Why do many pilots suck at landing?

[Shiny Side Up]

That's a question I'm going to take a stab at. From a previous thread:

but if you fall into that category of "most pilots" that a particular poster seems to have decided have poor landing skills,

I have decided this, but that's not really the whole story. I can't really say how the big metal pilots are doing, but in the GA world pilots are doing bad landings all the time. If we exclude student pilots from this sample, its generally really bad. Most airplanes that are being flown can deal with less than perfect performance on the part of the pilot, so we don't see more of these on youtube or in the accident reports.

In my mind thre's one reason for most of this less than ideal performance and that's the infrequency of flying most pilots do. Your average PPL holder flies less than 35 hours a year. Currency requirements are grossly lenient.

One of the things I frequently see, is pilots who don't practice their skill regularly get worse and worse at it. I'm very consious of this myself. If I take a bit of time off from flying it shows. It doesn't necessarily mean I become sub-PPL level, but its definitely not a ten out of ten performance. I'm crazy though and go spend time practicing on my own. Needles to say when I fly with a lot of other pilots (which I do all the time) I see less than stellar performances. Fortunately, many can shine up quickly with a bit of practice, they're not all inherently bad pilots (thank whatever for that small mercy). The thing is though they are unpracticed pilots in a majority of the times they fly per year. If I go up with someone who hasn't flown in say six months, the best that can be said usually for the first landing or two they do is that we didn't wreck the airplane. Usually in calm conditions, with lots of runway. Most will shine up after a couple of tries, but that fact remains of how their level has degraded.

With that in mind though, you see tons of pilots who spark up their machines and go flying - many times taking passengers - after long periods of no practice. A huge diservice to the unfortunate passengers, chances are after some sight seeing they're going to see this pilot at his worst, not a great first impression for a first time passenger. God forbid if something goes wrong on this flight and they have to make the additional test of skill in landing on a road or field. Additionally to not being practiced at landing, they're also going to be out of practiced with judging glides and all that other stuff that's required to pull it off safely.

You don't stay at the top of your game without some doing.

[Beefitarian]

'Cause I type about it in my basement instead of going flying? Oh, you allready writed that.

[iflyforpie]

Well, I think that is the biggest thing right there is the lack of recency. I've noticed that private pilots seem to be flying less and less these days, and when they do fly they want to 'make the most of it' so don't bother with pattern work and exercises. The private pilots with the best landing skills typically own a tiny rag wing... cheap to fly... tailwheel... and too slow for anything but pattern work and short local flights.

The other factor I've noticed is the 'give up' factor. Rather than maintaining directional control, wings level or banked into the appropriate cross wind, holding the flare, and holding the nose wheel up (or the tail wheel down) through the ground roll... they simply say CLOSE ENOUGH and plunk the airplane down... or wheelbarrow or porpoise as they force it to stay on the ground.. and don't use the rudder or aileron until they feel they need it (or in the case of a tailwheel airplane... too late).

This seems to follow the 'fishing for a greaser' because they've expended so much energy in doing so that they just collapse when the plane makes contact with the ground.

[Redneck_pilot86]

Because their instructors suck at landing.

[Shiny Side Up]

Because their instructors suck at landing.

That would be likely why students suck at landing, and fresh license holders. How do you explain when a guy with thousands of hours, type rated on a multi turbine aircraft does it in a little Cessna? His instructor sucked 30 years ago?

[Stephen Szikora]

Malcolm Gladwell (author of Outliers: The Story of Success) argues that none of is really good at anything until we have 10,000 hours of experience. In this case that's 10,000 hours of landings, not total flight time!

[Colonel Sanders]

I agree that lots of practice can solve the bad landing problem.
And lots of other problems.

I have a question for you, though: If I spend an hour with
someone who lands badly, I can see a massive improvement
in their landings which would certainly not occurred in the next
hour of their flying, if they had been by themselves.

How does that fit into the "lots of practice" model?

Hint: I am entirely self-taught at aerobatics, formation and
formation aerobatics. Many years ago, when I was learning
to fly aerobatics, I took all the advice and flew my @ss off.
Lots of gas through the engine, they said, will cure the problem.

However, I was only repeating my mistakes. Until I got a
knowledgeable person to critique my performance, I was
doomed to repeat my mistakes.

Would more practice have helped me?

[Masters Off]

I'll take a stab at it.

The technique used for landing varies. Most people have a hard time judging, a hard time following through with and hard time with consistancy because they weren't taught some basic things at the very beginning. Or if they were, it wasn't enforced. Why, if a PPL can still remember checklist items, or the other fundamentals of flying...perhaps some basic techniques could be put in their brain (muscle memory) such as -look far down the runway when flaring. Don't look at the dash, not out the side window...far in the horizon.
Also be properly trimmed.

