A320 Why LDG FLAP 3 Off for parking checklist?
 

So did a A320 SIM session the other day with an instructor. He made me do this several times as part of parking checklist and I cannot find out why or this item appearing on any other SOP checklists..

​​​​​Left hand overhead panel, under GPWS switches , always set LDG FLAP 3 Off! Why ? Makes little sense to me ? Spurious warnings ? Parking ?

Any ideas ?

The normal landing config is full.

If its not in the checklist, ask why the selection. Used for F3 landings but never seen it selected on the ground in 19 years on the Bus.

never seen this

So it doesn't get forgotten and cause a problem on the next landing, which might be a full flap landing?

I cannot remember if there is any specific annotation on the ECAM Memo when the switch is pressed?

Turning the LDG FLAP 3 switch off is not part of the after landing and parking flow neither is it in the respective checklists.

The next set of crew is supposed to check all white lights off as per FCOM SOP Cockpit Preparation. That’s where we turn it off.

You'll have to turn it off during the next prep scan as it is a white light and we turn those off. May as well do it after shutting down even if it is just to keep him happy.

Hi,

the GPWS LDG FLAP 3 used to be put back to OFF (light out) position in the after landing scan flow. Actually throughout the years this changed a couple of times from parking flow to after landing flow. Airbus removed this action in the after landing in one of the latest revisions of the FCOM to continue the standardisation across different types; the bigger brothers do not have this switch when Landing Flaps 3 and the selection on the FMGEC is good enough.
You will most likely see pilots that have been flying the A320 for some time still doing it as they might be unaware of the changes.

I suppose my question is, why wouldn’t you deselect it?

Leaving that switch selected would be a bit like deselecting the engine generators after shutdown…

To be honest I believe everyone still deselects it, including myself, but that’s just to be aware of the changes going on.

It’s a bit like doing the Preliminary takeoff performance computation during the preliminary cockpit preparation. It’s SOP to do it on an A319 with 30 pax out of a 4500m runway as it is on a fully loaded A350 😄

Procedure harmonization across different types/variants does help a lot indeed, especially when flying MFF, the down sides are that some flows coming from the biggies are relatively less important on the narrow body family.

If you leave it switched on you are no longer complying with the Airbus “dark cockpit” philosophy.

Yet another reason not to do F3 landings…it violates the dark cockpit philosophy 🙂

best excuse I’ve heard yet!

There are 2 basic philosophies for how to leave an aircraft:

1. Secure every item that needs to be secured for shutdown and walk away.
2. Prepare the aircraft for the next flight as much as possible while still doing the above, then walk away.

It would seem that your instructor falls under Philosophy 2. Its proponents reason that this will help the next crew in their cockpit preparation but more importantly will prevent them from making the mistake of using a setting from the previous flight for their flight. Airbus has slowly been removing these sorts of items from the SOP recently and seems to be favoring Philosophy 1, leaving the flight deck preparation to the pilots preparing the flight deck.

I flew at one company where standard practice was to set to 0 all heading bugs, course selectors, altitude alerters, bugs, everything. Even the navcoms were set to 108.00/118.00. This was absent from the SOP but was viewed as a critical flight safety step and airmanship basic so when I skipped it and left everything as is there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. 3 months later about half were doing it my way and the other half were distraught. A few weeks later after the company suffered its third "voluntary" shutdown in as many years for safety problems (Duty day violations, incomplete training, maintenance errors) the owners threw in the towel and folded the company.

I would ask the instructor for their reasons but if they cannot articulate one, I would just do it their way. You'll probably get better instruction out of them by following their directions in cases like this where it doesn't matter.

what does your current FCOM say in this section?

you instructor is probably just getting the plane set up for the next crew

When it comes to reading and understanding the question, the majority of replies in this thread worries me.

The question is, why do we select LDG FLAP 3 off after landing/on parking? OFF is the key word here. Remember the push button is ON.

The answer is simple. Dark cockpit philosophy and simplifying the preflight for the next crew/turnaround.

Follow manufacture's or company SOPs. So that everyone expects to do same.

As above, follow Your SOPs and don't think about the next crew or whatever aside from leaving the aircraft clean and tidy. Something You estimate to be advantageous for the next crew may not be the case. Think about legality always. There are actions that YOU are supposed to do and in case on an investigation for whatever reason it could come out that this was done by someone else and/or You have omitted something. Remember incidents/accidents are a chain of very small events.

Many thanks. Clearly some variance is SOP
 

Thanks for all helpful suggestions so far.
it does appear that some have never heard of this item ,some say it used to be a checklist item and others advising 'just do what they want '. I will, of course follow the latter.

Upon further reflection. We weren't event doing any FLAP3 landings.! We were doing Config FULL approaches. I wonder if, for challenging approaches (Innsbruck is an example ), this could be related. Maybe he wanted to avoid spurious GPWS alerts in the FLAP 3 config ? (I.e. just before FULL). Not sure, just thinking aloud.

You were doing full flap landings with the push button selected on?