2023-07 · NASA ASRS report 2016989
Air carrier flight crew reported a hard landing during a training flight resulted when the trainee released back pressure during the round out. A passenger reported a sore back due to the impact.
First Officer (FO) was the Pilot Flying (PF); and I was the Check Pilot and Pilot Monitoring (PM). I was able to provide verbal corrections with adequate response from the FO during the transition to land and landing; right up until about 20-30 feet. He had set an adequate pitch attitude to complete the landing safely; but then released back pressure and induced a sink rate from which I was unable to recover from in a timely manner; leading to a suspected hard landing. We also got a report from the gate agent after deplaning that a passenger was complaining of a hurt neck/back due to the impact of the landing.This was the second leg of my Operational Evaluation (OE) sequence (first with FO as PF; I was PF on the first leg) with the new hire FO. He had three other OE sequences before this one; with landings still needing improvement. I was definitely caught off guard with the FO's actions at 20-30 feet as I had not seen this before that low to the ground. The FO's previous flying experience; specifically the type of airplane; before coming could be a causal factor; as well as 5 days off since his previous OE sequence. I need to be more ready for this kind of control input low to the ground from now on. FO did have 5 days off between his last OE sequence and our sequence; so reducing the time between OE sequences might have helped.
On this IOE training flight; I (FO) was the flying pilot for the leg. On touchdown into ZZZ I conducted a hard landing. After flight passenger complained about back hurting. Sight picture for flaring is weak and developing. Additionally all previous aircraft flown have had much lower flare sight pictures. Not picking up on audible cueing (ie. pace of radar altimeter call outs below 50 feet). Low hours and landings (26 hours; 7th landing). Aggressive pitch changes below 200 feet. Low hour FO with significant amount of time between flights / landings. First 4 landings in 8 days; then 13 days no flights or landings. Then 2 landings followed by 6 days off. Event occurred on first flying leg after previous 6 days off.Suggestions - Additional training for FOs. Minimize time between training flights and line flights for low hour FOs.
More incidents for this aircraft family
Source: NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (public domain). Reports are voluntary submissions and are not verified by NASA.
Loading the flight search…
Pick an aircraft model — Boeing 737, Airbus A320, A380, Boeing 787 Dreamliner and more — enter your origin airport, and FlightFinder shows every route that plane flies from there with live fares.
We support Boeing 737/747/757/767/777/787, the full Airbus A220/A319/A320/A321/A330/A340/A350/A380 family, Embraer E170/E175/E190/E195, Bombardier CRJ and Dash 8, and the ATR 42/72 turboprops.
Search and schedules are free. Pro ($4.99/month, $39/year, or $99 one-time lifetime) unlocks the enriched flight card — on-time stats, CO₂ per passenger, amenities, live gate & weather — plus My Trips with push alerts.
Live schedules come from Amadeus, AeroDataBox and Travelpayouts. Observed routes (which aircraft actually flew a given city pair) are crowdsourced from adsb.lol ADS-B data under the Open Database License.