How to land an airplane. Sometimes I think, “stop me if I’ve told you this before”, because I’ve written so many times about how to land—or how to solve landing problems. But here we go again. If you and I were to ride together, this is how I’d tell you to do it.

First, you need to have good control of your approach speed. Your approach speed on final should be 1.3 Vso—and Vso means the stall speed in the landing configuration at the aircraft’s current weight. So if it’s just you, or just you and one other, the airplane is probably well under gross weight—Vso will be lower than what the POH says. So if on this landing you’re using full flaps, and on the next one you use only 10 degrees, then adjust your approach speed accordingly. Since you don’t have any power to work with, that means adjusting the pitch. That also means that if you are following the approach speed recommendations in a late model POH, you need to use the slowest recommended approach speed. If the POH says 60-70 knots, use 60, for instance. But why not use the Vso and calculate from there?

Here you’re asking, why not a faster speed than 1.3 Vso? Simple—your landings will be better if you use 1.3 Vso. Trust me—it’s true.

You’re also wondering why we’re not talking about the whole pattern. Well, if you slow down on downwind and more on base so that you’re at 1.3 Vso on final, or if you enter the pattern on base and slow down so that you’re at 1.3 Vso on final, or if you do a straight-in approach so that you’re at 1.3 Vso on final, it really doesn’t matter. What is important is that you’re at 1.3 Vso on final.

Next, you need to know the sight picture for the flare. Here’s how to determine what it should be. On a normal take off, you raise the nose when the airplane is ready to fly. Memorize that, because that’s the sight picture you’ll want when you flare to land, not higher, not lower, but that same sight picture.

So now we’ll divide your landings into 3 parts: approach, leveling off, and landing flare.

So you’re on final approach, using whatever flaps you want to use for this landing, and you’re using 1.3 Vso. Trim for that speed!!!!! Trimming for the approach is as important as trimming for other aspects of flying. If you don’t trim properly, you are an interested passenger, not a pilot. No excuses—you must trim!

When you get within 10-15 feet of the runway surface, level off. Don’t raise the nose, level it, just like when you were flying in the pattern on downwind. Then wait. Don’t get anxious to do anything else—wait! (Here’s a tip on how to determine that 10-15 foot altitude: as you approach the runway, it looks like a gradually widening trapezoid, but if your airspeed is at 1.3 Vso, just as you get to within 10-15 feet of the surface, the runway will appear to suddenly widen exponentially—that’s when you should level off.)

Meanwhile, look toward the end of the runway—it makes it easier than if you look closer to the airplane. That doesn’t mean look all the way to the end of a 10,000’ runway, just toward the end as opposed to looking near the airplane.

Soon the airplane will start to settle naturally, because without any power added, that’s what it does. When it starts to settle, raise the nose to that same sight picture that you had on take off. The airplane will slow more, continue to settle, and voila!, you’ll touch down!

You’re not finished. Continue to hold the nose up by gradually pulling the yoke/stick back as the airplane slows, and then gently lower it to the runway. Maintain directional control with the rudder pedals, and let the airplane slow, maybe with a little braking. But don’t get anxious to do much of anything else, because this is landing, not touch and goes, not “how quickly can I get the flaps up”, or “how soon I can take off the carburetor heat”.

As you become more proficient, you’ll meld the 3 steps into a continuous sort of action, but until then, consciously dividing it into 3 parts will make your landings so much better. Now go land!

evanr42 wrote:A floats guy once helped me earlier in my flying career with a bit of advice that we then practiced on a 7,000 ft runway with my plane, to get smoother touchdowns on concrete.

The basic premise - as you're landing, don't change any setting (pitch or power, staying coordinated/on centerline is always needed, this is about performance settings) until you've counted 6 seconds from the previous change.

I'd never thought of trying to set up for glassy landings float plane style on the runway, but it was a great way to learn - and by doing it on a long runway, we set up a 100fpm descent, and totally greased it on. I learned within inches instead of feet just when the wheels would touch and got used to how my plane flew in ground effect.

As we were coming in to land, we'd start out aiming a little further into the runway than usual. That way, a little extra sink or lift was no big deal - we were aiming 1k ft into a 5k+ ft runway with a plane that lands in 500 feet. Pretty much does away with round out and flare, so that's one way to reduce variables.

Cary wrote:
Now, go try this in a land airplane. Then get yourself a decent seaplane instructor, and do it in a seaplane.

Cary

CenterHillAg wrote:Learning to rely on my peripheral vision from 20 ft off the ground to touchdown helps keep me straight and coordinated. Flying in the back seat of a Cub or an ag plane, this technique is the only way I can consistently hit my landing spot.

albravo wrote:

evanr42 wrote:We haven't done glassy water landings yet but I think I will find them smoother than my spot landings. We did a couple power off landings to simulate engine failure and I did quite well with fewer variables at play. Adding power seems to be the issue that vexes my old brain. I start thinking about the right amount of power to offset the amount of sink and while i'm muddling through that equation I get behind the plane and I'm surprised by the splashing sound of touch down.