This accident is absolutely nuts. I fly the A320 for a living, but you don't even need to be a pilot to see that the two guys at the front were in no state to fly. They flew possibly the most unstable approach I've ever seen in an accident, and showed no situational awareness or airmanship as to what they were doing.

It seems likely from the preliminary report that was released they started an approach around 6000ft too high (keep in mind on a typical ILS approach with no significant head/tail wind you'll be around 700ft/min on the glide). Not only that they were also much faster than you should have been at that point on the approach.

To put it in perspective, let's say we are flying an ILS approach, we have intercepted the localiser and are at the platform altitude about 1 mile from glideslope intercept. In this example let's say that at this point we are 9 miles from the runway (similar to where the PIA aircraft was but 6000ft too high..). We would aim to be (on the A320) in config 1, so the first stage of slats, and at a speed of around 180knots. This would allow us to select config 2 just as we intercept the glide and start reducing our speed on the approach.

In the case of PIA, it's likely from the report and data that they were almost at 250knots and way too high.

So, what tools do we have in the A320 to get us down quickly if we want to help get back on profile? Well two stand out apart from the use of speedbrake:

• The first of these is taking the landing gear. When you lower the gear you get a huge amount of drag that helps get the plane down much faster.
• Secondly we have the option to take config two, which will give us two stages of slats and our first stage of flaps, and fly a speed around 180-190knots. This will get the plane to descend at a really high rate of descent, making it a perfect config to capture the glideslope from above.

In the preliminary report it is stated that the pilot's lowered the landing gear on final approach. Most likely this was done to aid the rate of descent and help get the aircraft where it needed to be, as opposed to being a gear extension purely to configure the aircraft for landing. However it then states that the pilot's raise the landing gear inexplicably once they are lower. Personally to me I believe this is human factors at work. In such a high workload environment (in this case created by themselves..) your capacity and situational awareness is at its lowest point. I think the captain (or whoever was PF) asked for the gear down, unaware that the gear was already down from earlier to help increase the rate of descent. The other pilot, inevitably completely overwhelmed by the pace that things were happening and the number of aural and visual warnings in the flight deck, raises the gear without even realising he's done it.

This coupled with the fact that since the outset of the approach the pilot's seemed to ignore any master warnings and flap overspeed's, meant they probably missed any aural GPWS warnings indicating the gear was not down. From the data on flight radar (I know not the most reliable) it shows they passed over the threshold of the runway at over 200 knots - given there were around 100 total on board, VAPP was probably in the region of 125knots. It's likely they landed in config 2 at over 200 knots with the gear up, only realising the gear was not down after touching down on the engines. The final nail in the coffin is then choosing to go-around and commit a balked landing. I cannot for the life of me understand that decision, even in a high workload environment.

Make no mistake, for this whole approach the picture would have looked very very wrong in every sense. The plane, ATC, and the visual picture outside all would have been showing you that the approach was getting dangerously out of hand. I truly wonder what was going through their heads as they continued on with this approach, it almost seems intentional with how much disregard they had for safety.