Hi AirRabbit,
No doubt the Ferret will come back and tell us if he or she meant the 1000ft markers or the threshold markers. I will be very very surprised if he meant the threshold markers because of the different way I interpreted his writings.
Also, a whump onto the 1000ft markers makes sense as that will be his aiming point and indicative of mis judging the flare/ energy state as happens to us all sometimes.
His original statement of
“I've been flying the A320 for seven years and still can't land it. Does that help your query?”
Sounds like a tongue in cheek way of saying " it isn't that easy to land an airliner, as long as it's safe who cares" that's my interpretation anyway.
I think that there is a bit of a pattern with pilots who get wound up about landing their aircraft. My hypothesis is that they were fine and dandy pilots on their last type and then made the jump to jets. During their TQ it became apparent to them that the swept wing jet is perhaps less forgiving than their fat wing turbo prop with regard to decaying airspeed. They may have had an experience in the simulator where five or six knots slipped away on them during the last hundred feet and they didn't feel it in their bum and suffered the almighty arrival that surely follows as they try to arrest the sink with elevator instead of thrust ( it would have worked in their fat wing turbo prop). Nobody takes the time to explain to them that in the real aircraft you can in fact feel changes through the seat of your pants even if it is a bit more subtle than in other types. Being dedicated and motivated pilots they vow and declare to be right on top of that airspeed and never again let the earth rise up to smight them. To achieve their new goal they scan inside at the ASI at 80ft, at 50ft, and maybe even at 30 ft. Each time they do this it ruins the picture they are building of the outside world and they have to start again at 30ft, as a result their judgement of the flare suffers. Then they progress to line training in the real aircraft and it is not long before they plant the aircraft hard. What to do what to do......? Being dedicated and motivated pilots they decide to create a wee break in the rate of descent prior to the actual flare as a safeguard against another heavy landing, some even give a burst of thrust at ten feet. They have now, all by themselves come up with a way of avoiding a hard landing due to airspeed decay, and also avoiding a hard landing because they have not got enough time to build a nice picture of the rate of descent. The result is what many of us have seen, slightly anxious pilots who land long and inconsistently and don't like runways less than 2500m long.
That is my hypothesis.
The fix is to go back to basics, maintain an aiming point visually, control airspeed by the seat of the pants below 100ft, shift focus down the runway at 30 ft. Fly the plane.
I am not a training Captain so am more than happy to have that theory destroyed by those more experienced than myself. Personally I think people who have trouble are trying to avoid a hard landing by using their instrumentation while they are low to the ground. Outside is best.