Jetstar continues to say contradictory things about the double missed approach by one of its A320s to Melbourne Airport on July 21, in which the flight from Christchurch came to within 20 feet of the ground in fog after the pilots decided not to land in the conditions.

The airline insists that the undercarriage of the jet was lowered at that moment. But that turns out to be “bad flying”. The wheels should have been up, and the jet nowhere near that close to the tarmac.

A320 pilots have shown Crikey the operating procedures for the jet which require the undercarriage to be retracted when an automatic go-around procedure is initiated, which was at about 200 feet above the ground on this particular flight.

Otherwise the drag of the undercarriage and the normal delay before the engines develop the required additional thrust will cause the airliner to continue to sink toward the ground before it gains enough velocity to climb away and may even result in the wheels making contact with it.

Was the spin imperative so strong at Jetstar that it had to deny the wheels were up when in fact they really should have been up?

A320 pilots have told us leaving the wheels down in a go-around situation is a common error in simulator exercises and is purposely trained out of flight crew in order to prepare them for the inevitability of situations like the one that confronted the Jetstar crew.

But it is not an error to be treated lightly in real flight with passengers on board.

Fortunately for all concerned, a disaster is unlikely to follow a wheels down contact by an A320 which is actually trying to go-around rather than land, because the engine and control surface settings are such that the jet will still climb away from the runway assuming there is enough of it left to become airborne, and this would have been the situation at Melbourne Airport.

Nor would the jet having retracted its undercarriage as required for the procedure have sunk so close to the ground.

(Unless, and this is another issue for the ATSB, the pilots erroneously increased the engine thrust to the “climb” setting but not the required “go-around” setting, which is maximum power.)

Those familiar with A320s remain perplexed as to how Jetstar could have claimed the only aural warning in the cockpit came after it was established on its climb away from the abandoned attempt, when a ‘GEAR’ alert, intended to remind the pilots to raise the wheels, should have been heard on the way down with the wheels down as the airline insists they were, and would have been quite unusual on the way up.

Just how badly was this jet flown?

Or is the real problem silly things that were said by management in an attempt to gloss over what looks a less than perfect response to poor visibility on approach to a landing?

Yesterday Jetstar announced that it understood the ATSB was to inquire into the incident. Earlier today there had been no confirmation of this from the ATSB, but if one takes the position that in Australia the airlines tell the regulators and the minister what to do, and when, no doubt they and Mark Vaile will act on their instructions shortly.