B767-300 and 300 ER
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Human-Machine Interface; Situational Awareness; Communication Breakdown
Aircraft Equipment Problem Critical; Ground Event / Encounter Ground Strike - Aircraft
Aircraft Aircraft Damaged
Aircraft; Human Factors; Manuals
During the post-flight walkaround; it was discovered that the tailskid had been scraped sometime during the landing phase. The landing was a firm one; but not a hard landing; which was confirmed by the Flight Mechanic. Inbound I [had been] asked to accomplish and accepted a visual approach to Runway 15.  I was initially high but corrected to a stable approach. My speed was 139 knots (which was computed command bug speed) into the flare but the flare was late and we made a firm landing. I remember holding the nose in the landing attitude after the touchdown for a split second to prevent the nose gear from slamming onto the runway. This may have caused the tailskid scrape. The GPWS was deferred inoperative for this aircraft and did not provide the usual 50; 40; 30; 10 foot callouts I am used to hearing and relying upon to initiate my flare. In addition even though we reviewed the GPWS deferral in the DDG; I did not insist that the First Officer; who was the Pilot Monitoring; give me these callouts verbally because they are not required callouts during a visual approach. The Flight Mechanic also mentioned to me that he did not hear or feel any tailskid scrape during main gear touchdown. The Flight Mechanic stated that he had experienced a tailskid scrape before in the B-763 and it was very evident from the noise he heard. Again this time he stated that there was no noticeable noise or other indication that a tailskid scrape had occurred. The tailskid scrape; even though a serious event; did not cause any serious damage and passed all maintenance inspections and the tailskid was cleared by Maintenance and the flight crew was cleared to fly on to the next destination without incident.The inoperative GPWS was a contributing factor to this incident. I believe that all callouts should be mandatory during any approach even if the Pilot Flying calls for visual callouts when the GPWS is inoperative. In addition a precision approach should be the recommended approach when the GPWS is deferred inoperative.
We were slightly low according to the PAPI on final; I called it out and the Captain corrected back on path. Accepting the visual when offered is normally an easy transition; but; with two pilots with relatively low recency of experience; it may deceptively become a high work load environment. The Captain had been off for vacation the previous two months; and I believe his most recent landing had been in the -200. I had only 63.2 hours on the fleet prior to this flight with only eight legs and six landings in the -300 (only two legs and one landing total in the previous 77 days). I would also recommend a [flight operations manual] statement advising the use of a precision instrument approach if available.  With essentially four different models of 767s in our fleet; many crew members new to the fleet type and many of them sometimes not flying for long stretches; it can only help.
A B767-300ER flight crew suffered a tail skid strike on a firm landing conducted from a visual approach. The reporters cited the loss of sequential low altitude/flare RA altitude callouts due to the GPWS being deferred was a critical factor.