Hi Ashling:
Sorry, I didn’t realize you thought that I hadn’t answered your question. I was attempting to do just that in an earlier post … but let me repeat it here. Level flight attitude with landing flaps and a speed between 1.1 and 1.2 times the stall speed in that configuration (the landing configuration) should be between 3 and 6 degrees of nose up pitch. One of the commenters on this thread,
chksix, had posted a link to a page copied from a B737NG manual. Here’s the link (thanks again, chksix)
http://img390.imageshack.us/my.php?image=landqq1.jpg That link clearly shows the B737NG on the ground with the nose at “4 to 6 degrees” of nose up pitch.
What I am advocating is that when you fly the approach, you get to the point where you have determined you should initiate the flare (and chksix’s link shows that the speed up to flare initiation should be Vref+5), initiate the flare to the level flight attitude (which I’m saying – depending on gross weight – will be between 3 and 6 degrees nose up attitude) and that should scrub off some of the airspeed – particularly if you’re the type to start gradually reducing thrust as you initiate the flare (but that’s more of a technique and I really don’t care about that – well, of course, I’d care, but it’s not a huge thing), and that should leave you about 1.1 to 1.2 times the stall speed in that configuration (1.3 times Vstall is Vref). So there should be no time that you should flare the airplane to anything above about 6 degrees nose up pitch. Even with, as you say, the B737-800 risking a tail strike at something just over 9 degrees of nose up pitch – you should be quite comfortably safe from such an occurrence at 6 degrees or less. When you are next in the simulator you should really try to see what it would take to get a tail strike. Try a full stall landing and see if you can put the tail on the runway before the MLG. This is the advantage of a properly built, programmed, and tested flight simulator. You might be surprised.
Perhaps I should make this more clear as well. Lets assume that 5 degrees nose up pitch and 1.2Vs is what would be necessary to maintain level flight. This means that if you added power and held both that attitude and airspeed, you would fly down the runway without climbing, descending, accelerating, or decelerating. However, you are not going to be adding power … your airspeed will continue to decrease even though you are in the level flight attitude for the speed reached at the end of the flare. If you initiated the flare at 15 – 20 feet and took between 1.5 and 3.0 seconds to flare (and 3.0 seconds is a very long time to flare … but …) you would likely be something like 5 feet above the runway. Because you are descending (while you have a level flight attitude, you don’t have the airspeed to maintain level flight) and because you are decelerating (you’ve put the airplane in an attitude where it cannot maintain the airspeed without additional power – in fact you may have already started to reduce the power – although that isn’t absolutely necessary yet), you are going to continue to “go down” (although at a slower rate, because you are now at that “level flight attitude”) and you will continue to “slow down.” The idea is to have the throttles at flight idle at (or just prior to or just after) MLG touchdown. The most you will have the nose in the air would be 6 degrees at touchdown, giving you adequate airflow over the rudder to maintain directional control until you fly the nose to the ground and can control that with rudder pedal steering. What’s more, since you are going to be getting slower in this attitude (which is what is wanted) and getting lower (which is also what is wanted) the airplane will want to “nose-over.” Additional back-stick pressure will be needed to keep the nose at the desired attitude – not raise it, just maintain it.
The height above the runway you are at the end of the flare and the time it takes you to close that distance will give you the rate of descent at touchdown. Like I said earlier, probably somewhere between 100 and 600 fpm. Obviously 600 is something a little more firm than “firm,” and 100 is a little light – for most, that is, although that is still some distance away from a round of applause from First Class. What is nice is that you have considerable control over that rate of descent because of the attitude in which you have the airplane. How? Merely “goosing” the throttles (sorry, American term, meaning stabbing the throttles forward and then back almost immediately) will temporarily reduce your rate of descent without you having to do anything with the pitch, which, of course, you are just maintaining. Not screwing around with the pitch attitude is a desirable practice at such close distances to the runway surface. And, this is why it is not necessarily advisable to have the throttles in flight idle too quickly – it might take the engines a small bit longer to spool up from flight idle if a “goose” is needed.