How not to fly the Airbus A380
Heard the one about the guy who got into a pilot-induced oscillation (PIO) in an A380? Well, it was me.
For non-pilots, a PIO is what happens when your brain gets out of synch with the aircraft’s movements in one axis or another, so that all your corrective actions end up neatly timed to make its undesired behaviour get even worse.
I guess every pilot that ever lived has been there, but in modern Airbus types its quite hard to achieve because if you command the aircraft to fly somewhere, broadly speaking it will then do exactly that until you tell it to do something else. The way you generate a PIO in such an aircraft is to try to fly it like a ‘conventional’ type – hence my difficulty, which was happily short-lived once I stopped abusing Airbus' fine aeroplane.
It was all a bit of fun – but fairly serious fun as I was fortunate enough to visit the CAE-built A380 simulators at Toulouse. They’re not perfectly representative of the aircraft’s in-flight behaviour, because new in-flight data is constantly being input into the simulator as it is generated, but the first machine is now pretty good.
I got the chance to perform a daytime take-off, (huge) circuit, and night-time landing. I suppose I should say now my actual piloting experience is limited to about 200 hours of light jets and single-piston types, most of it more than 20 years ago.
I came away with two major impressions. First the ease of preparing for flight and then ‘managing’ the aircraft is truly remarkable. Airbus’ menu-driven check-lists allied to the clever keyboard cursor control unit (KCCU), with its roller-ball and clicker falling comfortably to hand, makes the process a joy. Programming the flight management system, aided by a QWERTY keyboard, is similarly convenient.
And second the aircraft, like Airbus narrowbodies that I have handled in the simulator, is stunningly easy to fly, with the A380's inherent inertia being the only substantial differentiator from others in the family.
That said, my landing involved striking the runway a mighty blow a distressing distance past the piano keys, although at least on the centreline. As for most widebody novices, judging when the main-gear is going to touch down while your cockpit is still high above the runway is the tricky bit even with the synthetic voice altitude call-out. But, courtesy of Goodrich's landing gear and/or CAE's software we were safely down and staying there. I was wise enough to apply the parking brake and get out rather than explore the simulated grass while I figured out how to taxy the colossus around Toulouse's taxiways.
Over the next few months dozens of pilots will be learning to fly the A380 in the same simulator for real. I predict they are in for a terrific time.
