Not only Airbus A330, almost all aircraft have their nose gear shorter than the main landing gear.
The main reason is that, when the nose gear will have lesser height than the main landing gear, the pilots will able to get a better view of the runway during ground operations.
There could be another reason. Due to the above structure, the angle of attack is negative. Due to this the airflow creates some sort of negative lift, which helps the plane to stay firmly on the runway during the takeoff roll, specially, when the runway is too slippery.
Since, the airplane’s fuselage is higher from the ground, lowering down the nose gear will give pilots the better runway view.
And, do you know, this the reason why airplanes need to rotate before takeoff.
Due to the above structure of the airplane, the fuselage is bent down forward. As I have mentioned before, the angle of attack (AoA) of the wing becomes negative.
So, to make the AoA positive during takeoff, the pilots pull back the control column.
The AoA becomes positive, resulting in positive lift, helping the airplane to lift off the runway.
Author – Jagrata Bandyopadhyay
