Rubbish
Bravo he managed to save 100kg of fuel by spooling up at 10ft agl. But statistics prove most runway excursions start with an unstabilised approach. If this story ended with an excursion, I suspect the word skill would be replaced with the word reckless in this thread. And by the way, the insurance would not have paid for it either, given the failure to adhere to SOPs. The crew and their families would also be held financially liable.
Stabilised means in the landing configuration, on the right vertical and horizontal profile, with engines above idle and checklists complete. This was not the case at 500ft. 150kt in an A320 series is not stabilised. Adding 10kt to Vapp just so you avoid a speed QAR does not count either. There is no way this guy was stabilised by 500ft. Indeed many airlines have abandoned the 500ft rule, since if you screw up and accidentally select F1 instead of F3 at Vapp and 600ft it becomes ugly.
To me this would count as a violation of SOPs, and just cause to identify the crew and fire them both. Airbus has created SOPs to save passenger lives. This crew decided they knew better than Airbus. I hope IB safety dept picked this up and dealt with it accordingly. If not, we can look forward to an IB hull loss in future.
And for the "old farts", please remember that in your day you had to be near the top of your class in school to be a Captain. You were paid for your intelligence and skill, and ticket prices were therefore higher. These days the aircraft has been simplified so anyone anywhere can fly it safely. Accordingly, the available pool of (non rock star) pilots is much bigger, they get paid much less, and ticket prices are much lower. So although there are some very smart pilots still, most of the smart people work in banks. The average pilot today follows SOPs which are designed to keep him/her safe.
Last edited by Arrowhead; 29th Aug 2013 at 01:26.