"bad landingitis", a common problem?

[badboy raggamuffin]

Hi all, am currently out in California hours building for my CPL. Things going fine, am flying everyday and have got up to about 75 hrs PIC so far, not far to go to the magic 100!
Am feeling pretty good about my flying and seem to be really getting the hang of it, have made big improvements since my PPL training thats for sure.
Have also got the landings pretty much perfected, to the point where 9 times out of 10 u can hardly feel the wheels touching the runway, however every 10 flights or so for some unknown reason I seem to revert back to my PPL training days, flaring at the wrong time and banging the plane on the ground, and I go home feeling pissed of with myself for ruining what was otherwise a near perfect flight. The next day however I revert back to doing spot on landings again. Its a bit frustrating, as I would like to make quality landings 100% of the time.
Should I be pissed of by this, or do all pilots, even those with thousands of hours make the occasional bad landing for no apparent reason?
Is occasional "bad landingitis" a common affliction that affects even the most experienced, or does it dissappear completely the more experience a pilot gets?
(obviously things like bad weather can affect the quality of landings, what I talking about here is a pilot ballsing it up of his own accord!)

Cheers for any advice,
Badboy

[fernytickles]

To err is human. To do bad landings is the sign of a human pilot. To own up to them on a public forum is the sign of a humble and realistic human pilot. Don't worry about it.

[Silvertop]

Not a "problem", its just Madam Aviation's way of informing us that we are not the "aces" we feel we have become, and after 25 years it still happens without warning and for no obvious reason. Soon you'll just shrug your shoulders accept your fallability, and utter words like "hey ho try again tomorrow".And when Madam smiles on you and you have to illuminate the "we have landed" signs, then be sure to offer her the silent prayer of thanks .
Happy landings!

[badboy raggamuffin]

So are there any 10,000 hrs captains out there who are willing to tell me about a landing they stuffed up recently! am interested to know.

[Rainboe]

Well how about 19,000 hours, and still occassionally does a teeth jarring arrival? The 747 was actually very nice aeroplane to land- you can put it down without knowing it's down, but I used to find once or twice a year, for anything up to a month, I could not land it 'nice'. Then it would all work out again for months and months. It happens, don't worry. Just when you think 'yo de man!', you go and do one that puts your tail between your legs. As long as the fuselage doesn't snap in two, it's OK.

[badboy raggamuffin]

. Just when you think 'yo de man!', you go and do one that puts your tail between your legs. .

Got it in one there, maybe the secret is to never think "yo de man!", but then again if you never felt pleased with your flying/landings that would be crap as well.

[Capt Claret]

Badboy

Some 11000+ hours, flew with an F/O recently (B717) who did a perfect landing at Alice Springs (in the touchdown zone and smooth as silk).

It was my landing into Perth. I planted it so hard I'm surprised that the thing didn't take root. A little old lady in a wheel-chair looked at me as I was deplaning and said "that was a terrible landing" and then turned her back on me.

It was too, I didn't think she had to be rude and turn her back on me though!

It happens. I don't believe there's a pilot alive or dead, who gets it perfect 100% of the time.

[john_tullamarine]

.. then, again .. if you talk to 727-200 drivers .. the talk revolves more around the occasional good landing .... lousy landings are a dime a dozen.

[Brian Abraham]

It's natures way of keeping you humble.

A smooth landing is mostly luck; two in a row is all luck; three in a row is prevarication. (Anon)

A wise man once told me that the key to success in aviation depends solely on how you hold your mouth. I looked puzzled initially, so he answered my question. ‘ You can tell a lot about what is going through a persons mind by the way they hold their mouth.’ If someone has a confident grin, then they are probably in control of their actions. If they looked shocked, then they have probably done something for the first time, or they just realised that they’ve done something that they probably shouldn’t. However the most important thing about how you how you hold your mouth is how big it needs to be if someone asks you to swallow a piece of….
Humble Pie.
There are many ingredients in humble Pie, the most flavoursome being pride. You will definitely taste the pride as you swallow your first piece. The remaining ingredients are like the eleven secret herbs and spices, mysterious though a recognisable flavour. As life goes on, you’ll grow accustomed to the taste and might learn to savour the flavour. If you live to be older and bolder, normally it becomes your job to pass on the recipe to the younger generation. When someone tells you that they’ve eaten it before, believe them, it is true. Everybody eats humble pie, sooner or later.

