LH-V Operating Manual B — Airbus A319 / A320 / A321

Issue 1 — Draft for review Applicable to LH Virtual, LX Virtual and BOX Virtual.

0. Preface

0.1 What this manual is

This is the group's operating manual for the Airbus A320 family. It is the standard the Academy's A32x course examines against, and it is where the group's flight-reporting rules are written down in full — the 777, A330/A340 and A220 manuals all point here rather than repeat them.

It is written for simulator operation at a professional standard. It is not an FCOM, it is not complete, and it does not replace one. It covers what changes what the pilot does.

0.2 Simulation only

This manual describes operation of a simulated aircraft on a flight simulation network. It has no airworthiness standing and must never be used for real flight. LH Virtual, LX Virtual and BOX Virtual are virtual airlines and are not affiliated with Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Swiss International Air Lines, Airbus SAS or any other real operator or manufacturer.

0.3 Applicability

One type rating covers the family. This manual is written around the A320; where the A319 or A321 differ in a way that changes what the pilot does, the difference is called out. Engine variants differ more than airframes do, and where that matters — warm-up times most of all — the variant is named.

0.4 How limits are written

A figure printed here is a figure you are expected to fly to. Limits marked (M) must be held without looking them up. The requirement is that compliance is assured, not that the wording is recited.

0.5 Provenance

This manual draws on three kinds of source and they do not carry equal weight.

Procedure comes from the flight deck. Cost index practice, fuel policy, engine warm-up and cool-down, landing flap, noise abatement and brake temperature were established in July 2026 with a captain flying the type at a major European operator. Where this manual describes how the airplane is operated, that is where it comes from — and it describes one airline's way of doing it.

Group rules are ours. Chapter 7 is our own; it is not anybody's flight operations manual and it does not pretend to be.

Where neither reaches, the manual says so. Sections still open are marked in the text and listed at the end. An empty row is a smaller problem than a confident one that turns out to be wrong.

1. Operating policy

1.1 Philosophy

Procedures confirm two things at every phase: that the airplane is in a satisfactory condition, and that the flight deck is configured correctly. Checklists confirm; they do not instruct.

Everything aboard is the commander's. Recommendations reach the flight deck from dispatch, from the company, and from this manual. They are recommendations. The pilot in command decides, and where nothing speaks against the recommendation it is followed.

1.2 Stabilization criteria for approaches

(M) An approach is stable when all of the following hold together:

Whether the autopilot is engaged is irrelevant to the criteria — except in low visibility, where it is a requirement in its own right.

The rate of descent is the criterion that catches the case the others miss. A path can look right while the energy is wrong. More than 1,000 fpm below the gate means the approach is not stable no matter how good the picture is.

Not stable and held to touchdown? Go around. A go-around is a normal procedure and costs ten minutes. An unstable approach costs, in the worst case, everything.

2. Standard operating procedures

2.1 Phase sequence

2.2 Preparation and briefing

The order is not arbitrary, and doing it out of order means doing it twice. Weather sets the runway. The runway sets the procedure. The weight sets the performance. Only once all of that stands is a briefing worth giving.

A departure briefing answers three questions:

1. Where are we going
2. What is different here
3. What do we do when it goes wrong

The third is the one most often left out, and it is the one the briefing exists for.

A late loadsheet is not a formality. Takeoff speeds and thrust setting depend directly on weight. Two tonnes is not a rounding error — the numbers computed before it arrived belong to a different airplane, and they are recomputed, not adjusted by eye.

2.3 Taxi and line-up

Read back the route and every hold-short instruction verbatim. A read-back that drops the hold short is the read-back that leads to a runway incursion.

The transponder goes to its airborne mode when lining up — not earlier. Set too early, the airplane appears as an airborne target on the controller's display and can trigger alerts for other traffic. Lining up is the moment at which the display becomes true.

2.4 Takeoff

Climb away safely and get clean first, then reduce thrust. Reversing that order takes power away while it is still needed.

Shortly after lift-off the lever position hands over to an automatic mode. The FMA states it at the moment it happens, which is the reason to look up rather than to assume.

2.5 Descent and approach

"Descend via" means fly the published profile with all of its constraints. The altitude window is set at the given floor so that the automatics do not descend through an intermediate restriction on the way down.

An instrument approach is flown lateral before vertical, and the glideslope is joined from below. Configure too late and the approach will not be stable in time — which is the point at which it should be discontinued rather than rescued.

