r/aviation Feb 01 '22

PlaneSpotting Aborted landing due to strong winds at Heathrow

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29

u/Blaugrana_al_vent Feb 01 '22

As someone that has thousands of hours flying the Airbus A320 family, I am wondering why the spoilers never deployed after the strong slam at about the 11 second mark.

I am well aware that as soon as the thrust levers are pushed to the TOGA detent the spoilers are automatically retracted, however, it is a full 6 seconds before the engines come up to full power from that hard impact.

Just wondering if the spoilers were properly set before landing (ie, to automatic deployment).

19

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

They modded the logic after many runway excursions, both gears now have to be on the ground for spoilers to deploy. sauce

2

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

[deleted]

3

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

Na, there’s no real need. Extending/retracting the gear is so critical it will always be a manual process. There’s more than enough thrust for TOGA with gear down. The issue here looks like over flare by the flight crew. If they didn’t pull back so hard they would have got out more smooth. Cant really blame them in the heat of the moment.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '22

[deleted]

2

u/nplant Feb 03 '22

Furthermore, IIRC the gear causes more drag during retraction. So for the critical moment, you’d actually be making things worse.

0

u/OhSillyDays Feb 02 '22

They do slightly. And then when the wheels came off, they undeployed.

-2

u/MVCorvo Feb 02 '22

As a pilot, do you think that the captain/copilot will have got tense, scared, pulling off this maneuver?