If you don’t like Humble Pie and aren’t prepared to eat it, then the next time you are in a situation which warrants eating another piece, you might be wishing that you had a tasting, just for good karma. A frosty cold beverage aids digestion. Obey your thirst…SIMPLE. (Anon)

[Whirlygig]

A good landing is one you can walk away from, a great landing is where they can use the aircraft again!

'Aw c'mon, someone had to say it!!

I have, at various times, had my instructor say, "did we land or were we shot down?", he's stuck his finger in his mouth to check his fillings, and described my landings as "agricultural". However, he agreed that my landings were no worse than a 5,000 hour professional helicopter pilot he knew!

On the other hand, I have landed so smoothly, not even I knew it! probably just as bad!

With a helicopter, you can hover and hover, trying to get it right but the longer you try, the more you tense up, the more you tense up, the worse the landing will probably be!

Cheers

Whirls

[redsnail]

Got 6000 hours now. On average, 1 out of every 10 landings will be average. However, so long as I am on speed, on profile and landing within the touchdown markings (approach end :} ) then I am not too bothered by it.

Floating down the runway in a futile attempt at a greaser is not a good landing.

[v6g]

i did my CPL flight test in February - I can't break the habit after all those precision gliding approaches. Every landing I do now, I tend to bang it down heavily but right on the numbers!

(Do you do that precision gliding thing in the UK for the CPL? I always found them the hardest thing to do.)

Remember also that landing is the most dangerous phase of flight as you're very close to the ground. Making the transition from flying to driving as quickly as possible isn't necessarily a bad thing.

[BigAl's]

I have to say this thread is making me feel so much better! Last Saturday, flew a Tecnam siera for the first time during a PPL lesson (currently 41hrs TT).

After some general handling we went for an away landing at a nearby field. Had a bit of a hard landing into the sun.. thats my excuse and I'm sticking to it!:rolleyes:. ( :{ followed by :ugh: )

Been feeling mad all week, so it's comforting to know its not just me! Thanks to all you chaps for going to print with your experiences. Very encouraging!

[badboy raggamuffin]

Moderators, why has this thread been moved from the questions forum?
I can appreciate that bad landings are something that are relevant to pilot training, but the reason why I originally posted in the questions forum was to get responses from experienced "thousands of hours pilots". We all know that wannabees like myself stuff up landings, moving the post to the training forum defeats the object of my question!

[badboy raggamuffin]

just a quickie, as am off to bed,

what I find, is that to make a decent landing, I need to think of the flare more as a means of gradually reducing the speed of the ac, rather than as a means of arresting the flight path to plonk the plane on the RWY.

Ie, if your coming into land, if you reduce the speed of the ac by gradually raising the nose whilst keeping it just above the rwy, you will naturally land smooth, but if you try and pitch the nose up too fast, in some kind of effort to land on the back wheels/ reduce the speed with too much of a jerk, your gonna hit the runway with a much greater rate of descent, ie bang it down.
Might be elemantary to some, but took me a while to figure out.

[low n' slow]

Bad Boy:
The trick is the following: Allways have some kind of rate of descent and look to the horizon and not right in front of the plane.

If you arest the ROD before touchdown you'll do a baloon and do what's popularily known as a runway strike. As long as you constantly come closer to the tarmac, you're doing fine.

And by looking further away, you're reducing the angle of your flightpath which will in turn generate a rather low ROD and thus the landing will be acceptable.

Other than this, you need to get a feeling of where your wheels are. This might take som time. I know I'm still struggling after 300 hrs on type, occasionaly arriving with grace...

/LnS

[Deano777]

Badboy

If it's any consolation, when I did my CPL my CFI said my landings were awful, he had to totally strip them down and rebuild from scratch, now they are top notch (well I would say that :) ), so don't worry too much, the CPL course will sort you out.
What I was told was that I was flying the aircraft into the runway, to sort out we did various things, one was the fact that I was not looking at the end of the runway, the next, which was the biggest, was my perspective of what was "straight and level" was infact, not, also the "flare", the flare I thought was when you pull back to put the main wheels on the tarmac, not so, basically the flare is your roundout, so the technique I started to use to good effect was to roudout or flare to straight and level, then as the plane starts to sink pull back into the "holdoff", simple as that.
My biggest problem was the straight and level perspective, I was actually still pointing into the tarmac when I thought I was S&L, so to sort it the CFI got me to fly the plane 3ft off the ground the whole way down the runway, this worked perfectly first time, my perspective changed and it sorted it out.

