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Old 3rd Mar 2008, 23:40
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Arrowhead
 
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Being a Bus driver, and having reviewed the video over and over again, I am going to say something apparently controversial: he made a good job of a bad situation (which he probably should not have been in the first place).

1) On the video on YouTube it looks to me like he is coming in with Conf3. Which makes sense for the 320 in these conditions - even after the ELAC upgrade has taken place.

2) The wind clearly picks up below 50ft, but he is still on the centreline (or at least the cockpit is). It does not look like he deviates significantly from it below 100agl.

3) He does drop it into the ground, with left gear touching first, then right (see the smoke in the video), and then a bounce followed by a huge gust picking up the right wing.

4) The aircraft rolls left (causing the lefty wingtip to touch), then rolls back to the right, after a short delay. But Bus drivers know that it takes about half a second from a full sidestick input to actually getting the spoilers to give a good roll rate. The photo clearly shows no spoliers deployed to correct the roll for this exact reason. And I believe THAT is the cause of the wingtip strike.

Conclusion: he was caught in a very bad situation but made a reasonable landing attempt (except perhaps choosing to land on that runway in the first place). I just hope this prompts Airbus to quicken the response times for full sidestick input on final approach (which by the way is not unusual in strong gusty crosswinds).
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