turn.
FBW aircraft usually have a compensating algorithm within the FBW software that applies this input automatically, therefore this aft input by the pilot is not require.
I haven’t flown the A320 in MSFS, but its seems this level of detail hasn’t been modeled. Not surprising or unexpected for a default aircraft.