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The AI co-pilot and checklists completely mess up on turnarounds at high altitude airports


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Hello!

I am not sure if I'm writing this in the correct place, if I'm not, please move it or tell me where I should post it.

Following a suggestion I got from DaveCT2003, I decided to describe an issue I noticed in the Aerosoft Airbus Professional. For this occasion, I recorded a video, which will help me describe the problem. To show the issue, I flew a short flight from FDSK to FXMM. I chose FXMM as my destination airport because its elevation is over 5000ft. I took off, climbed to my cruising altitude, descended and commenced my approach without any difficulties or issues. The video starts just before the final turn to the ILS approach at FXMM. As you can see in the video, checklists go on normally all the way to the landing. After touchdown, the AI co-pilot says “ground spoilers, reverse green” - everything goes on as it should. But then, when the plane slows down to 80 knots, the FO should say “70 knots” and fails to do so. Also, the plane keeps braking on autobrakes, they are not turned off automatically.

After vacating the runway, the timer still goes on, flaps and spoilers are not retracted, landing lights are not switched off, the APU is not turned on. The after landing checklist is not activated and neither is the parking checklist after switching the engines off. Also, the MCDU doesn’t reset 30 seconds after landing, rather comes back to the takeoff phase of the flight we’ve just completed. When I checked the checklist page on MCDU3, FINAL is illuminated and DESCENT is flashing. Nothing can be done here, switching checklists and co-pilot on and off does not help.

After loading cold and dark state, the cockpit preparation checklist runs normally and ends with MCDU3 telling us to close doors in order to activate the before takeoff checklist. After closing the only open door, nothing happens. So I opened both left doors and both cargo doors and closed them and the result was the same - no response.

After switching to take off state, the takeoff checklist can be activated, yet as it is completed, the message to set takeoff thrust does not appear. Repeating this action gave the same effect.

I decided to take off anyway, but only after setting the levers to FLX, the PFD displayed MAN MCT instead of MAN FLX, even though the MCDU performance page clearly shows a flex temperature of 67°C. At the same time, the upper ECAM display shows the take off trust as TOGA. Therefore, I decided to increase the power to TOGA and continue the take off. Surprisingly, the timer was activated automatically as soon as I started my take off roll. While speeding up, I noticed the lack of V speeds on the PFD display and that the pink arrow indicated 100kts instead of V1.

Just after takeoff, not even having reached 100ft agl, I heard a GPWS warning “Too low, flaps”, although the flaps were at 2, just as set on the MCDU before takeoff.
During the initial climb I followed the FD indications which caused a very high angle of attack. Then I switched the autopilot on to see how it would deal with that and I was a bit disappointed as it maintained the nose in the exact same position, despite the decreasing airspeed. Only after selecting optimum climb mode and then switching it back to climb the aircraft lowered its nose and kept climbing normally.

During the climb, at about 6600ft, the QNH on the PFD started flashing, indicating the passing of the transition altitude. But according to the MCDU, the transition altitude was 12000ft. In the previous flight, it was 8000ft, so I have no idea where ~6600ft came from.

When reaching the thrust reduction altitude (6850ft), the aircraft seems to ignore it, the PFD says nothing about it, there is just a stable MAN TOGA sign. I reduced the thrust levers to climb mode and the aircraft seemed to maintain 250 knots as it should. At this point, the checklist menu is completely frozen.

The solution to this problem is very simple - it is enough to restart the simulator and everything works fine. But as this may take much time for people having complex sim configurations such as multiple screens, I thought I should report it to you so that you can try to sort it out. I believe this is not just my problem since I reinstalled the Airbus and it still is the same. I first noticed it in January, but it happened only once so I thought it was just a single error. But then it came back in September when I was doing a trip around Africa, where many airports are at high altitudes, and it happened every single time at airports located above some certain altitude (I don’t know exactly what altitude but I think 1000ft still works fine). I have the newest version of the Airbus installed, as well as the newest version of P3D. Also, there is no difference whether I land with the HIGH ALT button switched on or not.

 After describing the entire problem (quite extensively I believe), I need to apologise for the scenery in this video (bad glideslope, taxi signs on a runway) - it’s just a random scenery found online and used for a single visit at this airport. Please forgive me taxiing on the grass (it was just faster this way) and after takeoff, for forgetting to retract the landing gear, but since those things had no influence on my problem, I decided to keep it and not record a new video. I know my approach was absolutely terrible, I wanted to make an autolanding but I realised there was something wrong with the glideslope and I didn’t have time to do the video again or go around (btw. after going around the checklists also mess up, and that issue is here since the old Airbus).

Generally, it’s just a small issue, which does not affect the flying daily. It just happened to me so I wanted to let you know about it.

Looking forward for the A330!

 

The video: 

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The person who works this area of the sim has looked at this.  He says that we had similar issues a while back ago with high altitude airports and we believe we solved them.  He asked me to check to ensure you had the latest Experimental update for the Airbus.

 

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