2.6 Frankfurt — LH Virtual

Read the heading. This manual serves three airlines, and this section serves one of them. LH Virtual's A32x fleet lives at EDDF, so for those crews the local rules are not an annex — they are the normal case. LX Virtual and BOX Virtual fly this type from their own bases, and nothing here transfers to them. No equivalent section exists for those bases yet; when one is written it goes beside this one, not over it.

What follows is the part of the EDDF aerodrome operating information that changes how you fly, not the part you read once.

Transition altitude is 5,000 ft. It sits below the 10,000 ft sterile flight deck point, which is the reverse of the order most reference material shows.

Departure

Runway 18 has a wind problem worth briefing. With the wind between 160° and 200° at 15 kt or more, expect windshift and turbulence, with gusts and shifts that can reach a tailwind component. A tailwind above 10 kt is broadcast on ATIS — if you cannot take it, say so when you request start-up, not on the taxiway.

HIRO is in force and it has a cost if you are slow. Tell ATC the earliest intersection you can accept. If you are not ready to depart, say so unprompted: an aircraft that is not ready does not get line-up. After takeoff, accelerate promptly to the SID's published maximum, or to 250 kt below FL100 where there is none.

The SID is allocated by category, and a filed one gets changed without discussion. As a medium jet, northbound off 25C you are on WHISKEY if the aircraft meets the RNP-1 and RF-leg requirements and MIKE if it does not. Off 07, north and north-west is ECHO between 0600 and 2100, while north-east and east is DELTA. FOXTROT and GOLF belong to the twin heavies and are not ours. Between 2100 and 0600 the pattern changes again for noise.

Arrival

Crossing 07C/25C always needs an explicit clearance, and the stop bars on M6, M8 and M30 are monitored — cross one uncleared and bright red surface lights fire at you and the tower simultaneously. Stop, call, and wait to be told.

Where this comes from. The aerodrome operating information for EDDF, editions dated between November 2025 and May 2026. It is airport policy rather than airline policy, so it applies to everyone flying there — but it does change, and the chart set in the aircraft is the one that counts.

2.7 The flows

A checklist confirms. A flow is what it confirms. Between the two sits the part that actually configures the airplane, and it is done from memory against a scan pattern rather than read off a page.

Flows are triggered, not scheduled

Each flow has a trigger, and the trigger is a thing that happens rather than a time that arrives. That is what makes the pattern reliable when the schedule falls apart.

The trigger is the discipline. A crew that runs the after-start flow because it feels like the right moment will one day run it while an engine is still starting. A crew that runs it on the mode selector will not.

The roles change name partway through the flight

This catches people, and it is not pedantry.

Before the clearance, the split follows the seat. Afterwards it follows the job. A first officer flying the sector is CM2 during cockpit preparation and PF from the clearance — the same person, two labels, and the flows are written against whichever one is current.

The checklists follow the same seam: the ground checklists are read by CM2, and from the approach onward they are read by the PM.

The shape of a sector

Two details in that table are worth pulling out. The emergency briefing happens in the briefing room, before anybody touches the airplane — not on the runway. And the fuel check in the cruise has a number attached; a fuel check that happens when somebody remembers is not a check.

The approach sequence, and the one place the variants differ

Configuration goes in a fixed order, and the spoilers arm inside it rather than after it:

1. Flaps 1 — exterior lights set; arm the spoilers here if they are not out
2. Flaps 2
3. Gear down
4. Flaps 3, then flaps full

Variant. The latest flap setting at which the spoilers may still be armed depends on the airplane. On the A321 it is flaps 2. On the A319 and A320 it is flaps 3.

This is the first genuine variant difference in this manual, and it is the kind that catches a pilot moving between them: the sequence looks identical until the moment it is too late.

Refuelling

Fuel quantity is confirmed on the lower ECAM by both pilots and entered on INIT B. The seatbelt signs go on. The fuel pumps may then be switched on, and at the latest before engine start — that "at the latest" is the operative part.

Where this comes from. A flow reference for the type produced for flight simulation, based on the operator's practice. It has not been confirmed with a line pilot on the type, which puts it below the flight-deck material this manual's chapters 3 and 4 rest on. Where the two ever disagree, §0.5 applies and the flight deck wins.

