Now that's what I call a touch-and-go - the nosewheel didn't even touch down!

That's the bit, as a Boeing driver, that I found interesting. Thrust at idle, I assume, nose off the ground, and the GA power. Tail did not smack the tarmac. Was that the pilot or Hal?

I was looking forward to hearing exactly what you meant by 'Dreadful'.

RAT5: pilot, given the design logic ... but maybe then A350 has some sort of tailstrike protections? Entirely programmable.

Fantom, your posts demonstrate a shocking lack of awareness of what flight testing is all about. Like M. Mouse, I was curious just exactly what you meant by "Dreadful".
How do you think Airbus (and Boeing) come up with things like crosswind/tailwind limitations, or recommendations on how to deal with them? You think it's all done in a simulator?
I suspect the A350 in question is heavily instrumented to determine just what loads are being applied during the crosswind testing, and the resultant data is being thoroughly analyzed to determine what goes in the AFM.

If you would ... What are the critical design loads / manouvres the L/G is supposed to withstand? In the context of this thread, in lateral in particular.

Not that it will help you or is even possible to reproduce the hundreds of pages of landing gear design/performance/test criterion here.

However this should calm your fears that the gear may have suffered significant damage/stress: "the design must include taking into account the most severe combination of loads that are likely to arise during a lateral drift landing".

Gears do take a little more than 5 minutes to design and designers are well aware of what a landing gear will encounter during its life time.

I'm inclined to sympathise with fantom's comments. Unfortunately, the video only starts after the a/c has crossed the runway threshold, so the critical last mile or so of the approach is not shown.

However, the a/c looks as if it may have drifted left (downwind) of the extended runway centreline during the approach. That's a common mistake (we've all done it). My guess is that it was still recovering the error as it passed over the threshold.

For a crabbed approach (i.e., one without sideslipping) in a long-bodied a/c, the cockpit has to be positioned significantly upwind of the centreline if the main gear is to be over the centreline. During de-crab, the main gear won't move sideways much, being near the C of G. The nose will regain the centreline.

The right main-wheel bogie/truck seems to touchdown close to the centreline. Because the a/c is tracking towards the centreline, however, the error is corrected during the de-crab.

IMO, the main-gear drift at touchdown is probably more than the pilot had in mind. But, as the runway is damp-to-wet, some of it may have been planned.

If Fantom thinks that was bad, what about Boeing test pilots:-


It's all part of the certification process.