Otherwise, beyond just being a pilot who doesn't fly much, how many have changed their seat height (specifically flight school/shared aircraft) or their glasses since the last time they flew? You'd be surprised the large effect this makes on anyone.

Flame away.

[Shiny Side Up]

How does that fit into the "lots of practice" model?

The lots of practice only keeps people from degrading, like I said it the main reason I see a majority of the pilots have problems, its not the only fix though.

Would more practice have helped me?

The practice keeps you at the level you're at, its not going to improve you. The point is many pilots are a lot worse than their best (in some cases their best isn't great either but that's a different matter). While you need help often to be able to improve past a point, practice makes it so you keep that improvement when you do it. That said though the more time you have spent doing, the longer you can go without practice before your level needs to be topped up. Most pilots (GA ones in particular) aren't at that level. Put it this way: If you decided to take time off from the practice and then found someone to help you improve, you'd probably find it a lot harder to improve when the opportunity came. Another way to think about it is that practice is part of that hard work component of success.

[Colonel Sanders]

To address the original question:

Why do many pilots suck at landing?

I might point that that landing is really hard. United States
Navy (USN) pilots think that landing their aircraft, after a
combat mission, can be more challenging than the combat
missions. Admittedly, landing on a boat is especially tricky.

Back to a PPL. Landing is the hardest thing he will do in a
flight. That is because it demands the most precision, with
changing (decreasing) airspeed. This means that the flight
controls are changing their response to inputs (displacement)
during the landing. In fact they are getting sloppier and less
effective throughout the landing. Unlike during the takeoff,
the power is off, and this means that there is no slipstream
over the tail, making the rudder and elevator effective even
at slow speeds.

So we've got a high precision maneuver, with a curveball of
changing flight control response. Wonderful.

Most pilots think that holding +/- 100 feet vertically and
1/2 mile laterally is pretty good during cross-country flight,
but that's not going to do it, during landing.

During a landing you really need to control your aircraft
within +/- 10 feet laterally and +/- 1 foot vertically.

Being a bit off to one side of the runway centerline is not
the end of the world, but flaring at 3 feet is going to result
in a firm, unpleasant landing.

Most low-time pilots are simply unable to control their
aircraft that precisely. Flying formation, you will learn
that you can actually control your aircraft plus or minus
one inch in all three axis. If you can see it, you can
fix it.

You might think I'm on the crack pipe on this - you can
scoff and think that especially with a large aircraft, controlling
it's position to within an inch is ridiculous.

Well, look at these photos, of a pro at work. Look at
the runway centerline at touchdown:






So when you ask why PPLs and fresh CPLs suck at landing,
it's simply because they can't fly their airplanes precisely.

[esp803]

I'm going to go with complacency. I've seen very experienced pilots float halfway down a 5,000' runway then slam the breaks and reverse. I generally see lower time pilots try to touch down well in the first few hundred feet of the runway. I think operating out of smaller strips generally improves landings because you can't afford to $%^& up. Simulating it by pretending the runway is only the first thousand feet is not the same due to knowing that if you do %^&* it up you still have thousands of feet left.

E

[Colonel Sanders]

float halfway down a 5,000' runway

Again, lack of precision. That pilot had too much kinetic
energy, either from an excessively high approach - above
the 3 degree glidepath - or from excessive airspeed on
the correct glidepath.

Once you learn to fly precisely - through a range of airspeeds,
importantly - landing an airplane really isn't that hard.

I love this video of Skip Stewart formating on a Lamborghini:




Do you think he has any problem with landings? Nope:

[Chuck Ellsworth]

That runway is at Rand South Africa and it is really narrow, I used to be based there.

A month ago I posted this to try and decide if I should post on the training forum again.......

Seeing this is the beginning of a new year and I should be building my Cub project I am going to take a one month holiday from the Avcanada training forum and see if in some small way that will improve the content of the forum.

If any subject regarding flight training gets my attention it is the subject of how to make consistent good safe landings....in any aircraft.

Landing an airplane in my opinion is the worst taught of all the exercises in ab-initio training and thus will be a real problem for most pilots unless they get re trained and grasp the picture they need to land properly.

When I was in the advanced flight training business the landing skills or lack thereof was my first target with a new client.

To make the training fair for my clients I made it clear that my rates might seem high and to remove as much apprehension as possible I first sat them down and explained how the lessons would progress and clearly outlined how the flight training would progress.

My offer was simple...the first hour would be to determine if we both wanted to continue with the lessons, if the client did not want to continue then there was no charge for the ground briefings and the flying time I had done with them.

