Another A320 lands with cocked nose-gear
 

Airbus should maybe come with a spherical nose-wheel design - would prevent more of these embarrassing cocked-wheel landinds. The latest happened in Fargo, North Dakota on Saturday night, according to Flight International's website.

Better a "cock-wheeled" landing than a rudder hard-over wouldn't you say:\

WK

You beat me to it...

It would be better to have neither problem. There are such planes, when well maintained.

Exactly my thought too :}

That's two incidents as opposed to accidents resulting in no injuries out of how many hundreds of thousands of A320series flights over 20+years ?!?!? :ugh:

It'd be interesting to see if it was the same set of circumstances as the Jet Blue incident and if so, was the OEB fix tried to centre the nosewheels (Nosewheel steering OFF/ON, but only given 2 specific ECAM warnings)?

Twice at JetBlue, several more at other carriers. See http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=191037 and go to post #18.

A320 - Northwest should have known...
 

Question for any A320 pilots out there --

If you receive a BSCU Channel 2 failure shortly after takeoff, then later receive a Landing Gear Shock Absorber fault when dropping the gear, what does the manual tell you to do? What does common sense tell you to do? NW decided to land as normal and not prepare the cabin for very short landing run (nor tell the pax that something was amiss). Info obtained directly from the NTSB investigator working the case....

1 post in, and it develops into Airbus V's Boeing debate!!! Surely a new PPRuNe record! :D


Must say though, Airbus gear is tough maybe they should be advising Bombardier! ;)

NW A320 picture
 

Flight International has a picture of NW1432 cocked nose-wheel

"Passengers aboard a Northwest Airbus A320 that ground to a halt on the runway in Fargo, North Dakota on the night of 20 October, after a nosewheel malfunction, were not warned about a possible abnormal landing despite the crew’s efforts to troubleshoot the problem while circling the airport before attempting to land...."

Nice pax debrief anyway...

"He later walked down the aisle checking the condition of each passenger, before all were deplaned down portable steps, filing into a waiting line of taxi vans. Each was given vouchers for a free round trip flight, according to the passenger."

How can you possibly make a landing as a PIC knowing your landing gear has a malfunction and not notifying the passengers???

This was a known problem on the F86 Sabre, where upon retraction the nose wheel would rotate through 90 degree and was stowed flat.

Sometimes it would remain cocked on extension, and we would lay a narrow path of foam on the strip for the nose wheel to float on. Always appeared to work OK.

However in this case it appears as if on extension the wheel cocked itself, would have been quite a noise when the gear contacted.

Regards

Col

In fact there have been over 20 instances of such 90 degree rotation of the nosewheel on A320 aircraft over the years. It seems that there are many reasons why these occurred. Perhaps a re-design might be in order. This is not anti-Airbus or pro-Boeing - just has happened too often IMHO.

No Visual
 

Miss the old airplanes that had peepholes to visually check the landing gear positions. Bd, sometimes it's better to keep silent on "possible" malfunctions rather than cause unnecessary anxiety for the SLF.

That's not an A320 wheel
 

The wheel in the picture (post #9) that is centred in the inset blowup belongs to the base of the thing in the foreground (some kind of platform?/whatever), not to the A320. How odd (perhaps not?) for an aviation journal to misunderstand perspective.

Good spot ARWT. I was wondering how the tyre survived the landing :8

Chips

Yes I believe you are absolutely correct, what a sad excuse for a picture! :uhoh:

wonder why have these not occurred in India or am i just out of info? pls oblige if u guys have info on similiar incidents in India/Asia?

Do they fly with the wheels down all the time? :}