Originally Posted by
Daniel Larusso
No and yes. I'll preface this by saying just fly the airplane like any other and you'll be fine, but here goes from what I remember. The airplane transitions to 'Flare' mode during the landing which is basically a submode of Direct Law. Direct Law being direct stick to surface movement without FBW autotriming and protections. The plane takes a snapshot of things at 30 ft RA and then over the next 7(?) seconds it begins to slowly introduce some down trim based. It's basically an electronic feel computer that creates some of the natural feel that we all get when an airplane is in ground effect during the landing. In normal law during most flight phases except TO and landing, the plane autotrims and there was concern that such a 1g feeling might feel unnatural during landing and cause overcontrol from what I was told. In roll under Normal Law, the plane will hold whatever bank angle you apply up to 67 degrees whenever the stick is released with automatic pitch trim up to 33 degrees. While this is all nice to know, especially in an emergency, practically speaking I found it irrelevant when I flew the plane. I just learned it's tendencies and flew it like anything else. From what I remember on a typical X-wind landing like most Airbii it didn't take much rudder pedal input to straighten it out, and the plane had a natural aerodynamic tendency to dip the wing a little bit for you meaning that most of the time it didn't take much aileron input to be properly cross-controlled. In fact, I often saw people from other airplanes over control it and wrestle themselves into oscillations. On the other hand, there are times in gusty crosswinds where you can end up with full side stick to get the input you want which can be uncomfortable both from the standpoint of being at the stop and because the airplane usually doesn't require such large inputs on the stick. All in all, I found it to be the easiest transport category plane I've flown to land nicely in a X-wind as long as you waited to down low before trying to decrab. As with everything pilot, there are differing opinions and your mileage may vary

Thanks, thats good stuff.