Probably ground effect making the nose heavy therefore keep the aiming point fixed and not moving up the windscreen.

Ok, so in principle you see where your aircraft is traveling / aiming to. That is already a good basis!

So let's go into detail how to read what you see. What I describe is valid for all variants, 319, 320, 321, NEO, CEO, with or withour sharklets, just all of them. The difference in the variants is only in the proper moment of the power cut: higher weight, no sharklets (=more drag), NEO (bigger front surface = more drag) need slightly later power cut.

In clean lab conditions, if you had found a stable power setting and a stable pitch during approach, you would just not make any control inputs and the aircraft would still continue to fly towards the aim point.

However, clean lab conditions we usually don't have. Winds fluctuate, temperature over the runway might change air density, and we also hardly manage to find this perfect ultra-precise pitch and thrust setting.

So it is important to read the aircrafts behaviour. We do so during approch with the help of the instruments: air speed indicator and LOC/GS diamonds and possibly FD bars.

Now under 200 ft, when you start to visually fly the aircraft towards your intended point of touchdown (which is your aim point): how to read the aircrafts behaviour now?
Thrust still via airspeed indicator, no change there compared to further out in the approach.

However, while in principle maintaining the pitch you had during final approach (the one with final flap setting and vApp), you now with this pitch imagine the spit mark on your windshield, which is the point where your visual glance towards the aim point goes through the windshield.

Keep this spit mark on your aim point, always, no exception to this principle!

Now if you tend to come low, that shows as the spit mark drifting towards before your intended aim point: in other words if you look towards the runway through your spitmark, you don't look at your aim point but somewhere before on the runway, closer to you.

There can be 2 reasons for that:

1. A sign of too low thrust, and you hold airspeed by subconciously slighly reducing pitch (which positions the spit mark away from the aim point, direction towards you). The solution is to keep your spit mark on the aim point, and monitor airspeed trend and adapt thrust accordingly.
2. A sign of an unwanted pitch down through nervousness on the stick, your airspeed might now slowly increase and you might now create a low energy situation by reducing thrust. Also in this scenario the solution is to keep your spit mark on the aim point!

So you see, in both scenarios you must keep your spit mark on the aim point. No exception to that ever! Imagine the runway as a pitch indication, where the needle is your spitmark, and the aim point on the runway is the target pitch. If your spitmarks points beyond the aim point, your pitch is too high, if your spitmark points before the aim point, your pitch is too low. So keep a proper pitch by keeping the spitmark on your aim point, and maintain proper airspeed with thrust (if not using ATHR).

And I disagree strongly with some of your colleagues: you should only start looking towards the runway end once you have started the flare, and not before! Before the flare you look at your aim point and your airspeed indicator. Only once you flare you look at the runway end to modulate the sinkrate (no need to check airspeed anymore once power was cut).

One last thing: do not overcontrol on the stick, don't mix a drink with it, make calm and well planned inputs. Imagine the fly-by-wire system has a low-pass filter and lets only slow inputs through, but mixing-like inputs are not transferred to the flight control computers. That is where aim point flying helps to only make minor inputs!

Hope it helps! And do not stress, it is a skill, not just knowledge, meaning it needs practice and experience to apply what I have described.

A follow on highlighted to me is NB the "power cut" does nothing until the levers pass the (low) power approach power level i.e. the first 50%? 75% of the movement does nothing - which is why a manual thrust approach needs a "later" cut than ATHR since the thrust reduction starts straight away.

Its a small factor, but as in the quote, there is an exercise in judging the various factors as exactly when to power cut...

Just wanted to share something I encountered today that ties into the flare technique discussion.

I’m fairly new on the Airbus, with a little under 1,000 hours on type. Today, flying an approach into a reportedly steady 20-knot headwind in CONF 3 on an A321N, I experienced something I’d never seen before and, honestly, it scared me a bit.

Everything was stable considering the conditions. Crossing the threshold at about 50 ft, we had roughly a 700 fpm descent rate. My eyes were already transitioning down the runway when just below 40 ft, the wind suddenly dropped.

The aircraft sank immediately, so I started initiating the flare earlier than usual, but to little effect. There was almost no noticeable response to my inputs, neither an increase in pitch nor a reduction in the rate of descent. By touchdown … which was firm, I was at full aft sidestick, pitch had increased to around 6 degrees, and thrust wasn’t brought back to idle until main gear touchdown.

For a moment, it genuinely felt like I was just along for the ride.

After vacating the runway, I looked at the skipper in disbelief. He actually commended me for not retarding the thrust earlier and said there realistically wasn’t much more I could have done. He said he could see me hauling the stick back trying to arrest the sink.

I was honestly pretty shocked by how little authority it felt like I had.

A go-around would technically have been an option, but realistically it probably still would have resulted in a similarly firm touchdown by the time it was initiated.

At our company, we have a strict “autothrust always on” policy, so manually adding thrust wasn’t really an option. In conditions like these, though, a human probably would have reacted faster than the automation.

What other options are there in this situation? I already had a few knots of VAPP added in there, maybe even more? Would momentarily selecting MCT have helped by getting the engines spooled up sooner?

Curious to hear others’ thoughts and experiences.

Probably due to the ATHR logic below 150 FT RA. REFER FCOM DSC22-30-50-ATHR MODES-SPEED/MACH MODE: it states " BELOW 150FT RA the ATHR is less responsive to speed variations...." it is possible that the aircraft was maintaining V TARGET commensurate with the head winds and along the way as the wind reduces the thrust also reduced, but crossing 150 FT RA since the ATHR is less responsive to thrust variations, the speed or speed trend was nearing or below your VAPP Hence, the aircraft was at a lower energy to arrest your sink rate properly. However the late thrust retardation n would have maintained enough momentum for a while thus preventing a firmer landing. And also you said you needed a full aft sidestick, I'm just curious, did you check the load report to see what your pitch was on landing, especially since you mentioned it was CONFIG 3 landing ?

