Pax Comment - Help Please from Boeing Drivers

[q1W2e3R4t5]

6000PIC,

the topic was started because the poster was less than happy about a particular landing which was made worse by the fact a passenger felt strongly enough to say something in person. They are not worried about their ability to fly and land the aircraft 'safely'. That is not in question.

I started as a 250 hour cadet and went from flying a seneca to a 738. It would not have mattered if I'd clocked up 2000 hours on the seneca as time on type is the only way to learn a new aircraft.

We have posters with lots of experience right upto their very last flight still making mistakes.

If we are talking about experience here then given the choice, passengers will pick Capt 15000PIC over yourself anyday of the week! It works for both seats you know.

[Checkboard]

If I am passengering in the back in uniform, and experience a firm landing, the passengers next to me usually ask about it. My response is usually: "As far as pilots are concerned, it is where the aircraft lands that is important. Too short, too long, too far left or right etc. Smooth is nice, but not necessary." That usually satisfies them.

Remember that, at the moment, you can only judge your performance against the person in the left seat - who should be experienced enough to consistently beat your performance! If you ask them to judge you against your peers (who they get the chance to see, as you don't.) you may get a better opinion of your performance than you think!

As an aside (sorry for the thread drift):

it is necessary to make a firm landing in order to make good contact through the surface water and prevent aqua-planing

I just want to point out that that is an old wife's tale. Manuals talk about "not extending the flare for a smooth contact" simply to point out that you must not waste runway!

Aquaplaning takes place purely when the pressure of the water against and under the tyre exceeds the pressure of the tyre, and that pressure is dependant on having:

1. A water depth greater than the depth of the tyre tread, (i.e. a flooded runway.), and
2. a speed greater than 7.7 times the square root of the tyre pressure (for a non-rotating tyre to spin up).

How firm or soft the touch down was, however many meters behind the aircraft, is completely irrelevant.

[pax britanica]

As a humble PAX I do think it astonishingly rude that someone would make a remark like that-as many hear have said what on earth did she know since you cannot see much of whats going on from the passenger seat. Its a bit late now you have posted it here to say forget it-similar things happen to everyone early in careers but usually when people are addressing someone with a job thats a bit easier to understand than a pilots. Like profesional footballer who screws up and has 30,000 people, all of whom are better than him in their minds- yelling abuse at him.

Mind you I always felt for the pilot-not sure which one- of an SAS MD81 which in contrast to generally very smooth arrivals hit the ARN tarmac with an almighty crash bouncing many overhead bins open only to hear the in charge CC announce in English."Ladies and Gentlemen AS YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED we have arrived in Stockholm" ,talk about damning with feint praise.

PB

[PENKO]

Short runways have a nasty habit of playing with your mind. As one poster already mentioned, techniquewise you don't land any differently on a 1800m rwy than on a 3000m one. Once you realise this...

You floated, you dealth with it, the captain didn't smack you...mission accomplished and an experience wiser!

[PT6A]

Yes I guess the view in the back is really misleading! Had a passenger comment yesterday when getting off the aircraft yesterday about us making a “very steep approach”
Funny thing is we had just done an auto coupled ILS to a 3.01 degree G/S!!
So I would agree with most of the posters on here and just let it go in one ear and out of the other!

[Doors to Automatic]

I wouldn't worry about the odd firm arrival - if it is in the TDZ, doesn't bend the gear and you are stopped before the row of red lights, then it is a good landing.

Alternatively you could strive for the perfect landing that is so smooth that the passengers give you a round of applause - as they did here (very briefly):

YouTube - LDG TA 767 GUA Accident

[Piltdown Man]

It's a good landing if:

1. It's in the right place (correct airport helps and even better in the TDZ)
2. it's done at the correct speed
3. It happens at the end of end of a stabilised approach
4. You were tracking in the correct direction
5. You had the correct pitch attitude on touchdown
6. You dealt with drift appropriately

So if these were requirements were met, and the landing was a bit firm, you now have the most difficult thing ahead - to tell those who may criticise your landing to stick their heads up their bums, politely. I can do the rude version but the polite one still escapes me. What am I doing wrong?

PM

[TheGorrilla]

I always think it's funny how much emphasis is placed on the landing when judging a good or bad flight. I have to admit, I really don't care anymore. So long as the landing is reasonable, not to hard and in the right place I'm happy.

I have no time at all for the numpty who floats halfway down the runway "feeling" for a greaser or the pillock who has no concept of drift and lands 15m downwind of the centerline. Infact, I would really lose my rag with those two.

