Learning to Land

Those of us who have been flying a while and have hundreds or thousands of landings logged have a hard time remembering how many balls have to be juggled to successfully land an airplane.

We also forget how rugged training airplane gear is. So once in a while a student working on his or her first landings will bring all that back, and remind us why non-fliers think landing is the hardest part of flying. In some ways, it is.

A successful, smooth landing with minimal ground roll requires minor course corrections to maintain centerline, descent at specific airspeed and configuration, and a smooth transition to level flight a foot above the surface. All this happens as the control effectiveness is reduced by changing speed, and wind variations caused by trees and houses and hangars change steady winds at 100 feet into tumbling, variable, unpredictable cauldrons at ground level.

Meanwhile, the very thing that we takeoff to avoid -- the ground -- is fast filling the windscreen.

So take a moment to remember the challenges of landing, and give a student a break next time you're sharing the pattern and he or she flies bit wide to take more time to line everything up just so. There's lots going on!