Originally Posted by Lemurian
there was absolutely nothing wrong in that approach (including the decision to continue using the RWY 23 after the change-over to the tower)...until the airplane was blown rather violently to the left, off the centerline.
Not sure that it was necessarily 'blown,' Lemurian - after reading your post I looked again (for the nth. time) at the video, and noted that early in the sequence (immediately after it passes overhead) the aeroplane appears to bank noticeably to the left. So maybe it was that, rather than the wind, which caused the aeroplane to deviate left?
I also noticed that even in the earliest part of the video (when the aeroplane could very well have been being flown by the ILS, not the pilot) the banks both ways to maintain the crab angle were pretty sharp and jerky - nothing progressive about them.
And there's no doubt that the subsequent banks - attempting to regain the runway line and decrab - were also pretty steep.
Finally, I reviewed the two other examples of A320 go-arounds (kindly provided by CONF iture in Post 425 above) and saw exactly the same thing - steep banks both ways at incredibly low altitudes.
I find it difficult to believe that any professional pilot (leave alone three of them in different incidents) could have INTENDED such steep banks at such a low altitude. It's much more likely that the steepness of the banks was unintended.
To the best of my knowledge no other aeroplanes from either manufacturer have exhibited this tendency. Which makes me wonder, could it simply be the case that the relevant A320 controls (sidestick and ailerons) are just plain more sensitive than they ought to be, not 'progressive' enough? That too little movement of the sidestick produces too much reaction from the ailerons? Or the reverse - that too small a movement of the sidestick produces too little reaction and the pilot finds it necessary to move it more and more before he/she gets a response, which turns out in the end to be 'too much, too late'?
If that's so, it would make a precarious kind of sense. As I said, only the A320 Family seems to exhibit this tendency, A330s/40s and even the A380 don't seem to have the problem? But, of course, they were designed much later, the A320 was the very first 'FBW plus auto-coordination' type, designed back in the '80s?