I doubt very much that MCT would have been wise here. Apart from anything else, you'd be throwing the captain out of the loop entirely.

If you wanted finer control over the engines, manual thrust is the answer. Why does your airline forbid it?

We didn’t get the reports, though in hindsight they would’ve been interesting to see. There was no pitch callout or printer running after landing, so everything appeared to be within limits. The captain did mention that pitch was sitting just above the 5-degree line during touchdown, so there’s that.

Another contributing factor to the slow pitch response could have been a more forward CG than usual. We had an MEL restricting flammable cargo in the aft compartment, so we decided to load everything in the front. I believe it was around 18% when I calculated the landing performance.

As for manual thrust being prohibited, it’s apparently for safety-related reasons. I’m not familiar with the specific incident myself, but I’ve heard the restriction was added after a few hard landings years back caused by pilot error. Way to ruin it for everyone…

1. The Pitch Call out wouldn't have come unless it was an aggressive change in pitch, i.e., nearing the pitch limit mark

2. Not sure of your company's load report generation SOP, but unless it is preprogrammed to generate a load report post a threshold G or VRTA the load report wouldn't have come anyway. And a load report that requires a TECHINCAL inspection is well above 2G. So it's always a good idea to print the load report when in doubt and analyze your pitch change rate and the VRTA yourself. The SKIPPER might have said it's at 5 degrees when landing, which would be probably 100% correct. But since you had held the full AFT sidestick, which again is unnatural during flare in a flyby wire, unless some aggressive maneuverer is required, such as GPWS PULL UP or WINDSHEAR. In my company, the flight data monitoring has set the first upper limit of pitch(PITCH HIGH ON TOUCHDOWN) during landing on an A321 at 7 degrees for CONFIG 3. Also, remember the sidestick is soft or easy to handle in pitch control to a certain AFT or FWD movement post that the internal tension resists or adds a feel that makes the movement stiff, and to add full AFT sidestick requires you to go beyond this added feel.

3. The FWD CG shouldn't have any noticeable effect on your pitch rate in a fly-by-wire aircraft like the A320 family, that too in NORMAL LAW, unless loaded incorrectly and well beyond the margins, as the THS compensates for this. Note: read:- Rotation mode, activated during take off beyond 70knts ETC till flight mode engages, although this does not hold for flare, but shows Airbus is managed well in terms of CG.

4. I forgot to mention in my previous comment: moving the thrust levers to MCT momentarily during landing to soften a landing due what is perceived as lack of pitch authority is a violation of Airbus SOP. But say if it was done, during flare, where assuming you had pitch of 6 degrees and N1 is around 50-ish % the movement to MCT will do what? take ATHR out of the logic? Assuming the thrust has even time to react at flare height, now thrust will follow your TLA (doughnut), And due to an underslung engines, the thrust increase will vector a nose-up pitch . You are already a 6 degrees pitch and with AFT sidestick, no margin, and this will either lead you close to a tail strike or a pilot induced oscillation where the worst would be due intuition(perceived nose up due thrust increase) you input a sidestick release or worst a nose down pitch

Fly the output, don’t overthink it.

Well put thewiseelderman.
I've flown the A319/20/21/330 CEO and NEO and I fly them all the same.
The inputs to do this, do vary slightly between variants, but it is the aircraft's reaction that I'm interested in.

Indeed. It is helpful to have a firm grasp of the fundamentals (this is what the FCTM and FCOM are for) and to try and replicate that on every occasion

my company is very good at breaking down the landing process into stages to create as consistent an output as possible for every occasion but it really is just about nailing the fundamentals and not accepting deviations

if you’re chasing a ‘greaser’ that’s an entirely different story and shouldn’t be on the top of your mind as a professional aviator- ignorewhat the uninformed behind the FD door say, including the crew. In fact the crew are perhaps the worst judges of a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ landing.

I think the OP just needs reassurance there is nothing unusual in his/her performance.

Whenver someone refers to a book how to land an aircraft I feel like:... :ugh:

Unless you only intend to fly perfect days, no landing is identical to another. Fly the output, I liked that! There is a lot of practice in it to do it consistently well.

Firm landings are fine, especially in the wet/dry snow and in gusty conditions. I never once fixated on the TDZ, when landing an A319, 320, 321, or 330. (330 is usually much simpler, btw, with ground effect helping soften the blow). Just adjust the scan to 150-200 feet. Keep her coming down. Look up the runway more and more, and gently close the Thrust Levers at 20-30 feet while keeping her straight or correcting the drift. Do not keep pulling back, just relax the back sidestick pressure at 5-10 feet, and let her settle. Anticipate using Full or Idle reverse thrust, and brake accordingly. It took me about 4 months on the line to feel confident when landing, and for the next 15 years I can say I did not make an unsafe landing. Plenty of firm ones though.

Previous landing experiences on the F-27 and Shed were a different matter altogether!

not really, FCTM exist for a reason. PERF calcs are designed to land in a specific repeatable pattern (within TDZ at a certain speed)

If you try to land a jet like your SEP/MEP from training you’re likely to get into trouble

the number of ignorant comments out there that fixate on ‘butter’ landings whilst the jet has floated halfway down the runway or you see some American cowboys aiming for the numbers in a commercial jet show that many don’t understand the theory behind landing these kind of aircraft and hence low hours people can get lost. If you apply what your manuals say you’re likely to get a consistent output. The refinement of adaptation to real world conditions comes with experience