and you are probably too high, maximum ceiling for the A320neo is 39,100ā39,800 ft, and you are probably above the possible ceiling depending on your gross weight
Yes speed wrong, height wrong but I could not get the plane under control and A/THR was playing up, engines falling back to idle on their own despite throttle on CLB.
Iāve reverted back to SU14ā¦and guess what, the FMS seems much better.
Well, donāt know what youāve done before, but when the automatic fails itās your part as the pilot to fly manually until you find out whatās going wrong. Even an Airbus can be flown completely manually without autothrust and autopilot.
Probably itās because of the beta, probably because of bad pilots skills. Without more information itās impossible to find out for us.
Even on max payload you can go to FL390. Slowly and maybe not on a direct way but it is possible. You have to handle the plane very carefully then.
My money goes on bad pilot haha Thanks everyone for your help.
I did notice the left fuel tank was a lot lower than right, but not empty. Perhaps the FMS sees that as a bad imbalance; I turned on cross flow but that may have been too late.
Iāll have to read up about pumping fuel left-right.
So youāve breached whatās known as Alpha floor protection, this basically is a system which kicks off the autopilot whenever a breach to normal operating conditions is observed. You in this case have breached the minimum safe operating speed so the AP has been turned off to force the pilot to make an alteration, in this case, increase your speed. The AP will not reconnect until this condition is met. The first comment is entirely correct but I thought Iād shed some light upon whatās actually caused this to happen to you. If you need to find out any more on this, google āalpha floor protectionā and thereās plenty information regarding this. Hope this helps you.
Thanks, yes I knew about alpha floor protection. I have a feeling engine 1 idled because of low fuel, which I didnāt notice.
Other aircraft are more forgiving with the AP kicking back in. The FBW does it correctly of course.
I got the fuelling balanced on the latest flight. Brussels Centre, radar contact FL390.
My wife will be amused as its the flight we will take to visit her brother.
EDIT: A.FLOOR did kick in. I got the speed back up but was trying to climb as well. Next time Iāll fly her out of the problem, instead of expecting the AP to fix the problem.
On a sombre note I remember the A320 crash into the forest at the Air Show in 1988. Too low, too slow.
Glad you knew mate, thereās so much to learn and discover when flying simulated aircraft and I thought Iād try to be as helpful as possible. Iāve only just had the time to read over what I had commented and I must apologise if I came across as condescending, it was not my intention in the slightest.
It took me a decade of flying in simulators and frequent research before āaviate, navigate, communicateā finally sunk in but these things happen.
Iām not advanced in age enough to remember that event but I have seen it covered on various documentaries to include Air crash investigation, terrible incident which essentially, could have been avoided but alternatively, we learn from our mistakes. Hope you have many more uneventful miles in the flybywire!
That was not the main reason for the crash. It happened because the engines didnāt spool up within the maximum allowed 8sec.
Airbus āmodifiedā the CVR and FDR tapes to disguise this fact.
The issue that tripped me up is that both stable and development FBW planes boot up with a significant difference between left and right inner fuel tanks, 14% and 79%. This seems unlikely in real life.
The MSFS sliders for fuel are ignored, you have to set the fuel via the fly bag which has an algorithm to fill the tanks in a specific order depending on how much fuel is required. As soon as the refill button is pressed, all the tanks are balanced which would involve pumping from right to left.
I concur with the moderator. The specific problem is losing the AP, which was down to my lack of fuel management which caused engine 1 to idle, then A.Floor kicked in at high altitude.
Iāve also noticed that saving the flight at altitude then loading it needs care with the Airbus throttle settings. Make sure throttle is on CLB, engines switched on, gear up, no flaps or speed brake before loading the saved flight. Get something wrong and the AP wonāt kick in, accidentally have engines off and A.FLOOR will kick in, pilot then has to fix everything before AP will engage.
Remember Captain Sully thought through the problem of no engines and turned on the APU to get hydraulic bleed to start them.
