One thing that jumped out at me was the narrow range of safe airspeeds on the landing approach--only three or four knots between stall and max speed not to overrun the runway. Quite a good piece of flying to get the plane down safely, not to mention all the other things the crew had to do.
Yep, they were very heavy and needed to land essentially at stall speed - which they basically did seeing as the stall warning chimed in moments before touch down - in order to allow for as much space as possible to stop the plane. I took from the article that their calculations were kind of hacked together with a number of overrides, so I guess they erred on the side of caution in case any of the assumptions needed a margin of error.
Amazing article. So well written. Kudos to the Qantas flight team, especially the pilot - they know their stuff for sure. And also kudos to the Airbus engineering team, that was such an epic win for redundant systems.
(It was interesting to see how stopping calculations were improved as part of the post mortem, for one.)
Worth noting that there was an unusual flight crew: 3 captains (one to check the captain's proficiency, and another to check the checker's proficiency) plus the first and second officers.
Plus the off-duty one upstairs watching the tail camera on the entertainment console. Article says 140 years of combined experience between them which is more than impressive. Airbus really couldn't have hoped for a better crew for this to eventually happen to.
One of my favourite things about the A380 is that in-flight live feed from the tail, surprised more planes don't do it. Offers visual detail of the entire topside and a lot of information that might not otherwise be available.
> wouldn't ground effect allow for a lower stall-speed?
Slightly lower, yes, but since, as the GP pointed out, the stall warning sounded just before touchdown, it looks like their calculations already took that into account.
