6 minutes ago, Tom Wright said:

In a 737 yes, not in an A320.

Typically the autothrottle is kept in until the Retard call at 20 feet.

Had a lesson from a Delta Line check pilot years ago, on the 767. He told me to leave Autothrottle engaged until flaring. 

On 5/27/2022 at 10:18 AM, Chock said:

The 737 (entry into service 1968) was literally the first jet airliner which was designed and certified to be operated by two crew members

Sud Aviation Caravelle (1959), BAC One-Eleven (1965) and Douglas DC-9 (1965) have entered the chat.

On 5/27/2022 at 10:18 AM, Chock said:

the well-known crash of an Air France A320 at Habsheim airport (AF296Q)... The pilots were doing an airshow fly-by and were too low and too slow. They were attempting to show how cool it was that you could literally do this and the plane would not let you pull up into a stall condition, but realised they were about to hit some trees at the end of the runway they were flying along. So they tried to pull up, but that very feature of the A320's protection systems meant they could not do it until they had more speed on. Too late, they throttled up, but with not enough speed on, the A320 dutifully followed its programming and refused to pull up, striking the trees. The catalyst of this mistake, was in failing to understand that these features are very cool and very safety-driven, but if you don't understand them, they can, and will, bite you.

In fairness to the protection systems, what was the alternative, stall and crash onto the runway? However one thing that could have caught the crew out is when the A320 is landing configured it adopts a higher engine idle so the engines can be spooled up more quickly to full power, as they weren't in a typical landing configuration they probably had the engines at flight idle instead of approach idle, which meant it too much longer to obtain the power to allow the nose to pull up.

Edited May 31, 20224 yr by ckyliu

4 minutes ago, ckyliu said:

Sud Aviation Caravelle and BAC One Eleven have entered the chat

In fairness to the protection systems, what was the alternative, stall and crash onto the runway? However one thing that could have caught the crew out is when the A320 is landing configured it adopts a higher engine idle so the engines can be spooled up more quickly to full power, as they weren't in a typical landing configuration they probably have the engines set at flight idle instead of approach idle, which meant it too much longer to obtain the power to allow the nose to pull up.

I believe there were several mistakes that the pilots doing this demo made , that caused the first Airbus crash, like wrong runway, too low flyby, etc....

After today I'm pretty sure that the answer to the OPs question will be the HJET.

sp

2 hours ago, Tom Wright said:

Typically the autothrottle is kept in until the Retard call at 20 feet.

Says who? All the realworld Airbus pilots I watched did disconnect the AT as well when going manual on the approach.

58 minutes ago, ckyliu said:

In fairness to the protection systems, what was the alternative, stall and crash onto the runway? However one thing that could have caught the crew out is when the A320 is landing configured it adopts a higher engine idle so the engines can be spooled up more quickly to full power, as they weren't in a typical landing configuration they probably had the engines at flight idle instead of approach idle, which meant it too much longer to obtain the power to allow the nose to pull up.

In Star Trek III, Scotty jokes that he multiplies his repair estimates by a factor of four, so that he can maintain his reputation as a miracle worker; the point here being that engineers and indeed certification test pilots always strive to limit a system's cut off point well within acceptable safety limits. The protection systems on the A320 are no less an example of this, whereby they stop short of taking the thing right up to the ragged edge of what the thing is likely to be genuinely capable of, so it's almost certainly the case that had the pilots of AF296Q been able to stick the nose up just a little bit higher and squeeze a tiny rate of climb on the thing, it might have cleared the trees. But, this is not the fault of the aeroplane and its systems; as noted, they just did what they were designed to do.

I daresay you've seen several youtube videos of people doing the 'impossible turn' where their stall warning horn is going off quite a lot but they know they can take it up to that point and get away with it providing they resist the temptation to edge it around with the rudder. I have myself once got away with the 'impossible turn' by sticking the thing into a dive to get a lot of speed and then sticking the thing on its wingtip in a chandelle to come scraping in over the trees for a downwind landing. This wasn't in an Airbus A320 of course, but it was a case of a pilot (in that case, me) knowing what they could get away with and so to answer the hypothetical question in regards to an alternative, the chances are that an aeroplane with no climb-inhibiting alpha floor protection system probably could have been coaxed into a slight climb whilst waiting for the engines to spool up.

But as I say, this is not the fault of the aeroplane. The real cause of the Habsheim crash of AF296Q, was as is often the case with crashes, a cavalcade of errors on the part of the crew which were made long before they hit those trees. Specifically, they briefed to do their flyby down runway 02 at Habsheim, but even then they came in a bit too hot for that, having taken off from nearby Basel, then commenced their descent from 2,000 feet down to their planned fly-by altitude of 100 feet at just 6 miles from the airfield, which is not really enough time to guarantee the aircraft being in a stable condition, particularly when flying a new type in an unusual manner. But what made things worse was that when they got the airfield in sight, they realised that the crowd for the airshow were lined up along 34R and not 02, as they had assumed would be the case. Since the rules on European airshows had changed some years before (owing to another airshow accident) to forbid aeroplanes overflying the crowd, this meant they had to change their plan on the fly, and this led to them descending to 40 feet AGL at one point from being distracted and rushed. Having not done a proper survey of the airfield, they were unaware that there were trees at the end of the grass 34R runway and their steep approach made these appear to be small bushes when they were in fact 100 foot-plus tall trees as can be seen on the crash footage.

It's easy to be wise after the event, but the truth is the pilots, being aware that there were passengers on board their A320, should have simply abandoned their hasty attempt at getting the fly by done, radioed the tower and told them they'd have to come around again to get more stable. Having seen a British Airways Concorde do a low and slow fly-by along the runway at Barton Aerodrome below about 200 feet or so, when it too had passengers on board (yes really), it's not inherently dangerous to do such things, but it does require a proper plan and the willingness to knock it off and not push things if one thinks it's going pear-shaped.