Difficulty landing a 737-800? Is that true? Any Pointers?
 

A friend of mine has just been trained as an FO on a 737-800 for Delta in the States. He claims that landings are difficult in even the best, calm conditions compared to the DC-9 and corporate jets he used to fly.

Is the length of the aircraft the culprit? Any 737-800 drivers out there like to comment? I have heard this complaint more than once...

Cheers!

All I´ve heard is that it doesn´t have alot of tail-clearence.. Makes sence what with that stretched fuselage.. We have had one of our -800 tailstriked I think.. Not sure though, not on that fleet..

When I switched from -300 to -800 I had some firm ( and very firm ) touchdowns during the first couple of weeks. You get the hang of it very quickly. With flaps 30 it's about the same as the -300. Flaps 40 is a completely different story to me. It's absolutely not as forgiving as the -300, if you screw up during initial flare you can forget about a greaser.

Most of the times a real greaser is completely wasted anyway because of the spoilers coming up so rapidly after touchdown, slamming the thing through it's struts. And to make matters worse, earlier serial numbers have modified shimmy dampers on the mains that will shake you up completely.

If you just use normal landing ( boeing ) technique you will get reasonable landings 9 out of 10 times.

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Track

Obviously it was a bit of a problem today in Shannon.

Track is right. If a greaser is the objective it takes a while to adjust. (I'm still adjusting!). If you just want to land in the touchdown zone you make life a lot easier for yourself. Then, once I was about to adjust to the -800, I lost the touch when flying a -300 or -400. At least that's what the cabinstaff tells me :)

Sq

I don't know if you are also thinking of the awful vibration that the new 737s cause at landing. I am flying the 400, 500 & 700. My theory is that the new 737s are like shopping carts; The wheels are dragged behind and sometimes the wheels on the shopping carts vibrate alot because of this. The stall speed on the new 737s are a lot lower than Vref, compared to the 400 and 500. My experience of the 700 is that if you let it touch down at a lot lower speeds it lands smoothly. (Of course, don't fly it at lower than Vref speeds and don't cause a tail strike)
Happy landings