The 1.8g planter in the TDZ gets my vote every time. Right spot, drift off, brakes on.

[Bealzebub]

The 1.8g planter in the TDZ gets my vote every time.

I think yours would be the only vote it got!

[flyboy_nz]

Mate, I have only SE experience, but I thought I would add my 2 cents in to hopefully make you feel better.

We were joking about this during our Instructor Rating that before every approach, to annouce to the pax, "Ladies and Gentlemen we have an emergency on board - we have lost both engines, the landing gear might not be down, we have lost the hydraulics and and just barely able to control the aircraft, but we are on final approach and will be attempting to land the aircraft on the runway."

So, when you do land the aircraft, even if it's the crapiest landing, all the pax are guaranteed to .

[Blues&twos]

Coming on top of your bad feeling about the landing, a comment from a passenger like that is bound to make you feel low.

In a different arena (I drive rescue boats on the Thames) I used to feel the same....if I attended an emergency promptly I would be loudly and publically criticised by onlookers and event organisers for "endangering other people, the speed limit's 4 knots y'know", if I slowed down a bit I'd be loudly and publically criticised by onlookers and event organisers for "not responding quickly enough". I always felt I'd done something wrong.

It really got me down at first, but after a while I realised that complaints from the public who had absolutely no idea about the different circumstances and considerations I was having to take into account (which they couldn't see or just didn't understand) meant their comments were meaningless. It's all water off a duck's back now.

People who complain in these circumstances, when you know things weren't perfect, but weren't actually that bad either just display their ignorance and arrogance and should be ignored.

[TheGorrilla]

[QUOTE] The 1.8g planter in the TDZ gets my vote every time.
I think yours would be the only vote it got! /QUOTE]

I suspect not. Only landings above 2g require a heavy landing check, unless the Captain determines otherwise (in our organization). A smooth landing that ends up off the end of the runway may require the front end of the aircraft to be rebuilt. A crap landing way of the center with large amounts of drift still on (smooth or not) may induce undercarriage collapse, pod strike, tip strike and much humiliation.

I'll take the 1.8g straight and true on the TDZ option any day. Sod the ego!

[Tarq57]

As a SLF, heavy landings don't bother me. Nor heavy braking. If stuff comes out of the overheads and collides with my noggin on the way down, the annoyance is directed at the manufacturer of the overheads, and the airline management that allow the stashing of high-octane duty-free missiles up there, not the flight crew.
Long flares and floats on a short-ish runway, do, even if the touchdown is smooth. (Especially the runway that I keep an eye on at work.)

When you have more experience on type and the confidence that goes with that, such a comment won't have the same sting. By this time it's probably lost most of its' sting anyway, I would hope.

Someone said earlier they were a bit disappointed that the captain didn't offer a bit of support.
I think the same should be said of the CC. Does it reveal anything about CRM or morale in the company you work for? Do you normally get on OK with these people? (Not that it should be a factor.)
Try not to respond in kind should the applicable CC member/s ever be in a situation where the roles are reversed, would be the sort of thinking I'd aim for.

[Pilot Pete]

Right.

Firstly, as others have said, don't worry about it. And certainly don't apologise. You are EXTREMELY inexperienced (as we all were once). An 1800m strip (5900ft) is short for a 738. My operator sets a restriction of 6000' or more for F/Os (let's not have a debate about the rights and wrongs of that), but the fact they put that restriction in the manuals means that the pilot management consider it to be 'more challenging' shall we say? I have just done a calculation using our landing performance software for an 1800m runway with a 0.5% upslope for one of our 738s (without the short field performance package) at MLW (65250kg). On a 'standard' day using flap 40, using inflight performance (forgetting about dispatch requirements), autobrake 3 has an LDR of 1626m, unfactored. Max autobrake has an LDR of 1167m, again unfactored. So do pilots still think his choice of max autobrake was inappropriate? You really need to know the type to comment because I have flown 75/767 too and never got anywhere max auto, but remember they have many more wheels and the brake settings have different deceleration rates (3 on a 73 feels like less than 2 on a 75).

An upslope adds to the challenge, as does a 15kt crosswind! You say it was at night, so other factors also add to the challenge; lighting, weather, approach you flew etc etc.

Add that little lot up and I would say that for someone with 350hrs on type you were perhaps (with all due respect) closer to your available capacity limit than perhaps the guy in the other seat would have been.

