As I was landing (I was a passenger) on Sunday, the plane (A300) made a flare about 40 ft GND. Then, I heard..

Question

... that the engines went from (probably) idle to max. (well ok, not max. perhaps, but at 70% N1 or something like that). A VERY rough and hard landing followed (even though the weather was perfect, CAVOK, and no wind). So what happened there? I know that pilots make sometimes harder landings, because they are better, when winds are strong etc....

To me, it seems, that the nose was put up a little to early, therefore it floated longer over the runway, speed was dramatically going down before the gears touched the rwy, so the engines were given some thrust, but too late, so that a hard landing was the result....

Am I right with this?

Answer 1

i think that the pilot started to flare to high above the runway and stalled   then he tried to gain airspeed by running the engine fast.. also he could of forgetten to put on full flaps. this is not a wind shear this is pilot error.. maybee not enough time in that model.. taking  pilots now with only 3 or 4 hundred hours.. instead of 3 or 4 thousand  any one of the three could do that ok.

Answer 2

Keep in mind it can take anywhere between 3 and 12 seconds for the engines to go from idle to max-power. If he were trying to recover from a high-flare, I suspect it would be impossible to add power to recover. Maybe... first officer landing, thought he would go around, captain said no, just land, so first officer lowered the nose to plant the wheels hard so that the plane would not overrun the end of the runway?

Answer 3

How can anybody know if you're right when all you can do is guess having not been in the cocpit. And it sure ain't gonna float longer if he flaired early. In fact he'll just sink right in. Hey, they blew it, landed hard and that's that.