The TWISTED Story of the Airbus A320 NOSE-GEAR!

A few weeks back, an Airbus A320 landed in Medellin, Columbia with its nose-gear twisted 90 degrees of its axis. This has been a reoccurring thing during the last two decades with the A320 so what is actually going on?!
In this video I will give you a full breakdown of 5 of these incidents and what caused them. You will find that this is NOT as easy as it seems.
Stay tuned!

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Sources 👇

Twitter Video @joanpada7 - A320 Twisted Nosewheel Landing Colombia:

Twisted Landing Gear Picture:

Figure 1 - Shock absorber schematic:

BSCU scheme 01:

BSCU scheme 02:

Airbus Landing Gear System Presentation:

Ural Airlines A320:

A320 2011 - EC-GRH - Photo by David Guerra:

Latam LA-4292 - Carlos Daniel Dobelli

LA-4292 after landing photo - @Aerocivilcol

Flight Crew Training Manual Image:

Landing Gear Unsafe Checklist Image:

Thrust reversers video:

Jetblue A320 Image:

Northwest A320:

Pegasus Airlines A320 Nose Wheel Incident:

MEL Image Sample:

CHAPTERS
----------------------------------------------------------

00:00 - Intro
01:15 - Incident 1: Jetblue
03:40 - Incident 2
04:10 - Incident 3
05:11 - Incident 4
07:47 - Sponsor
08:28 - Latam Air Incident
12:34 - What should Pilots Do?
14:39 - Latam Air Twitter Video
16:39 - Outro

[frk]

As an engineer (not in the aviation industry), I want to add that it's true that a fault that appears to be same might have have different causes, BUT if the same part keeps having problems and you are fixing it time and time again and always something new pops up, then you sometimes want to scrap that part entirely and design it from scratch again - ideally, using a different engineer. Oftentimes 80% of the problems are located in 20% of the parts and if you already found that you have a part at hand which keeps suffering all sorts of problems, there might be more to discover in this part. And then it might be cheaper and safer to scrap it and start designing this part from scratch again.

[TheAruruu]

I think the most important take away from all of these incidents is that the nose gear has not collapsed after landing 90 degrees to the side like this. I don't know how close to collapse they've been, but they haven't collapsed. That speaks volumes to just how incredibly strong those struts are.

[philstuf]

I remember JetBlue 292. I watched it live, and also remember passenger interviews stating, "It was one of the smoothest landings I ever experienced." This just puts on display the pilots' skill level with events like this over the years...

[jocax]

I realize how seriously this could have gone wrong, but there's something inherently funny about Airbus going on a Wile E Coyote like chase after the nosewheel that keeps going wrong in increasingly unlikely ways.

[Aworldonapage-josh]

Fascinating. I can imagine the engineers at airbus starting to get really frustrated. “Again, John? How many times do I have to fix this?”

[KetogenicGuitars]

Sounds quite crazy that you could dispatch with any fault in nose gear. I would not like to be inside such plane. Luckily it seems to be amazingly tough thing. Once in Helsinki-Vantaa a van got knotted around main gear with no problem.

[chrisatty]

Capt on A320, now retired, 1200 hours command, on type, my experience of nose wheel problems, was as follows.
Half way thro a take takeoff, nose wheel commanded 45 degrees left.full right rudder applied, To get back near the runway centreline. T/O continued.
Inquiry stated unknown fault of BSCU.
Previously, the company had a similar fault, crew rejected the T/O and the aircraft had a runway excursion. BSCU issue, again.

