Happy Landings

Among all the students I have taught over the years there has never been one who learned to land an airplane more easily than he (or she) learned to get the bird off the ground and into the air. Airplanes are built to fly; they almost leap into the air with just a little coaxing. Feed enough power to the propeller to make it produce enough thrust to pull the airframe along at a speed that generates lift more powerful than the force of gravity, and voila!, the wheels leave terra firma. Light pressures on the rudder pedals keep the airplane moving in a straight line.

Landing is a whole different game -- and of course, for every takeoff, there has to be a landing. There are no exceptions to that rule, unless one bails out of the airplane with a parachute and lets the craft crash. Landing is an art, and is very difficult to teach. An instructor can demonstrate until the cows come home, and the student will never develop the necessary skill to make consistently good landings, until he actually feels for himself the control forces required to make the wheels meet the pavement at exactly the right millisecond.

The first few flying lessons, for a beginning student, are spent learning basic aircraft control: straight and level, climbs, descents, turns. Next comes an awareness of how an airplane is moving across the earth as a part of the air mass (are we drifting right or left; are we moving faster or slower than the airspeed indicator shows?) Then the student learns to control the aircraft at very slow airspeeds, even to the point where the wings stop producing lift and a "stall" occurs. We do these maneuvers at an altitude high enough to safely recover control. Finally, the student is ready to begin working on landings, which up to this point, have usually been just a blur in the windshield.

I like to start the process by having the student fly a "landing pattern" up high, where there is lots of room and no ground-induced anxiety. We begin with level flight simulating our "downwind" leg of the landing pattern, reducing power and raising the nose of the airplane slightly to bring airspeed down to an assigned goal. Then we make a 90-degree turn to simulate our "base" leg, all the while descending, then one more 90-degree turn to "final," where we extend flaps on the wing to further slow the airplane and allow a steeper descent without increasing airspeed. A final check of indicated airspeed, and we're all set to "land," except we are still several thousand feet above the ground. I have the student add power, retract flaps, and climb back up to our original altitude to repeat the process again. We do this until the student can perform all the steps without really thinking about them. Then it's time to head to the airport for practice down close to the ground.

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