Good luck, and don't stress :ok:

D.

[Craggenmore]

Always keep in mind to land on the main wheels first. You are further from a prop strike if you do. You want to see a nice high nose attitude with a shallow ROD inches prior to touch-down.

If you constantly aim for a 3 pointer you are far closer to a prop strike than you probably think. When the wheels compress it can get dangerously close. It may feel smooth when it works and so far for you it has, but, one day you'll nose wheel it and that will be everybody's day ruined from yours to the aircraft owner to the ambulance crew.

But to answer the thread, yes, bad landings do suddenly come out of the woodwork. If you had been at the threshold of 03 at LIS last Tuesday you would have seen it first hand. Then on Wednesday my Captain went and did exactly the same which of course made me feel a whole lot better. If you know the runway Im talking about you may also have been fooled by the visual aspect..!

[npasque]

i personally find that, landing the high wings, such as a cessna 172 and especially the cessna 172 RG, are the worst. I much prefer a low wing, although i am not technically endorsed on one!

i did my CPL flight test today (nervous as all hell :ugh: ), and my landings were nothing short of rubbish. Needless to say he still ticked the boxes!

(unfortunately i had one cross, so i need to do a quick 1 hour nav to prove i can do a 1 in 60 properly. damn wizz wheel :} )

[Hour Builder]

(unfortunately i had one cross, so i need to do a quick 1 hour nav to prove i can do a 1 in 60 properly. damn wizz wheel :} )

Unlucky, that little cross cost you +£450 ouch.

HB

[npasque]

Unlucky, that little cross cost you +£450 ouch.

HB

hah yes, and i have reason so suspect that my flight computer is warped. Checking it out today, if it is i am going to be one unhappy chappy!

[tiggermoth]

It's great that you're doing your CPL flight test at 18! Don't worry about having to re-do it, I'm sure it will be easier the second time round, and you should find yourself better composed. Good luck!

T.

[Luke SkyToddler]

The keys to a good landing in a conventional (non tailwheel) training aircraft ...

1) You HAVE to be on speed. All the landing advice from all of us experienced guys here will count for nothing if you are 10 kts too slow or 15 too fast at the roundout, the best technique in the world will turn to ****.

2) You have to round out at the correct height, a lot of bad landings come from rounding out too high, this is normally caused by the pilot getting ground rush from flicking their eyes around between the instrument panel / runway threshold in the close in approach when they should have been following my next tip which is the real key to the whole thing

3) LOOK OUT THE WINDOW at the HORIZON! From my thousands of instructing hours, whenever someone had an awful landing it was always the case that their focus point was closer in, they were looking at the touchdown zone, I know it's human nature to look there but it's impossible to accurately judge sink rate unless you are looking at the horizon. I know your instructor has probably told you that 1000 times already, but ask yourself honestly next time you crunch one onto the runway, where were my eyes looking at that moment? All pilots, even the most experienced ones, still do it occasionally because we are still guilty of lapses. Particularly if you have been distracted by being a little left or right of centreline, you still have to force yourself to look back up to the horizon in the roundout & flare.

As long as you have carried the correct speed and roundout height into the flare phase then it's almost absurdly easy to apply the last tiny bit of back pressure and clear that nose wheel for a nice greasy landing.

[Wing_Bound_Vortex]

Ah dont worry, we all do them from time to time, 9 out of 10 will be smooth and in the correct place, on speed and all those good things you should do. And then the next one will come along and loosen a filling or two, making you cringe.....

I just generally laugh when i f~@k up a landing and hopefully the captain is enough of a sport to take the p#ss out of me. Keeps your ego in check....:}

WBV

[bluepeely]

On a recent visist to prague flying with CSA, after an aborted landing and severly climbing (making me nearlly throw my desparado's back up) ,the pilot finally landed so hard which made my desparado's finally appear. When seeing both pilots through the doors when getting off, my mate shouted " f**ckin cowboy" thinking chzech pilots couldn't speak the queens!!
The ageing pilot who shone experience just through his wrinkles smiled and simply said " even cowboys are human my friend"
The moral here is simple.... Do not drink a gallon of a lager/tequila drink when flying with CSA