3. Planning and performance

3.1 Cost index

Cost index expresses how time is valued against fuel, on a scale of 0 to 999. It is recalculated daily for each type and each destination, so there is no single correct number — in practice it sits between 3 and 30.

It is usually higher outbound from the home base than at an outstation, because fuel is cheaper where the airline buys it.

Whether to change it depends on which way you are flying.

Why you cannot simply crank it up. A cost index of 999 on the A320 gives an optimum flight level around FL250, and the fuel burn at that level is enormous. So speed is increased only as far as the optimum level does not have to change. The cost index at which the optimum level starts to fall differs by type and sits somewhere between 150 and 250; going past it is very rare.

That is the whole trick: a cost index change is a speed decision until it becomes an altitude decision, and the moment it becomes an altitude decision it has stopped saving anything.

3.2 Fuel

Normal conditions. Plan to have at least one hour of remaining fuel in the tanks after standard flight fuel.

Where threats are expected — weather, air traffic control, anything that can reasonably be foreseen to cost time — plan so that after a diversion to the alternate there would still be 45 minutes in the tanks, plus the delay those threats are expected to cause.

The second rule is not the first rule with a bigger number. It is a different calculation, made from the alternate backwards.

3.3 Landing flap

There is no recommended setting. Airbus withdrew the recommendation, and the crew is expected to think about it before every landing and ask what actually makes sense today.

The test. Take Flaps 3 whenever you could vacate where you sensibly intend to without reverse and without autobrake medium. If you would need either of those, take Flaps Full first.

The combination to avoid is Flaps 3 with full reverse and autobrake medium. Arriving at it means the earlier decision was wrong.

Steeper glide paths and tailwinds count too. If you cannot hold the final approach speed without speedbrakes, the decision was wrong — and the answer is Flaps Full, not more speedbrake.

4. Engines and ground operation

4.1 Warm-up and cool-down

These are engine figures, not airframe figures. The same A320 has different numbers depending on what is hanging under the wing.

4.2 Brake temperature and the brake fan

When to run it. Generally not before 5 minutes after landing. The exception is a landing where experience says the brakes will certainly pass 500 °C — then immediately after vacating.

When to stop it. Before taxiing onto the stand, where the turnaround allows — it is loud, and the noise lands on the ground crew rather than on the flight deck. Where the temperature is too high or the turnaround too short, leave it running.

Airbus procedure: any brake above 100 °C when taxi begins → brake fan on. Then cool as far as the time allows.

(M) Maximum brake temperature for takeoff is 150 °C.

The 300 °C figure is not the takeoff limit, and quoting it as one is a common error. It applies only where the brake fan was not used — a case that essentially does not arise in practice, because the fan is used. Fly to 150 °C.

4.3 De-icing and holdover

Holdover tables are reissued annually, because the fluid manufacturers keep improving the products. Tables exist for Type 2 and Type 4 fluids.

A holdover time cannot be looked up from the airport alone. There are around twenty different tables in circulation, and a single airport may have more than one fluid manufacturer on the field — so the table that applies depends on which fluid was actually sprayed on this airplane today.

The practical answer is a holdover tool rather than a printed table.

4.4 Noise abatement departure

Airport-dependent, and not inferable from the airport alone. The procedure is published in the arrival and departure information for the field. Different airlines use different values at the same airport, and there are arrangements made between individual airlines and individual airports.

The two standard profiles:

NADP 1 keeps thrust longer and accelerates later, which moves noise away from close-in communities. NADP 2 cleans up earlier and is quieter further out. Which one applies is the airport's decision, not the crew's.

5. Standard callouts

5.1 Principles

Callouts come from what the instruments show. The pilot monitoring calls the condition; the pilot flying verifies it independently and acknowledges. If a required call is not made, the other pilot makes it.

5.2 The Flight Mode Annunciator

Five columns, and the order they are read in is the order they are printed:

Read left to right and one glance gives all three axes plus the status. Sorting an annunciation by which axis it belongs to is the mental move that makes the FMA readable at speed rather than decipherable at leisure.

Each column can carry two lines. The active mode sits on top in green; a mode that is armed sits below it in blue, waiting. A star — ALT\* — means the mode is capturing rather than holding. So a single column tells you what the axis is doing now and what it will do next.

Four states worth recognizing on sight.

Italics are armed modes, shown blue on the second line.

