We have been in Chile and Antarctica for the past month and had an aviation experience with an A320 that I've never heard of before.
It was a flight from Santiago to Punta Arenas aboard a LATAM A320. The flight was about 95% full. When we arrived at PA we were told to stay in our seats and we would disembark starting with the rear if the aircraft??? It was pretty breezy and I thought it had something to do with the weather but upon our return flight to Santiago at the major airport we we had the same process repeated.

I've flown on A320's before and never had to do that so I was wondering is this common practice with the A320 or was this a LATAM policy or what!

https://www.reddit.com/r/flyin...se_up_as_passengers/

I don’t think the 320 is as prone to ‘tail-tipping, but it can be a thing. It’s more of an issue with stronger winds, a certain direction, over the tail.

I think it’s more of a thing with a long bodied , newer 737, hence the pole under the tail at the gate. There are others, preventative methods are better than after the occurrence.

Not a pilot, but I have family and friends that work in commercial airliner manufacturing. The aircraft are built to the specs of the airliners who buy them, at least anything to do with the passengers and the interior. For example, the number of seats, how close the rows are together, what materials they’re made of and how far they recline are all dependent on customer (the airline) specs. Since the A320 can board from the front and LATAM has people board and deplane from the rear, I’d be surprised if that wasn’t their choice, or local laws and how they have to do things.

I may have not made myself clear...

We entered and exited the plane from the front like every other commercial jet I've been on but they had the passengers in the rear move to the front and get off there.

quote:

Originally posted by smlsig:

I may have not made myself clear...

We entered and exited the plane from the front like every other commercial jet I've been on but they had the passengers in the rear move to the front and get off there.

I have flown some light (under 6,000 lbs.) airplanes that required care during the loading / unloading process. If the CG was too far aft with nobody in the front seats, the nose wheel would come up off the ground and the tail skid would touch the pavement.

Way back in the 1960's when I was working in Puerto Rico, I would see a local air taxi pilot loading bundles of Sunday NY Times to take from San Juan to Ponce. He had an interesting method for calculating weight and balance; he just kept putting bundles of newspapers in the airplane until the nose wheel started to come off the ground, then he would remove one bundle, and take off.

I've never heard of an Airbus using that procedure, but it was certainly to avoid the tail dropping to the ground. As previously mentioned, some airplanes will use a tail stand.

I would guess that this airline had an unfortunate event in the past and this is their solution.

I'm more interested in what you were doing in Punta Arenas. I lived there for four months - 30 years ago...in the winter.

I wanna go back and hike Torres Del Paine National Park.

This is something new since 2012/13 when I regularly flew 320’s on that route on TAM.

quote:

Originally posted by Russ59:
I'm more interested in what you were doing in Punta Arenas. I lived there for four months - 30 years ago...in the winter.

I wanna go back and hike Torres Del Paine National Park.

That's exactly what we did! Unfortunately due to the ice storm in Dallas at the end of January we lost 3 days of our trip so we just got a taste of how beautiful TDP is. We were able to find Puma's on a Puma trek we went in and man those cats are huge!

We are already making plans to go back and explore more of Chile. It is a beautiful country.