Originally Posted by
Time Traveller
In recent years I've encountered new pilots who have extraordinary perceptions, which they say they were taught during training - about how to salvage a landing which is going a bit pear shaped.
One is to add a surge of thrust just prior to touchdown; normally that's just makes for a very fast and long touchdown, and sometimes PIO in the past couple of feet trying to force the gear to touch.
And the worst - to actually push on the yoke when coming down too fast!!! Now this lead to the only hard landing I've ever been the crew for. And a sudden push at 20' is almost impossible for the captain to catch! He swore blind a trainer taught him this; of course it's crazy. (I think it comes from the theory in long wide bodies, where I tiniest relaxation of the back pressure at about 2' was the way to get a super smooth touch (it does), and he claimed he was told increasing pitch slightly pushes the gear towards the runway making it worse - nonsense of course - the mains are close to the pitch axis, and that effect is dwarfed by the massively increased touchdown descent rate by pushing) - No!; faced with excessive sink rate crossing the threshold - flying 101 ... PULL to moderate the descent rate (if the speed is adequate) ... or go around.
Anyway, both elements seem to be in this incident.
It is a nasty little technique.... it has remained around from the MD80 and B727 which could benefit from an initial flare and then a slight de-flare. The risks on the method are enormous, Doing an analysis of what the wheels sink rate does in a de-flare gives zero comfort as a procedure to avoid a hard landing. forward stick may help a P51 or T6 wheel landing to plant the gear, but otherwise is high risk.