It is always better to consolidate your flying after initial line training by trying to build consistency, which is easier to achieve on less challenging approaches/ runways. I would advise speaking with your captain during the preflight briefing and mention that you are trying to build some consistency with landings and perhaps consider the factors at your home base, which may mean that another sector would be more appropraite in that consolidation. Perhaps pick the home base for a landing when conditions are more favourable, say no crosswind to deal with, in daytime and good visibility. That way you can crack the nut and build up to more challenging conditions rather than jump straight in at the deep end.

For those offering advice who do not fly the type I would say be careful, because the advice about 'chopping thrust' is not something that should be applied to a 737, at any height, let alone at 50'. I train on Classic and -NG and the usual problem that we encounter with inconsistent landings during type training is with de-stabilising the approach in the last few hundred feet. What do I mean by that? Usually an inappropriate power setting for the configuration (slightly too much or slightly too little). This leads to a slight speed excursion and usually coupled to this a slight glideslope deviation (as the scan breaks down trying to set the power, just as the glide is getting increasingly sensitive) and a subsequent correction, usually by too much in the case of power setting. This then leads to the visual transition being slightly less than optimal, with power not quite set correctly, a V/S slightly away from optimal (chasing the sensitive glide before looking out) and the workload increasing just when you want any extra capacity to concentrate on moving the gaze from the touchdown zone to the end of the runway. It makes a 'good' landing more difficult from such an approach. However, we all do them, even with years of experience, but the difference is that the experienced pilot still has capacity to make last minute adjustments to 'catch' any late deviation and can 'feel' the landing, even without perhaps looking right down the runway! It all comes with time and experience.

So, have a review of the correct techniques in the FCTM, especially with flap 40. Any chopping of the power, especially if you are spot on the correct Vref + increment in the flare will make you drop onto the runway. If anything, you need to leave the power on a fraction longer than with a flap 30, making sure you are 'flared' before reducing thrust smoothly. In your scenario, if you are floating on a flap 40 landing, on a reasonably short runway with an uphill slope, then your flare has been at the incorrect height. You should be thinking GO AROUND.

Get your approach nice and stable, nice and early on and then hand fly from a reasonable distance out (don't disconnect at 500'!) to get a feel for it. If you fully configure with the automatics in and let the aircraft stabilise for you before disconnecting you will have a reference thrust setting for your speed. Many disconnect with the flaps running, or the autothrottle still moving towards the correct setting. This just adds to your workload. If you want to disconnect earlier, have a ballpark figure for the correct thrust setting; on an -NG, look at INIT REF and your current weight is about the right value for your N1 setting for a flap 40 landing. Use that as a datum to then make small corrections from. For flap 30 it is your current weight minus about 6.

Keep that scan going and don't fixate on the Flight Director, bring in the V/S on the IVSI; another rule of thumb is to fully stabilise, look at the groundspeed and divide by 2 and add a zero (say 150kts G/S means 75 with a zero =750fpm) that is your reference V/S for a 3 degree slope. If the IVSI says 900fpm, you are about to go low on the glide, if it says 600fpm, you WILL go high if you don't correct promptly.

Once you transition to the visual you need to move from inside scan to start bringing outside in more and more. In the last few hundred feet you should be concentrating more on the aiming point and looking inside for speed and the odd glance at the other instruments to confirm they are still correct. Just like in a 152, fix that aiming point in the screen and make minor stick adjustments to keep it there. Don't be chasing the glideslope now, use the aiming point as your reference, keep that speed nailed and your flare will be much easier from this stable position. As you hear the 50,40,30 callouts you should be transitioning to looking right down the runway and starting to 'feel' the height above the runway from the seat of your pants (it will come). Think flare at 30' so you are actioning it at 20'. Pitch the nose to the flare attitude and hold it there. Don't freeze on the controls, keep putting in those little inputs to hold the attitude and the wings level, slowly start to reduce thrust smoothly so as to be at idle as the main gear touches. Easy eh?


As for the passenger comments, as others have said, ignore them. I would be disappointed as a trainer on that flight if your captain did not go and fend off those comments on your behalf. Remember how you feel after that experience. I did exactly the same many moons ago and my captain stood in the flight deck entrance and listened to the rantings of a certain 'seasoned traveller' who was not happy. The captain just said, "it was a safe landing sir", to which the punter disagreed, so he said again "it was a safe landing sir". After repeating this about four or five times the pax gave up and walked off, refusing to take the offered contact details of the Flight Operations Director....Works a treat and I have used exactly the same comments to protect a young colleague in similar circumstances. He was beating himself up and in the end left the crewroom laughing with me.

