Airbus 320 Unpowered flight

[ukeng]

Just something i've been pondering of late. In our ground sim training (all works 'cept no movement or view out of the windscreen) we all had a go at a normal circuit and landing followed by flying with no FBW just using the stab and rudder.
Question is - do you train for this on the sim on a regular basis, how easy/hard did you find it and has there ever been a need for it on a real flight?

I have no experience flying wise other than sitting down the back enjoying a snooze or three and found the FBW less attemp extremely difficult.

No flames please i'm just curious :)

[Max Angle]

Have tried using just the stab. trim and rudder in the sim a few times and it's not easy. Flying around is OK but setting up an approach and making a landing off it on the runway is quite difficult. The airbus test pilots have done it in the real aircraft during test flying and I suspect, like most pure flying exercises, it would be easier in the aircraft than it is in the sim. Interestingly on the latest aircraft (A340 5/600) the manual back up has been deleted and was never required for certification of the orginal ones.

[ukeng]

Thanks for the answer, just about summed up all the things I was wondering about.
Nice to have as a last resort I suppose but it'd have to have gone very pear shaped to end up using it....

[TopBunk]

ukeng

My conversion course onto the 'bus suggested that flight using stab trim and rudder is only designed to be temporary, ie until you can recover direct law or better.

[FlapsOne]

TopBunk

Spot on. It allows one guy to sweat heavily for a while whilst the other plays with the CBs.

This plan will hopefully give the sweaty one more toys to play with after a while.