Airbus Tail Strike at EGLL

According to some of the comments, the aircraft wasn't taken out of service but flew out that evening.

Technically speaking this is what’s referred to as a baulked landing . There’s a type specific procedure for it which is slightly different from a go-around.

Baulked landings have been a feature of recent simulator training after an incident emirates had not so long ago.

I was looking at the short amount of runway apparently available while it looked like a landing was still being attempted. I am not criticizing, just curious what more knowledgeable folk here might think. I had not heard of a "balked landing." Had a horse once that balked at mailboxes. Never learned what bad news he feared.

52 minutes ago, Tim_Capps said:

I was looking at the short amount of runway apparently available

I think that’s probably the zoom of the camera playing tricks, I’m familiar with that particular runway having landed on it many times. He’s probably less than half way down the 12,800ft runway when he climbs away.

Its hard really to second guess what happened and I really shouldn’t as I want on the flight deck but it sort of looks like they might have been concerned at loosing lateral control and heading off the side of the runway or a pod strike, I don’t know.

I’m not familiar with the Airbus but on the being types I’ve flown TOGA is disarmed 2 seconds after 5ft RA so pressing TOGA does nothing for you so requires a quick and firm manual application of go around thrust. This is where the emirates 777 had problems.

52 minutes ago, Tim_Capps said:

Had a horse once that balked at mailboxes. Never learned what bad news he feared.

😂 That’s funny, though I’m sure the horse didn’t think so.

Edited February 1, 20224 yr by jon b

What's going on there, is the weight on the wheels sensor is reading the aeroplane as being 'down' because there is a wheel on the deck, but the problem with that on the Airbus A321, is that when the sensor detects that status, it automatically halves the amount of throw you can put on the ailerons in order to prevent a pod strike, which is useful most of the time if you happen to be crabbing/wing-down for a bit of crosswind control, but the downside to it, which we see on that video, is if a gust then starts pitching you over to one side, as happened there, you then have a limited amount of aileron you can put in to counter it whilst you have either of the main gear wheels in contact with the runway. Because of that, the PF hauled back on the stick a bit too much because he feared a pod/wingtip strike he might not have had the control authority to counter, which is completely understandable at that point, but you only have to go past about 12 degrees deck angle on a 321 to risk a tail strike when you are hauling it off the deck like that rather than letting it fly off the ground.

Probably should have gone around sooner given how unstable and hot he was when getting to the point where you think about flaring and closing the throttles, but than again it's easy for me to say that whilst sitting here with a nice cup of tea rather than at the controls of the thing. There is a bumper skid thing on the tail which offers some protection, and so you wouldn't necessarily see any damage because of that, but the problems can be more than skin deep with a tail strike; it can potentially crack the rear pressure bulkhead dome, which is pretty serious and really dangerous if it goes undetected. Hopefully they did inspect that properly. I'll have to have a nosey at G-NEOP next time it comes into EGCC, we do see that one from time-to-time. Mind you, you'd be hard pressed to spot a bit on the lower fuselage which isn't dented on some BA Airbuses; they look nice from a distance, but when you get up close, they're surprisingly battered. 🤣

1 hour ago, Chock said:

you then have a limited amount of aileron you can put in to counter it whilst you have either of the main gear wheels in contact with the runway.

That's the same reason for the Lufty A320 wingtip strike in Hamburg not so long ago 14 years ago(!)👴, https://avherald.com/h?article=402e5972

Easy for anyone to try and 'Armchair Quarterback' the PF's response, but that didn't look like a comfortable angle to be at.
 

A pretty minor tail strike by the looks of things, but I imagine the entire episode gave the passengers quite a fright!

Whats up with the boards not coming up when he got on the ground? Probably would have helped him stay on the ground. I don’t know airbus but any of the airplanes i have flown, the spoilers would have been up.

10 minutes ago, ahsmatt7 said:

Whats up with the boards not coming up when he got on the ground?

I was wondering about that too.

I’ve just had a look at an A330 manual I have and presuming the A321 is the same it requires both main wheels on the ground and thrust levers both in idle for spoilers to deploy if armed.

I guess that particular combination wasn’t met at any one time in that landing 

That's a tough GA to handle in a 321, with TOGA thrust and the airplane already in ground mode (sidestick bit different then) you need to keep the pitch at 7-7.5 deg to avoid tailstrike. 

Gets trained in the sim, but reality and sim are sometimes not the same pair of shoes, esp. when gusts might be involved. 

Luckily only the drain mast got bend. 

Edited February 2, 20224 yr by 320Driver

1 hour ago, jon b said:

I was wondering about that too.

I’ve just had a look at an A330 manual I have and presuming the A321 is the same it requires both main wheels on the ground and thrust levers both in idle for spoilers to deploy if armed.

I guess that particular combination wasn’t met at any one time in that landing 

My SOP manual for the 320 is basically the same as the 330 and 321 (there are just supplementary additional loose-leaf pages for the different types), so it is basically the same system on all of the three aeroplane types. That manual does however go to some lengths (pun intended) to caution pilots about the need to be aware of the reduced maximum rotation pitch angle on the 321 if one is used to the 320. But regardless of this, I will say that from my experience, BA pilots do come across as some of the better ones out of all the 'bus drivers I speak to, so I suspect the guy on the stick in this incident is a decent pilot and at the end of the day, if he scraped the tail a bit by hauling it off the deck, that's better than digging a wing in and cartwheeling the thing, so for me it was a good save. Looking at the approach, I do think he should have gone around a bit sooner, and I daresay he'd agree, but it's easy to be wise after an event so I don't think we can lay too much blame on him.

There is no doubt that the weather in the UK has been a bit challenging for aeroplanes over the past few days with almost a permanent wind warning from ops over that period, in fact, yesterday at work when we were waiting for an Aurigny ATR-72 to come in to Manchester, we were looking at the windsock and betting on whether they'd make it down on the first try (they did). Normally one gets used to the noise of the fan blades clattering around in the wind on aeroplanes, but yesterday I did notice that an EasyJet A320's starboard engine was spinning really fast in that wind, a lot more than it generally does. That's actually a bit of a pain in the word not allowed when doing a walkaround check because you can't see if the fan blades are damaged when they are spinning, such that when working on a plane, if the wind drops at any point, I take the opportunity to check the fan blades at that time!

Edited February 2, 20224 yr by Chock