A321 flight characteristics

[Hartington]

It's probably my imagination but I flew on IB A321s earlier this week and on both take offs (LHR and MAD) the pilots seemed to leave the flaps out much longer that I would expect when flying from those airports on a BA 319/320 much less Boeing products. Is it my imagination or is there a reason?
Also, I wasn't too impressed with the aircraft reaction to turbulence. The flight down from London on Tuesday was pretty turbulent at all levels. Coming home the take off from Madrid was turbulent for a few minutes after take off then suddenly got much better (inversion layer?). The aircraft seemed more senstive in both roll and yaw (yaw in particular at low level) than equivalent Boeing products. I accept that this is all a bit subjective so I may be being entirely unfair to the 321 but comments would be appreciated.

[Hand Solo]

The A321 is significantly heavier than an A319 but with the same wing, hence the minimum flap retraction speeds will be higher and acceleration to those speeds is likely to be lower.

I think your comments on roll and yaw are entirely subjective! Can't say I've experienced any significant in-flight yaw in 2500 hours on an 319/320s, but I've certainly felt rough down the back of a 757!

[Max Angle]

Madrid is a noise abatement departure so flaps don't go in until 3000' anyway, LHR is not so don't know why they stayed out a long time then. As the previous poster said the 321 is much heavier than the 320 but has double slotted flaps instead on single slots and an extended trailing edge to give about 4 square metres more wing area with the flaps retracted. The flaps help take-off and landing performance and the increase in wing area helps with the cruise. Despite this take-off and landing speeds are quite a bit higher, vref at max weight is about 144 knots.

From the pilots point of view my experience is that the A321 is by the far the nicer of the two to fly. It feels much more stable than the 320, is easier to land consistantly and is much more pleasant on rough old taxiways such as LHR's. The downside is the poor climb performance, the 320 is not exactly a star but the 321 is really awfull above about FL250 when it's heavy. I would also agree that you get more yaw down the back in turbulence, this is a problem with all long aircraft, the 777-300 is said to be bad and I suspect that the stretched 757 is not too good either so it's not confined to Airbus although they say you actually see the A340-600 flex if stand at the back and look along it in rough weather!.

[Point Seven]

Max Angle

Everything is rough at LHR ;)

You mentioned the landing speeds of the A321 to be higher than the A320. Is the A319 's therefore slower? Have been noticing recently that their speed inside four is getting close to B757 territory.

P7

[Hand Solo]

Correctomundo!

On a light 319 the final approach speed can be around the 118-120kt area, and even when its heavy it's generally only around 125-130kts.