Teaching landings

To many students, instructors, and passengers, a smooth touchdown is the quintessential sign of piloting proficiency. Contrarily, a hard landing can negate the pride a pilot is entitled to feel after accomplishing a challenging ILS approach to minimums or completing an exhausting cross-country flight.

Good landings are much more than ego boosters or deflators, however. Year after year, botched touchdowns account for more accidents than any other form of noncommercial fixed-wing mishap. That’s the bad news. The good news is that most of those accidents bust metal and pride but claim few lives. According to AOPA’s latest Richard G. McSpadden Report, about 36 percent of all noncommercial fixed-wing accidents occurred upon landing (largest quantity in all GA categories), but those accounted for only 5 percent of the fatal accidents in 2022. Of the 965 accidents documented that year among typical GA activities, landings accounted for 338 nonfatal and eight fatal occurrences.

Helping students learn to land encompasses all the elements of good instruction (teaching, demonstrating, drilling, and testing), and illustrates the benefits of a “building block” approach to learning a challenging maneuver (for example, proficiency with ground reference tasks, slow flight, airspeed and altitude control, and trimming are basic skills needed for landing proficiency). Even when weather and runway conditions are ideal, teaching landings challenges CFIs. Adding crosswinds, gusts, marginal runway width and length, and aircraft condition, such as engine or system failure, further compounds obstacles CFIs must address. Teaching students to land is demanding even for experienced instructors.

The place to start is with the fundamentals of the landing approach.

Planning: Knowing what to do before attempting a maneuver is a requirement for all things aeronautical. Hence the need for instructors to present a comprehensive lesson plan on landing before teaching that maneuver, starting with a brief reference to the basics covered in previous lessons and addressing the orientation of the airport’s traffic pattern with respect to the surrounding area. Students should be cautioned that at pattern altitude, typically 1,000 feet above ground level, abrupt maneuvering and steep turns must be avoided and precise airspeed control is essential.

Since each flight involves transitioning from the enroute to the airport environment, CFIs have ample opportunity to address this phase of a landing lesson plan. Also, prior to the landing stage of the training syllabus, the student should be familiar with determining the airport’s weather conditions, identifying the runway in use, communicating with the control tower or on the common traffic advisory frequency, and precisely tracking from the practice area back to the airport. Previous work with slow flight will have developed a student’s skill in establishing and maintaining the desired airspeed and altitude. Instructors should emphasize the basic concept of attitude for airspeed control and power for altitude control—fundamentals the student learned during lessons on slow flight.

With a GPS, sectional chart, or local knowledge, students should locate their position and plan a descent to join the airport traffic pattern at 1,000 feet above airport elevation. Rate of descent from enroute altitude to pattern height should be about 500 feet per minute—certainly no more than 1,000 fpm.

The purpose of all traffic patterns is two-fold: first, to assure the safe flow of aircraft into and out of an airport, and second, to enable a stabilized approach on final from 500 feet above ground level to flare. According to AOPA’s Air Safety Institute, nearly half of all GA midair collisions occur during approach and landing when the accident aircraft are on final or over the airport, and poor airspeed control is a major factor in landing accidents.

Teaching students to land is demanding even for experienced instructors. The place to start is with the fundamentals of the landing approach.

While the majority of traffic patterns used by students have a racetrack shape with downwind 1,000 feet agl, the lateral offset between the downwind leg and landing runway and the airspeed flown on downwind and base are situational, depending on the mix of aircraft using the airport. The FAA’s Airplane Flying Handbook describes the downwind leg for typical GA aircraft being offset to the left of the active runway by approximately one-half to one mile, which might be tight if the pattern is congested with aircraft flying at significantly different speeds (turbine-powered aircraft are required to fly downwind at 1,500 feet agl and fly a wider pattern, which mitigates their influence at smaller airports). CFIs should remind students that bank angles should be moderate at or below pattern altitude. The final leg—after completing the turn from base to final and reaching 500 feet agl—must be flown at the approach speed given in the aircraft’s pilot’s operating handbook (POH) or flight manual.

Applying “challenge and response” teaching techniques, the CFI should review approach particulars such as configuration, airspeed, and altitude for each leg of the pattern with due consideration to local traffic and the need for moderate bank angles.

Deflecting flaps 10 to 15 degrees once established on downwind initiates the trimming process, a vital part of configuring an aircraft for a good landing.

Depending on airport activity, pattern dimensions can expand modestly, but unnecessary expansion of the pattern should be avoided.

The turn from downwind to base should be initiated when the runway appears 45 degrees aft of your shoulder so the base leg’s ground track will be perpendicular to the runway after completing the turn to base.

Airspeed on base is also situational, although the student must anticipate descending for landing by reducing power on base, being at 500 feet agl upon completing the base-to-final turn and promptly establishing the POH’s recommended approach airspeed (1.3 times stalling speed for the landing unless otherwise stated for a short- or soft-field landing). Standard procedure is using an intermediate flap position until completing the turn from base to final, then selecting landing flaps and retrimming. Instructors should demonstrate the proper traffic pattern, pointing out ground references and alerting their students to select prominent landmarks for each pattern they fly, regardless of their familiarity with the landing area. Frequent reference to the student’s sight picture of the active runway throughout the pattern is helpful. Such consistent discipline is required for consistently good landings.

Significant points of emphasis are knowing when the airport’s control tower will be contacted; identifying ground reference points that define the ground track to be flown for entry to the traffic pattern; articulation by the student of the configuration, altitude, and airspeed for each leg of the pattern; knowing where power will be reduced to descend for landing; selecting landing flaps turning onto final; and the approach speed to be maintained on final. Furthermore, a repeat of the familiar GUMP-F (Gas, Undercarriage, Mixture, Prop, Flaps) verbal checklist is essential in the pattern. Instructors should remind students that the approach can be aborted at any time either to remain in the pattern for another circuit of the airport or exited as done after takeoff.

Stabilized approach: Precise control is a prerequisite for a stabilized approach, which is flying a constant descent angle (about 3 degrees) from the point of power reduction to point of flare, maintaining a steady airspeed (1.3 VS0 plus 0 to 5 knots) and holding a modest rate of descent (about 400 to 600 feet per minute) from the turn onto final until initiating the flare for touchdown. Students should anticipate the need to adjust pitch trim following each flap or configuration change throughout the traffic pattern. The landing flap setting should be established immediately after turning final. Sustained deviations (e.g., approach airspeed 5 knots less or 10 knots more than 1.3 VS0, or rate of descent more than 1,000 fpm) are unacceptable and necessitate a go-around.

While pitch trim should be used to alleviate control forces throughout the approach, once adjusted following the application of flaps for landing, there is no need for further trim changes unless a go-around is initiated. Flaps should not be retracted until the aircraft has landed and cleared the runway or the landing is aborted and flaps are retracted safely and deliberately during a go-around procedure. Small changes in attitude and power used to maintain the desired airspeed and descent rate during approach do not affect trim perceptibly. Go-arounds, however, may demand aggressive nose-down retrimming, which should always be secondary to increasing power and establishing a climb.

Go-around: Normal approach procedures should position the aircraft aligned with the active runway and fully configured for landing no lower than 500 feet agl. Between that altitude and 200 feet agl, the student has time to observe the visual cues needed to assess the landing and ensure no significant changes in airspeed, power, or heading are required prior to starting the flare for landing.

If maneuvering below 200 feet agl is needed, the student must abort the landing and go around. Simple as that.