A350 Flare Techinque

1st Official Post

    I've been reading up on some flare techniques, it has been interesting to find many real world pilots had issues with hard landings on this bird when it first came out. The sim seems to have nicely captured the 'quirks' of landing this aircaft. I have a few questions though.


    Airbus restricted manual landings with the HUD initially, this was due to the HUDS FPV vector being a bit erratic, they later corrected this with software revisions.

    1. Does the Aerofly A350 simulate derotation like the real aircraft?

    2. is recommended flare height between 30 - 50ft?

    3. Real technique suggests a very shallow flare compared to the A330, was this behaviour also included in the sim?


    Below is a comment from a real A350-1000 operator -


    The flare of the 350 is about “half” what you would do in the 330 and the 350 has an “autoderate” function - you are supposed to release the sidestick at mainwheel touchdown (FCTM Landing technique)...of course the reality is that most pilots instinctively do their own derotation in my experience. The 350 has more rapid response rates that seem to be built into the Prims and this makes it very twitchy, especially during crosswind landings - on calm days it flies on the rails - very smooth. Pilots who tend to overcontrol the 330 have a hard time on the 350 as a result.

    • Official Post

    Our A350 has a de-rotation law after touchdown simulated, but I'm not sure how accurate this is, since there is very little data available for this. Releasing the stick at touch down would work and bring down the nose. But depending on the pitch 5 seconds after touchdown of the mains the auto brake will kick in. If the nose isn't fully down by then the pitch down tendency will de-rotate the plane a lot quicker. So if you are de-rotating too slow you sort of have to fight the nose down of the auto-brakes.

    From what I heard the recommended flare height is around 40ft with a gentle flare. I like to flare at 30-35 ft or so and bring up the nose a bit by holding just the right amount of elevator until main wheel touchdown. You can fine-tune the elevator deflection during flare, it's quite responsive but the aircraft has a lot of inertia due to the long fuselage. So sudden inputs won't translate into quick pitch changes that easily, not nearly as quickly as on the A320 at least. That's just physics for you.

    It takes a bit of practice but it's not very difficult in my opinion (having done it 1000s of times already...). Just start the flare a bit higher than on the A320 and be quick with your inputs (fast response) but not aggressive (small inputs).

    Regards,

    Jan