Originally Posted by wily
Pardon me, I still hear my instructor saying "Dont stretch the Glide"
- away from ANY comment on this crew's action - while your instructor was teaching you a good basic tenet - as I commented many moons ago (I think on the original 038 thread) that 'rule' should be treated with commonsense. If you are at best L/D with, say, 10 kts in hand over the stall at 50' in your Cessna and you are faced with a wall in front of you, using some of those 10 kts to 'skim' over the wall is fine. If however you have the same +10 kts at 1000' it is a bad idea. After all, what is the landing flare but effectively a 'stretch of the glide', with the wheels meeting the runway as the a/c runs out of enthusiasm for 'flying'?
It takes us back to the eternal 'Habsheim' argument as to whether an 'iron' a/c such as 737 would have had enough energy to just clear the trees without stalling unlike the AB with its alpha-floor protection which limited its climb = no trees, no crash..
There never will be an answer to that conundrum (and I am certainly not intending we should open this again!) nor to whether to trade speed for distance at some lower height. It all comes back to what I and Woodpecker described as that 'sixth sense or 'seat of the pants' which can only come with experience.