Hard Landing Airbus A320 Avianca on 08/10/21 - at Ibagué
 

Does anyone know anything more ? 4.9G ?

"Preliminary data based on the notification from the Colombian authorities:

According to preliminary statements, during a first airline operational check flight (validating the new approach procedures) to operate the Airbus A320 in Ibagué Airport (SKIB), the Avianca N742AV had a hard landing event on Runway 32 reached a peak of 4.9 G’s."

bea website article

5900 feet runway at 3000 feet elevation sounds more as turbo prop territory.
With legal W+B I would question if the operation is very economic with a A320.

Flight profile looks more like a training detail.

Aircraft was back in the air to Bogotá a couple of hours after landing, but hasn't flown in the 3 weeks since.

Runway short AND only 29m wide. If one is used to the "picture" on a 50m-wide runway, easy to misjust HAT, and fly it into the surface.

Had a CFI give me a very good demonstration of that early in my PPL training. "Now, this runway is only 30 feet wide, so we'll appear to be higher than we are. We have to be careful not to flare too (Slam!) - uhhh, late."

The A320 has the advantage of radio altimeter auto call outs approaching touchdown. The more rapid the call outs, the greater is the possibility of a firm touchdown. In any case, the crew will have had simulator training to gain practice of the different perspective between a 45 metre width (standard) runway and a 29 metre width (narrow) runway. In addition, training should have included day and night maximum crosswind take offs and landings (often 20 kts, but depends on individual company procedures) and engine failure during the take-off run (challenging at low speed). I’ve flown one day to/from 60 metre runways and the next 30 metre runways, never had a landing firmer than 1G 🤥.

Did the radalt have enough time for the call outs for a 4.9g touch down?

Probably something like “50”, “10”. bang😂

Well, it would have been more - you are descending at 1G and there must be some force to stop the settling descent after the flare, small though it may be. You don't plan on "greasers" in an airliner. You plant it. More so in the wet.

You’re all assuming the hard landing was caused by a late or no flare. That’s not necessarily the case. The Airbus A320 family has/had a long history of high G landings due to untimely spoiler extension following a bounce. To mitigate this, a modification to the Spoiler Elevator Computer known as SEC 120 was introduced. For those interested, the full story can be found in Airbus Safety First February 2010 Edition. However, despite this modification, the aircraft can still be subjected to a high G touchdown if the Thrust Levers are still in the CLB detent after the aircraft has bounced (Lift spoilers deploy).

If they flared then why THR levers in CLB detent? Normally aircraft bounces due to insufficient or no flare and during bounce throttles are closed causing spoilers to deploy, leading to a hard landing.

Airbus hard landing graph (example, not this event)
 

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....3a8f69291.jpeg
Airbus A320 hard landing example

Out of interest, what is the limiting load factor, before a heavy-landing inspection is required?

From memory, 2.5G on touchdown will annunciate on the SD EFIS (lower central display). Not sure if that results in a heavy landing check as routine, maybe an Engineer could advise?

2.2G on Boeing airframes.

Load 15 report

Ascend Charlie

but not at 4.9g you don’t. That’s a crash

737...
 

Banana Joe

737 maybe. 757 is 1.8. Don't know about all the other Boeing airframes.

If I recall right A320 is VRTG of 2.6 to 2.86g or RALR of 10 to 14ft/s is considered a Hard Landing. Above 2.86g or 14ft/s it is a Severe Hard Landing and it is phone Airbus.

Main entry is pilot report of a hard landing, anyone who relies solely on a auto-print of a Load 15 report may get caught out some day as this auto-print feature can and has been switched off in the software. Also any load 15 report must start with a Code 4XXX. As sometimes the inexperienced will pull off a Manual Report with code 1XXX, which would not be representative of the last landing event.

The worst I’ve heard is 4.2g at AirAsia. Exactly
the same situation, training flight. Many dollars and months later it returned to service.