In all the years I offered that deal the number of clients who decided not to continue was zero.

Generally the flight time to bring most pilots up to a standard we both would be happy with was two to three hours of flight time and a whole lot of ground briefing using the video records I made of the training.

Most of the training included video of the flying but not all of did.

By the way the biggest problem most clients had was not being able to judge closing rate with the runway and height above the runway.....usually it was looking too far ahead and thus degrading depth perception.

. E.

[Colonel Sanders]

the biggest problem most clients had was not being able to judge closing rate with the runway and height above the runway

The flare, from the 3 degree descent on final approach,
to the level landing attitude at 6 inches above the pavement
is certainly one of the most trouble-prone.

The problem I find is that it happens very quickly and people
get well behind the aircraft. They simply can't keep up with
stuff changing that fast.

So what I do is try to slow it down. Headwind component
is nice but difficult to reliably schedule. So what I demonstrate
is to start the flare a little bit higher, and do it a little bit slower.

An experienced pilot can delay the flare until the very last
moment, then rapidly flare to the landing attitude at 6 inches
above the pavement, and it's a thing of beauty to behold. But
a bit difficult for a beginner to perform.

Instead, try to do the flare in slow motion. This way the
student has a fighting chance to keep up with the airplane
and observe what is going on. Yes, you will use a bit more
runway at first, but as he gets better, he can flare faster and
faster until eventually he is putting on an expert performance.

Until the student is able to keep up and observe what is going
on, the outcome is going to be random. Again, landings are
hard. Stuff is happening fast.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

I was fortunate to have been trained how to consistently judge the flare and maintain a very low height above the ground early in my career....my first flying job outside of flight training was aerial application and the training I received before actually being allowed to fly farm work was twenty five hours of real high command flying.

Learning how to best teach these skills took along time but gradually I put together a program that works very well and gave excellent results.

It is the results that count, with excellent results one then receive excellent pay for ones time.

In the final analysis I would suggest that if any teacher is top notch and turns out a good end product why in hell would they not be paid accordingly?

[Shiny Side Up]

So when you ask why PPLs and fresh CPLs suck at landing,
it's simply because they can't fly their airplanes precisely.

And I don't disagree with that, but to control the airplane precisely you have to do. Repeatedly preferably. While you're doing that, hold yourself to a standard, or at least shoot to meet one. Many don't, "good enough" is well, good enough for them. Few meet their potential.

[Colonel Sanders]

Repeatedly

Oh, I agree that lots of stick time is a good thing.
Remember, I'm the guy that says that if you have
less than 1,000TT you need to fly at least once or
twice a day.

But again, you have to make sure that when the
person has 1,000TT they don't have 100TT ten
times over. You have to make sure that they are
not simply repeating their mistakes.

Hard work is certainly necessary, but unfortunately
by itself, is not always sufficient.

I would strongly encourage low-time pilots to fly with
as many different, highly experienced pilots, and as
many different aircraft types as they can possibly
arrange. Exposure to both will make you a much
more rounded pilot.

A pilot with 300TT, all at one airport, only in one type,
and has only had two or three instructors, really needs
some more exposure. He might have 300 hrs but he
has an awful lot to learn about aviation.

[Beefitarian]

I would strongly encourage low-time pilots to fly with
as many different, highly experienced pilots, and as
many different aircraft types as they can possibly
arrange. Exposure to both will make you a much
more rounded pilot.

I have to say going up with any instructor would help. While I attempt to fly and more importantly land precisely and the guy is saying things like, "Don't worry about that." On occasion they're bound to have some sort of a valid observation.

However, you're right when you suggest finding a competent instructor is bonus, and part of that is certainly going to one that works at a FTU that does not have a "Cross wind components greater than xx knots prohibited." rule. Hey I get it, there's a lot of pilots that have trouble with crosswinds. Prevent them from flying when there is one and they won't bend the planes. Or maybe teach them how to deal with a cross wind.

A pilot with 300TT, all at one airport, only in one type,
and has only had two or three instructors, really needs
some more exposure. He might have 300 hrs but he
has an awful lot to learn about aviation.

What on earth does a pilot do at one airport for that much time? Obviously not directed at you. I'm a horrible student. I go broke and stop flying for long periods, then have to retrain the same ol' things again. I still managed to snag a fair little chunk of cross country PIC time. In my 150 solo hours.

Hard work is certainly necessary, but unfortunately
by itself, is not always sufficient.

I'm glad you said this. And I'm not attacking you, even if I am being defensive. I probably owe you a steak dinner and a bottle or case of some beverage for the "Internet entitlements" I've entitled myself to. You post some great stuff amongst the posts picking on the poor four bars. Did one of them kill your other dog, steal your giant watch or something?

