Tips to Improve Your Landings

Any pilot has had landings that they wish nobody saw. My worst landing since I got my landing was a night flight with my date. We came in for landing and misjudged where the runway was and bounced hard, and then again. I managed to save the landing but I did not know exactly what to say after it finished. I had over a thousand landings and the one landing I wanted to go well did not. Every pilot has stories like this so what are some tips you can do to make you landings better, but remember every one has a landing every once and while that they are less than proud of.

When landing and you are on final if you look at the runway you should notice it rotating around a line somewhere on the runway. It looks like one end of the runway is going down, and the other end if going up. It takes some practice to see this, but once you do you can almost see where you are going to land. If you put this line at the end of the runway, and are at the proper speed you will land on the numbers. By trying to land towards the end of the runway you get more time in the flare and you’ll be less likely to force the plane down.

Extending your final. This is the single best thing you can do to improve your landing. By extending your final you have more time to setup the perfect approach. It allows you to fix any problems before you have a lot of things to think about. This also gives you time to make sure your flap settings are right, your trim is set and if you have retractable gear, MAKE SURE ITS DOWN.

Proper energy control. This is key, most people say proper speed control when dealing with landings, but energy is better. Energy is a combination of your altitude and speed. It does not help to be on your final speed but too low or too high. So you need to control your energy. We all know that the throttle controls altitude and pitch controls speed during the final approach phase. To low increase the throttle, to high reduce the throttle. While this is the rule I’ve seen too many good approaches go bad because the student gets a little nervous making these adjustments so close to the ground. You have to remember that winds are going to change as you get closer to the ground, so at 500 to 800 feet the winds could be 10 knots stronger, so as you get closer change is needed. Even on completely calm days I have needed to adjust the throttles to make a good landing. Also many students and some pilots get a little scared when they pull the throttle back close to idle when they are still a few hundred feet off the ground. It gives them this feeling that they will fall out of the sky. After you do this a few times that feeling will go away and you’ll get a better understanding on how the airplane glides, but you need to realize that if you go into a thermal or get a huge tail wind you are going to need to reduce the throttle probably to near idle. The faster you recognize this and pull the throttle the better off you will be. Of course if you feel uncomfortable you can always go around or go to another airport.