Whenever a penalty is greater than 100% (e.g., 180%), the clearest information for someone under pressure is to show the multiplier (e.g., 2.8x).

The original news said the crew managed to raise the gear only the doors remained open. So there's something wrong here. With only doors open they would have had sufficient fuel and with gear stuck down you never have that much fuel.to reach original destination or diversions.

Sounds like the crew are telling porkies to cover up a monumental cock-up.

Sadly the Russian establishment are strangers to truth so we will probably never find out exactly what happened.

I am curious to what will happen with the flight crew...

Every airline I saw train this or trained, the first batch of people do exactly that.

See a fuel penalty of 180% and assume the fuel burn will double. Nope, with doors hanging (additional +15% over FMC baseline), it triples.

Ugly trick the mind plays, all the other factors are in range (mostly) of 15-30%, so the 180 sure looks like a double. Badly wrong.

OTOH, S7 had a good training team and proficient aviators before, used to meet them and vigorously discuss things at a nearby ATO when the times were good. When we wanted to friends with them again.

Remember fellow flyers, debating and arguing is only purposeful if gain something for our own consicience out of the excercise.

For Airbus? Clearly built better than a local tank! (and yes, the old standard of forced landing with the gear out proved well)

Agreed 3x (+200%), the liveware design of the table is long overdue for a redesign.

Unsure about their ZFW, however on a standard loaded A320, from around 7t expected FOB at destination (!) you start hitting the MLW limit.

Meant to say, quite likely there never was more than 6.5 when the diversion started.

With the triple burn this would suggest an equivalent of 2.2 on a normal day, i.e. about 50 minutes [or markedly less] from resuming ZFW state.

In case that happened, kudos to crew for taking the necessary actions before running out of the juice competely.
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And I hear they are now planning to fly it out. Looking at aerial photos, whatever the crew got wrong, they chose the right field.

Source ?

They are going to fly an A320 out of a farmer's field? Only in Russia. Dashcams at the ready.

Maybe Airbus will fix their parlance and sort this part of the FCOM out as likewise, it's a standard error of which you just need to 'know better than the manuals'. That being said, I don't know an A320 captain that wasn't aware of this gotcha. Even if they do fix them, no idea if Airbus are providing this lot with the latest manuals anyway?

There was a Gulfstream which forced landed on a race course in Ireland and was subsequently flown out after a temporary runway was made for it, so the precedent is there. Strip out the seats, load minimum fuel, flaps 3, TOGA and away you go. A few hundred metres of temporary road if the field is a bit soft.

Ethiopian did just that in Arusha with a 767 ,: It started in Grass , hit the short asphalt runway ( 00.35 on the video,) left it again for grass 5 seconds later , but they made it . Everything is possible in Africa, so why not in Russia? .

Not to mention the TACA 737-300 that did a dead stick on a levee outside New Orleans and was flown off that same levee a few days later (after an engine change).

So, not a "Russian" phenomenon.

Allow me a small correction...The aircraft was towed from the levee to a nearby NASA base, fueled to the minimum amount needed and took off from Saturn Boulevard, a road which had previously been an aircraft runway at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility.
By the way...Captain Dardano announced his retirement last week ;)

https://www.aviacionline.com/2023/09...ntent=cmp-true

Take off may not be so easy without a prepared surface. Remember this airplane was leaving three ruts in the ground down to walking speed, and landed with Zero fuel. To get it out you will need to add enough fuel, for the 180 kms flight. Also they will have to repair the faulty hydraulic system as well.
Pictures on another web site show that some of the rescue vehicles were also making ruts in the ground.

So what we are saying is..... Not only did the crew incorrectly calculate the fuel required for a gear-down diversion to Novosibirsk, but they also incorrectly calculated the landing distance required with a G HYD failure at Omsk which precipitated the flawed diversion decision in the first place! They really did not do very well.

As I am informed the first officer calculated it correctly and reported to the captain, that Omsk runway sufficient enough. Captain decided to divert to Novosibirsk because there is a good repairing facility available of another (S7) airline

No doubt taking the pax somewhere other than they wanted to be, and retrieving the aircraft from a farmer's field has proven to be a sub-optimum business decision on the part of the Captain. No doubt he will disappear without trace.

Not the first time a well thought out operational decision has gone wrong or the books were wrong. A Trident 3 took out the approach lights during a night take off from Malta with the stick shaker going as the manuals had used a take off distance 1 km too long.
A sister ship diverted to Madrid after an engine failure after take off from Malaga but had to do a late go around due to a typical Spanish ATC cock up; unfortunately it was outside of the WAT limits and continued to descend ..the captain accelerated down a valley, cleaned up to min drag and managed to carry out a circuit. In this case the numbers were in the books but needed to be extracted from the take off charts.
Slightly off subject but similar I had to do a go around inside the OM on a route check..following SOP left the speed dropping with go around thrust and everything dangling..after thinking I would probably get a stick shake if I retracted the land flap and a gear warning if I raised the undercarriage I decided to lower the nose first..nothing was said in the debrief nor were procedures ever changed..
At least the crew made a good decision putting her down in a field