No passengers in either of these, however I pity my spine should I be sitting over the exit on such a landing. Nobody has yet to test the limits on what it takes to break a A320 in half however I don’t think they would have been far off.

Took over a 737 which recently had a 4,5G landing recorded in the tech log. Hadn't been that many days or weeks since and it had flown plenty. Either it was a lucky, built like a tank or the recording device not very accurate?

PoppaJo

Though, given that the Avianca A320 flew back to Bogotá after the incident, I think it's safe to assume that the engines stayed attached this time around ...

I seem to recall on a different Boeing recorded G didn’t always correlate well as a late sharp flare also caused a G spike that was hard to separate from touchdown in the data.

Station Zero

TIL…!

but why would the manually requested load report not be representative of the landing just completed?

A Manual Report (Code 1XXX) is a snapshot of the parameters being received from the aircraft systems and stored by the DMU/FDIMU at the moment the report is generated. Which may be different to the ones which would have been recorded at the touchdown.

Technically the Airbus doesn't have a limiting 'G' as such but is more of a rate of descent on impact. An engineer told me that the hard landing report will trigger in our airline at around 2.2g and a full inspection is required in the 2.6-2.8g range. In a previous airline an A321 did a 3.9g landing during a Windshear Go Around and it was deemed uneconomical for repair as it was going to require a new wingspar and tail. I would be very surprised if this aircraft should have flown after a landing than hard. Remember the UK charter A320 that flew home a few years back after a 3.5g landing and on departure the Gear wouldn't come up as the airframe was so distorted. On closer inspection there was rippling of the skin under the wings.

Does it not say 'landing' on it?



https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....ceb9dfb6cb.jpg

This is a ACMS report, so it is a pre-defined layout and the DMU/FDIMU is filling the slots with received parameters when the triggers are met, same as all the other reports such as cruise report etc, the standard report definitions are found in AMM ATA31 if I remember right. As this is Code 1000 it wouldn't be appropriate to use when deciding whether a hard landing has occurred as per the the Maintenance Manual.

If in disagreement and currently working on Airbus aircraft, would suggest a posing a question through engineering to Airbus to ask whether a Code 1XXX (Manual Report) can be utilsed for determining whether a hard landing has occurred.

So what’s the go with conducting another flight? That’s a whole another investigation in itself.

I’m amazed it didn’t fall apart at some point. Impressive if it vacated on the second landing without losing any piece at all. I think you will find things probably did fall apart.

Training Captains usually not paying attention from what I’ve seen in many previous examples. Then one tries to react or takeover at the last minute, the end result is much unchanged.

I have seen one who tried to throw the FO under the bus also....oh but I took over at the last minute when I noticed things were going bad...No you were doing sweet F All and took over as it approached its second bounce.

4.9g...
and it flew back home?
Cool.

3 weeks in the hanger was probably not on the maint plan.

That's stronger than it should be, although, it would have been light, and it is possible that the Gz just freaked out at the thought of the approach. For a real 4.9g the techs would have a lot of work in inspection and rework... strong plain. On a one gear touch, the pieces would still be getting collected, absorbing hard landings symmetrically eases the payne.

P.S.: that could be a record. for a plane that subsequently flew. Of all of the plain data I ever reviewed, not much with further use went much above 4g. The 200g plus planes didnt fly again, nor did the crew or occupants. 4.9g reuseable is iquite mpressive.

:}

Jwscud

quite so, for a Boing, we used to review the VS recorded immediately before the landing, to get a better picture of the event. years back guidance came out from WA about that, as on occasion the g recording would be high but no damage occurred, yet on other occasions, damage would be evident from a lower g recorded event. Apparently, 1650fpm at TD-1 is enough to vacate the wings and gear of MD11s... certainly make you look for the tail hook.

fdr

Make that 8 weeks now, and counting ...

Anyone know what the forces were on the Delta 757 hard landing at Ponta Delgada PDL? It took a lot of work, but that aircraft was made suitable to ferry to ATL and eventually returned to service.