Difference in flare behavior between A330-200E and -300E + bonus question
 

Can someone enlighten me of the differences, if any, in flare technique (radio altitude, stick inputs, aim) between the A330-200E and the -300E? Or did Airbus manage to program the FBW in such a way that these aircraft behave exactly the same.

Bonus: how representative are full flight simulators these days to really give you the correct feel in this very sensitive part of the landing (flare). I mean, ground effect, subtle flight control movements, stick displacement, can this even be simulated correctly or do we accept the inherent limitations and fly a sim differently from the real a/c.

Thank you very much.

I don’t know about the A330 but on A320 the landing phase is far from being realistic even in the latest simulators.

Why do you think that is?

That’s just the way it is. I’m not sure why: Maybe cause you don’t have good perception, no ground effect and the sensitivity on the stick is not the same between simulators. Some simulators you barely need to flare and even with 300 feet/min you touch the ground it looks like a kiss landing lol. I’m not saying it’s completely unreal but it’s definitely does not feel like the real aircraft. XD

Agree with this. The sim doesn't feel like the plane. I've stopped trying to do "good" simulator landings.

It also depends on whoever was the last engineer or simulator auditing pilot to test it and check it. Close enough is close enough. Where I'm at touchdowns aren't assessed at all - only technique.

It's further complicated because A320 simulators are not the same. Airbus changed the ground reaction model from IIRC standard 1.8 and this certainly made is very significant difference to the handling qualities during this phase. Additionally a major Canadian TDM doesn't use the Airbus data but their own Ground Reaction model.

A good acceptance pilot advising engineering can usually compensate somewhat for these idiosyncrasies but the fact that very few A320 simulators will react correctly to a hard touchdown shows how poor the ground handling models are.

This is a very serious concern, considering the zero flight time training paradigm. The ground reaction is notorious to not provide proper cueing, both A and B models suffer from this. Typical workarounds are to add artificial "bumps" in the motion cueing to simulate reasonable touchdown forces. Too bad the OEM doesn't care enough to add this to their models.
Airbus simulators still at std 1.7 or older should be avoided imho; many significant changes in displays, fly by wire etc make it easy to misalign the sim with the fleet.

Asides from the interesting points brought up, I am still very interested in the primary question; difference in handling in flare of the different 330 versions :) Both in the sim and in the real world.

You can't compare in the sim as Airbus GO5 don't support both A330-200 and 300 datapacks.
200E is the only supported version, albeit with any engine fit

Thanks, I didnt know that. Then the question is about the real aircraft only. Still in comparison to simulators though in the sense that A330-300 pilots are trained on A330-200 simulators. So how to adjust for that difference in a ZFTT context, if any exists.

My experience of the A320 sim is that it wasn't particularly representative of the real thing. In a crosswind it always felt like it was on casters and required into-wind aileron on the ground to maintain ground track, which the real thing doesn't.

On the other hand, I find our 787 sims are scarily accurate for landing with the exception that everyone bangs the nose-wheel down in the sim. I do wonder though if this was a deliberate decision to reinforce the fact that the derotation in a 787-8 or -9 is anything but subtle.