A330 Pro - Taxi Speed

[VAFPilot 17]

Hello, All:

 

I believe this has been discussed before and I've read some of the responses which seem to always point to the calibration of the hardware. The A330 begins to roll the second the parking brake is released and continues to gradually gain speed. Last evening I had a long straight parallel taxi to the departing runway and before long the aircraft was 40+ knots of taxi speed: that was with throttle at idle. I tried different fuel loads and that did not seem to make a difference.

 

I re-calibrated the hardware (throttles), disabled the thrust control on the Thrustmaster TCA Sidestick to avoid a secondary input. I also checked this issue in the other Airbus Pro series (A318, A319, A320) and this is not an issue. Aircraft remain stationary with thrust levers at idle and no parking brake.

 

I'd very much like to have the A330 not to be overpowered at idle. Any suggestions on how to fix/tweak this would be appreciated. I enjoy flying the aircraft but this has become quite a bit of a distraction especially with other airport traffic on the ground and when ATC is online (pilot workload).

[Secondator 643]

Hi VAFPilot,

This is normal behavior especially on lighter weights where the aircraft starts automatically rolling on idle power. Even on heavier weights the aircraft needs only small amount of thrust to overcome the inertia but after that the aircraft will happily maintain speed or even accelerate even at higher weights. The RR engines truly have a lot of power at idle thrust. This effect is magnified even further when using Engine Anti-ice which increases the idle a bit.

[VAFPilot 17]

On 12/24/2020 at 12:12 PM, Secondator said:

Hi VAFPilot,

This is normal behavior especially on lighter weights where the aircraft starts automatically rolling on idle power. Even on heavier weights the aircraft needs only small amount of thrust to overcome the inertia but after that the aircraft will happily maintain speed or even accelerate even at higher weights. The RR engines truly have a lot of power at idle thrust. This effect is magnified even further when using Engine Anti-ice which increases the idle a bit.

 

Thanks for the response. However, what you said in the response is what the aircraft is not doing: ' . . . happily maintain speed even at higher weights.'. It continues to accelerate at idle regardless of aircraft weight. It would make sense to me if at a low weight this was an issue but at a heavier weight the behaviour would decrease or disappear due to more inertia required to get the aircraft moving.  I know the 787 has similar behaviour but I was surprised to see it on the A330.

 

I'm guessing at this point there's no way counter the effect other than constantly riding the brake when taxiing? If this is how the A330 operates in real life I would imagine there's a bit of additional fuel burned and certainly a lot of brake changes.

 

I really do like this aircraft . . . just wish the taxi speed could be throttled back without the need to have my feet constantly on the toe brake. Becomes a bit of a nuiscance on long taxis.