FSAirlines

I am just curious how FSA determines landing rates. Several of our pilots use add on landing rate meters (LRM, kACARS, etc) and have expressed concern the rates they get off external meters do not match FSA.

I have a theory - only a theory mind you - that somehow FSA is taking the not the initial touchdown like other landing rate meters but the highest touchdown (lowest negative number) rate produced on all contact points.

The theory continues: for example if you touchdown so gently you've used up most of your runway so you slam it into reverse and bam! down comes the nose gear giving you a much higher number than your add on landing rate meter indicates as they judge only initial touchdown.

It would be nice to have a definitive answer to give to my pilots as to how FSA grades landings.

Both simconnect and FSUIPC have an interface for reading the vertical speed directly from the simulator, the value we use is the average of the last three readings right before touchdown.

Thanks!

So if you "grease it" on the main wheels but hold the nose off for a bit, then slam the nose into the ground (good example would be Concorde, very high nose attitude at touchdown, deploy reverse which keeps nose up, then hit the brakes and yoke forward, heavy nose touchdown), am I right in thinking this would not be detected as a hard landing by FSA?

From the data I have gathered with our pilots, I think the FSA grading system judges "all contact points" so slamming down the nose gear would indeed make that overall "average" much more worse than a landing rate monitor would show.

So if you "grease it" on the main wheels but hold the nose off for a bit, then slam the nose into the ground (good example would be Concorde, very high nose attitude at touchdown, deploy reverse which keeps nose up, then hit the brakes and yoke forward, heavy nose touchdown)

I just watched video's of the Concorde landing on youtube and they do not use reversers until the nose is down, they keep it up for "aerodynamic braking" and slowly let it down then full on with reversers. So in the real world they never "slammed" the nose down.

Just FYI

https://youtu.be/ef_A8GWD91A

https://youtu.be/B4UEaYqCL0w

I completely agree that is the correct way to land a Concorde, but if one does it wrong, as in my example, the touchdown was not a hard landing, but in reality the nose wheel would be badly damaged!

We are looking at vertical speed for the aircraft for hard landing. But of course the sim is looking at VS for the contact points and even if we don't record a hard landing, it could still be recorded as a crash.