To sum up;

1. Consider the suitability of the airfield/ runway/ conditions at this early stage in your career and the likelihood of it helping you to conslidate.

2. Communicate with your captain nice and early on, preferably at the planning stage. Most captains appreciate your 'heads up' and will be supportive and encouraging and willing to help. Some might even offer you more landings if they feel you would benefit!

3. Never be afraid to give a landing away, better to do it early, perhaps even brief the possibility so that the guy in the other seat can expect it. They will really appreciate this professionalism.

4. And last but not least, ALWAYS be thinking Go-AROUND, even in the flare if things aren't right and even more so on a limiting runway.

Happy landings

PP

[Mrs-rodge-bless-her]

Pilot Pete and others... thank you very much for some supportive posts. Really have helped.

I forgot to mention the capt on the day was a really good guy, I think as far as the pax comment he was probably in shock at what she said also. But he confirmed with me afterwards it was a safe landning.

The good news is I have got my mojo back, most landings this week have been on TDZ, centerline and on the correct speed. So ive been happy with myself. I think what prompted me to post is the fact that my confidence was low and the pax just hit me when I was down!

Once again, thanks for the help and kind comments.

"Missus Rodge.... Bless her"

[Pilot Pete]

Good news! Glad to hear it.

Can I ask where you got the mojo from as I planted one in to Chambery last weekend?

PP

[Mrs-rodge-bless-her]

I purchased him from the crew shop in Malaga, they sell mojo's too ya know! They gave me a discount because the last one as you know was a bit dodge.

[hoksipgao]

Hi,

This thread made me angry enough to register. Take no notice of these idiots. Try aiming that kind of criticisem at a taxi driver and see what happens!

There is the problem these days. Airlines are marketed like taxis and actual "do'ers" like pilot F/O, ATC, ground, FA's that actually have the knowledge and skills are treated like sh**.

I'm a product expert in my job so the 95% time I get it right there is silence and the 5% - hang the wkr!

Shrug it off. Ignore it. Most pax probably enjoyed it.

My best was coming in to LCY with some wind ** THUMP**!

Loved it.

Anyway, remember, you know more than "them". Did you *really* worry on landing for safety? Undignified doesn't = Unsafe.

You'll always encounter these types in life (and in all industries) and it is hard not "rise" to them but once you have had a few "back seat" experts you will start to see a pattern.

Best regards,

Hok,

[UK019]

As ever, Pilot Pete gives the real gen. He should write a textbook. Maybe he has(?)

Since 1978 I've had 2 passenger complaints about 2 of my landings. Perhaps I should be more accurate - I've had 2 complaints that I've actually heard!!

The first was in the '80s when I put an F27 down in a crosswind using the standard wing-down technique and subsequently a loud-mouth (a barrister as it happens) complained very vocally about the fact that I had landed on just the one main leg first. He was actually practically frog-marched to the flight deck by our No1 (who was incensed.) I explained the technique, and we then had a nice - polite - little discussion about how he would feel if I yelled "objection!" from the public gallery in his courtroom.

The second was in a B737-300 in 2001 at CDG when the complaint was relayed to me that my landing was "too fast and dangerous." Granted, it wasn't the prettiest but it wasn't "dangerous." As far as I recall the speed was just right, but I don't know what the passenger's personal ASI on the seat back in front of him was indicating (!!!!!)

The point was that I saw, if not actually red, certainly a pretty strong shade of russet. Anyone who knows me would say that the fact that I got out of my seat and tapped the oaf (a real oik) on the shoulder was totally out of character for me. I explained that I had received his complaint, took it very seriously and that when I returned to the UK I would have the FDR trace analysed. I explained that if - as I believed - this was a perfectly normal landing I would consider sueing him for defamation.

I still cannot believe that I said such a stupid thing to a fare paying passenger - but I was rattled and I did. Fortunately the gentleman grovelled and didn't call my ridiculous bluff - thank goodness.

The very best reply that I've ever heard of was an American pilot who came out of the flight-deck to confront his seat 18A critic. He quietly said "Sir, do you really think that we give a sh*t about what you guys think about our landings?"

As many of the posts have said - it happens and it'll happen again.

Happy landings, as they say.....

[framer]

Mrs Rodge.....start marking your landings out of ten using this technique.
a mark out of four for speed
a mark out of four for touchdown location
and a mark out of two for finesse.
.....with that method a real thumper on the 1500ft marks, spot o speed, gets you an 8 out of 10.

Thats what I did for a few hundred hours until I stopped caring lol