WHAT IS A "FLARE" ON LANDING ?

[kuldalai]

As a regular passenger I have read with interest the thread on the Dunnunda & Godzone forum concerning the ATSB final report on the runway overrun at BKK by QF-1 in September, 1999. I even downloaded the full report from the ATSB (Australia) website which I found to be fascinating reading. I can understand all the terms and abbreviations and aviation lingo except for the reference to flare on landing . Could a pilot please explain what flare is in laymans terms ?

[Land After]

There's an excellent description of the subject in http://www.monmouth.com/~jsd/how/htm/landing.html#sec-flare

Basically it's the stage in landing when you raise the nose to move from a nose down descent attitude to the nose high attitude adopted for contact with the runway. The nose gear of most aircraft is not strong enough to absorb the force of a landing. By flaring, the aircraft lands on the rear landing gear, which (should) be able to stand the force of the landing.

[Iz]

Though many large airliners already fly the approach with a nose-high attitude.

Raising the nose is actually used to stop the rate of descent.
On a normal approach, the rate of descent is about 700 feet per minute (vertically). Slamming against the runway at this rate is very undesirable (a "hard" landing for passengers is usually 2-300 feet per minute).

So by raising the nose, lift is increased and rate of descent is decreased to an acceptable level for touchdown.

That's a flare.

[ExSimGuy]

A cynic might even say that raising the nose, and bleeding off the speed quite rapidly by the extra drag this causes, effectively stalls the a/c onto the runway :)

(just don't do it while too high, or too fast http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/eek.gif )

[Norfolk and airspeed]

Don't stall a passenger jet onto a runway. It'll break and all the people inside will fall out.

Typically, a big jet pilot will raise the nose by about 2-3 degrees at 30 feet or so above the runway. That'll lower the rate of descent to something reasonable. It's more important to land where you want to (about 1000' down the runway) than to try and land very softly. And if it's raining, you don't want to land very softly, you want to get those wheels through the water and onto the hard stuff so you can get on with stopping the damn thing.

[ExSimGuy]

Thought that would elicit a response http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/tongue.gif

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What goes around . . .
. . often lands better!