I could leave my wife (and trust me I've considered that option) go to Fort MacMurray or possibly find something closer to her house. Work way less than I do now and make decent enough amounts of money to support the dog and myself after alimony, plus fly even more than last year. But you're right I "make the choice not to" partially for my kids who as you know are one of the best things that has ever happened to a guy most of the time.

I'm usually pretty happy looking after the little sweet hearts, doing laundry, vacuuming and cooking for their mom to complain she doesn't like burritos or "Not that again. We already had it this week." It's not as much physical labour as when I hand carried drywall into basements for Winroc, or even retrofitting fire alarms in schools but it's more work. I just don't get paid in monies and I can't leave them to go home and relax.

If I can quit breaking up perfectly good bands, or find a "normal" job that fits my schedule maybe I can get paid. I'm starting to get stupid again and want an airplane. Not sure what I would do with one other than let the poor thing die of camshaft corrosion and sun rot, sitting outside at the airport while I was flipping burgers. I suppose I do know at least one guy that could exercise it.

Anyways, thanks for the helpful advise ya : personal insults and profanity removed :

I'm going to go with complacency. I've seen very experienced pilots float halfway down a 5,000' runway then slam the breaks and reverse. I generally see lower time pilots try to touch down well in the first few hundred feet of the runway. I think operating out of smaller strips generally improves landings because you can't afford to $%^& up. Simulating it by pretending the runway is only the first thousand feet is not the same due to knowing that if you do %^&* it up you still have thousands of feet left.

E

I see what you're saying about "If you're just pretending you might not have the motivation." but if you keep at it you'll still get the same benefit of practice.

[Colonel Sanders]

During a landing you really need to control your aircraft
within +/- 10 feet laterally and +/- 1 foot vertically.

I posted that a while back, and no one disputed it.

During a landing, what you're really doing is joining up in formation
with the runway, and maintaining formation position to within a
foot or so. That's pretty hard.

People think I'm insane - or at least a very bad person because
what few ab initio students I teach, I insist that they experience
some aerobatics (loop, roll, 1/2 cu-8 - nothing wild) and some
formation. I even like to sneak a formation aerobatic loop in
there (them on wing) if their progress permits.

Oddly enough, my student pilots have absolutely no problem
with landings. I send them solo with the windsock straight out
across the runway (5 knots of crosswind? Try 15 knots of
direct crosswind) and I don't even bother watching them land
because I know they will ace it.

Again, I know, many people think I am a very bad person
but I find that if you properly motivate people, you will be
astonished at what they can achieve.

[Beefitarian]

I posted that a while back, and no one disputed it.

Give them a little time. They're probably busy or formulating their posistion.

People think I'm insane

Of course you are, face it, normal is boring.

- or at least a very bad person

Yeah, sorry. I keep forgetting.

Have a good week.

[akoch]

A pilot with 300TT, all at one airport, only in one type,
and has only had two or three instructors, really needs
some more exposure. He might have 300 hrs but he
has an awful lot to learn about aviation.

This is my clinical case. I'll try to chase . next time he is around my airport and beg and bribe into a few flights

And the problem with "bad" landings is simple from my perspective - no one is telling me otherwise, it is really hard to "see everything" yourself. I got on the ground alright, the 15ktn direct crosswind was not an issue. So how do I know when the landing was bad? It is only when somebody experienced it telling you what was going on, and what could be done differently.

[TG]

If taildraggers were to be the only type of aircraft you could fly, I bet many pilots would really, really sucks at landing!

Or:

They would simply pay more attention to this particular phase of flight, knowing that it wouldn't take much to screw it up.

[Cat Driver]

This is my clinical case. I'll try to chase . next time he is around my airport and beg and bribe into a few flights

No need to beg or bribe.

We should borrow Georges yellow Cub and fly that because it needs to be flown.

When spring comes I will be over there and remind me about this.

. E.

[akoch]

This is my clinical case. I'll try to chase . next time he is around my airport and beg and bribe into a few flights

No need to beg or bribe.

We should borrow Georges yellow Cub and fly that because it needs to be flown.

When spring comes I will be over there and remind me about this.

. E.

Awesome, will gladly do .!

[gaamin]

This is my clinical case. I'll try to chase . next time he is around my airport and beg and bribe into a few flights

No need to beg or bribe.

We should borrow Georges yellow Cub and fly that because it needs to be flown.

When spring comes I will be over there and remind me about this.

. E.

Awesome, will gladly do .!

While not as experienced as ., I'll gladly go up with you in it too. George is happy with it.

JBL