A321 flight crew experienced a GPWS terrain warning during a night visual approach to runway 27 at s...

Narrative:

Captain was the pilot flying and the first officer was the pilot monitoring. It was dark and the weather was VFR. We flew the lucki one arrival into san. Just after hnahh we were given a vector to the north for spacing to follow a B737 coming from that direction. After a couple more vectors back toward the west and then south we got a visual on the B737 and the airport and were cleared for the visual approach to runway 27. At this time I put in direct cijhi and managed the approach for the RNAV to 27. Final approach was annunciated on the pfd and we were a little high on the profile. During the descent we got a GPWS terrain warning and performed an escape maneuver. The first officer had terrain selected on his navigation display (nd) for the arrival and never saw anything come up on the nd until momentarily when we got the terrain audio. The GPWS warning went away right away after we started the climb. After leveling off when we were clear of all terrain we advised the tower what happened and they recleared us for the visual approach to 27. We had to do a soft go around when directed by the tower because the B737 had not cleared the runway yet. The go around and second approach were uneventful.we had a little higher than normal high sink rate trying to get back on the profile of the approach. With the terrain in the area the aircraft GPWS predicted that with the current sink rate we would have inadequate terrain clearance. Use a normal rate of descent and if it is not enough to get you back on the approach profile do a missed approach.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A321 flight crew experienced a GPWS terrain warning during a night visual approach to Runway 27 at SAN. A go-around becomes necessary as the descent profile could not be regained.

Narrative: Captain was the pilot flying and the First Officer was the pilot monitoring. It was dark and the weather was VFR. We flew the LUCKI ONE arrival into SAN. Just after HNAHH we were given a vector to the north for spacing to follow a B737 coming from that direction. After a couple more vectors back toward the west and then south we got a visual on the B737 and the airport and were cleared for the visual approach to Runway 27. At this time I put in direct CIJHI and managed the approach for the RNAV to 27. Final Approach was annunciated on the PFD and we were a little high on the profile. During the descent we got a GPWS terrain warning and performed an escape maneuver. The First Officer had terrain selected on his Navigation Display (ND) for the arrival and never saw anything come up on the ND until momentarily when we got the terrain audio. The GPWS warning went away right away after we started the climb. After leveling off when we were clear of all terrain we advised the tower what happened and they recleared us for the visual approach to 27. We had to do a soft go around when directed by the Tower because the B737 had not cleared the runway yet. The go around and second approach were uneventful.We had a little higher than normal high sink rate trying to get back on the profile of the approach. With the terrain in the area the aircraft GPWS predicted that with the current sink rate we would have inadequate terrain clearance. Use a normal rate of descent and if it is not enough to get you back on the approach profile do a missed approach.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	1406311
Time
Date	201612
Local Time Of Day	1201-1800
Place
Locale Reference	SAN.Airport
State Reference	CA
Environment
Flight Conditions	VMC
Light	Night
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Airbus 318/319/320/321 Undifferentiated
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Initial Approach
Route In Use	Other RNAV (RNP) Z RWY 27 STAR LUCKI1
Flight Plan	IFR
Person 1
Function	Pilot Flying Captain
Qualification	Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Person 2
Function	Pilot Not Flying First Officer
Qualification	Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Events
Anomaly	Inflight Event / Encounter CFTT / CFIT Inflight Event / Encounter Unstabilized Approach

A321 flight crew experienced a GPWS terrain warning during a night visual approach to runway 27 at san. A go-around becomes necessary as the descent profile could not be regained.