Read the last two rows together, because that is where the capability comes from. The same approach, the same green G/S and LOC — and CAT3 DUAL in one, CAT1 in the other. The difference is column five: two autopilots against one flight director. Column four is not a property of the runway, it is a statement about what is currently engaged, and it changes the moment the configuration does.

Some readings worth knowing cold.

MAN in column one means the levers are in charge. That is why the column changes to THR CLB the moment they are brought back — the same thrust, a different owner.

Just after lift-off column two shows a speed, not an altitude: a speed is being flown. Column three holds the runway track.

Holding an altitude, pitch is busy with the altitude, so thrust takes the speed — which is why column one reads SPEED and not a fixed thrust setting.

On an ILS, G/S and LOC mean captured, not armed. Column four carries the approach capability, and two autopilots engaged is what makes the lowest visibility categories available.

5.3 Actions commanded by the pilot flying

One rule covers every knob on the unit.

Push means follow the plan. Pull means I am telling you. Once that is automatic, half of the FMA reads itself.

Turning the knob only prepares. Without a push or a pull the previous target stays active — which is exactly why a glance at the FMA belongs to every altitude change, and why "I dialled it" is not the same sentence as "it is selected".

An ATC instruction is something you select, so you pull. Pushing would ask for the flight plan route instead — the opposite of what was just instructed.

5.4 Summary for each flight phase

Takeoff roll. The hundred-knot call is a cross-check that both airspeed indications agree, not a speed announcement. V1 is the decision speed: past it the takeoff is continued, which is precisely why it is called and not assumed.

Roll-out, in this order: spoilers, reverse, decel. That is the order in which each becomes effective, which is why it is the order they are called.

Spoilers are checked first after touchdown, before anything else. Without them the wing keeps lifting, the wheels carry little load and the brakes bite poorly — every other deceleration device is working against a wing that is still flying.

"Decel" confirms that the deceleration is real — that the airplane is actually slowing — not that a switch is armed.

To be completed for Issue 2. The full callout set — the exact wording, who speaks and who answers at each point — has not yet been established with a line pilot on the type. What is written above is the structure and the reasoning; the phrasing is owed. Until it is here, the calls in the Academy's A32x course are the working standard.

6. Non-normal operation

Non-normal checklists are read and done. Irreversible actions are confirmed by both pilots before they are taken. Fly, navigate, communicate, in that order — nothing on a checklist outranks the airplane's flight path in the first minute.

To be completed for Issue 2. Memory items for the type are not carried here. We do not have them from a source this manual can stand behind, and inventing them would be the single most dangerous thing this document could do. Until they are written, the airplane's own procedures are the authority.

7. Flight reporting

This chapter is the group's, and it is stated here once. The 777, A330/A340 and A220 manuals point at it rather than repeating it, so a change made here changes the rule for every fleet.

7.1 General

A flight report — a PIREP — is the record that a sector was flown to the group's standard. It is filed for every sector.

The type booked must be the type flown. Booking one airplane and flying another invalidates the report even where everything else about the sector was correct.

7.2 Requirements for a valid report

A report is valid when the sector was flown continuously, in real time, in the booked aircraft, and logged by the network.

An Academy type rating counts as complete when its course is finished and its check ride has been flown and accepted.

7.3 What invalidates a report

These are not appealable. They describe a sector that was not flown the way the report claims.

7.4 What sends a report to review

Review is not rejection. It means a person looks at the sector before it counts, because the automatic checks cannot tell a good reason from a bad one.

7.5 Booked aircraft type mismatch

Where the aircraft you want is not bookable on a route and another type is, fly the type you booked. Changing airplane after booking and filing against the original invalidates the report under 7.1 — the correct action is to rebook.

Revision record

Open points for Issue 2

• Callout wording (§5.4). The structure and the reasoning are here; the exact phrasing, and who speaks at each point, is not yet established with a line pilot on the type. This is the largest remaining gap and the Academy's A32x course depends on it.
• Memory items (chapter 6). None carried, deliberately.
• Limitations. This manual carries no limitations chapter. Speeds, weights and envelope figures live with the type's certification data and have not yet been brought in.
• Variant differences. §2.7 now carries the first real one — the flap setting by which the spoilers must be armed differs on the A321. Everything else is still undistinguished, and the A321 differs enough in handling and performance to deserve boxes of its own.
• Systems. This manual is procedural throughout. The Academy's systems stage carries the systems material.