[jimrobin]

I love these videos and they are always very professionally presented. Just one little point - the editing is so good that it sounds like Peter never stops to take a breath. Sometimes a few seconds pause as happens in normal conversation or even a lecture, allows the listener to take in and process what has just been said. Just a thought! :-)

[paparoni]

I am a Reliability Engineer working in this type of air vehicle development. When you design such complex hardware/software systems it is crucial to perform a comprehensive Failure Modes, Effects, and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) in concert with the mandatory Safety Critical Thread Analysis (SCFTA). In the past these analyses were led by the Reliability Engineer who was performing the FMECA with the Safety Engineering function developing the SCFTA with Software Engineering support. As the US has dropped mandating the use of Military Standards in many areas (a result of Acquisition Reform in the 1990s) the level of rigor (yes I am American so US English used here) of these analyses has been left up to the manufacturer for the most part. One result of letting the bean counters determine resources while also removing mandatory processes which require collaboration is that many companies have decreased the rigor of their Reliability analyses including the FMECA coverage and depth while somewhat stovepiping the SCFTA analysis efforts into the Software development process with System Safety supporting Software Engineering.
It is clear that this structure is almost certainly in place at Airbus given the various failure modes discussed in the video that resulted in the NLG being rotated 90 degrees. Identifying, analyzing, and mitigating these failure modes is the MAIN reason for the FMECA. An investment in real FMECA analysis coordinated with the SCFTA activities would have uncovered most, if not all, of these failure modes so they could be designed out of the system before they occurred. This lack of rigor is also the root cause of the 737 MAX problems as no half-decent FMECA would have allowed redundancy killing HW/SW designs that are rampant in that design. I avoid flying 737 MAX aircraft for this reason.

[unvergebeneid]

I'm actually impressed you can grind off half a nose wheel while having the weight of a jet aircraft pressing down on it without any visible damage to the runway. Amazing material!

[LuigiRosa]

One of the MANY reasons I watch your interesting videos is the incfedible similarity between modern airplanes and IT systems (meaning endpoints, servers, network, storage, you name it). I work as system administrator in one of the most complex possible environment (a network of cruise ships)

Both are a sum of many very complex systems and very often improvising or going with "post hoc ergo propter hoc" is the first step to failure.

Many users tend to simplify the problems because they don't have the "big picure" of the situation, is human and it happens with computers as well as with airplanes.

Keep doing this videos Petter, they teach more than you can imagine to us IT flight enthusiasts, thank you!

[dreamscape]

What kind of repairs have to be done to the runways after these types of landings? I imagine that they cause a fair amount of damage to the surfaces of the runway. Great video by the way.

[zavtparticles]

i'm astounded by how the struts don't get torn apart during these landings, despite the faults, that's some amazing structural engineering

[rocketwontoo]

I am not surprised by this as I spent over 40 years working for a major Avionics manufacturer. A fault would be flagged and something totally unrelated would be causing fault and not fault that was flagged.

[JasonMcCord-qkyb]

I can understand the pilots wanting to go through every checklist and procedure, especially if they have the fuel and time. No one ever regretted being more safe. The amazing thing about all these incidents is that nobody was seriously injured or killed!

[timenginemannd]

I remember when it seem like a rash of Boeing 727 (yes, I'm that old!) had issues with their nose gear Not Extending when they came in for landing! I think that there might have also been a few cases with the nose gear extending but not locking in the down position...

I Do remember when one pilot was able to trim his airplane to such an extent that he was able to keep the nose of the jet off the ground until he was going (what seemed to be) about 6mph (10kph) and the nose came down reasonably slow!

[temoku]

Terrific presentation. Like the toughest diagnosis in medicine, it is clear modern systems can’t always be fixed by a software patch.

[Nordern]

I'm curious, is the RAT automatic? I imagine they would start the APU to keep power and control after the engines are shut down?

[chrisshelley]

Yet another wonderful and informative video with straight talking explanations for the different reasons that this keeps happening yet for different reasons, you really do give better information than anyone I can think of, you really should have your own television programme where you explain all of these questions to the public at large. Flying is an everyday event for many people, yet we know so little about it, it's taken for granted, there have been others before you but in different fields of expertise who explain in detail how and why certain things just are, you are another one of these people, you have a fantastic gift and you deserve more than being on YouTube.
Take care and stay safe :)

[Boodieman]

How does the nose-gear on the A320 differ from those on other Airbus aircraft that don't seem to have the issue?