I got the feeling that it would be a rough trip when the flight attend-ants began complaining aloud that the pilot ordered the push-back from the jetway before they had the cabin ready. I wondered why they were unhappy about leaving the gate on time, until I realized that they had experience with this pilot and were reacting to his rough style — lots of maneuvering, flying through bumpy cloud bases, and, on landing, pumping the brakes hard in an attempt to make the high-speed turnoff most convenient to the arrival gate.
The second leg of the flight was on a different airplane flown by a different crew. These guys were smooth. We passengers were hardly aware that we were flying, and the night landing was a greaser. I waited until all the other passengers had deplaned and then stuck my head through the cockpit doorway. "Nice landing," I said. "Who's responsible for that one?"
The captain in the left seat glanced back and, with a smile, blew on his fingernails and then rubbed them on his chest.
"I noticed you added a bit of power just before touching down. Was that based on airspeed or feel?" I asked.
"Feel," he answered. He explained that he kept the power on because it was a night landing and therefore more difficult for him to judge height above the runway. To avoid a wing waggle and a stiff arrival, he elected to use a tad more speed and touch down smoothly. Making a specific turnoff to the taxiway was not his goal; treating his tired passengers to a soft landing at the end of a long day was. This pilot knew something that every pilot should be aware of: Smooth flying is all about pleasing your passengers.
The quality of being smooth on the controls refers to how we apply all of the skills and techniques that we learn in training and acquire through experience. All of us can taxi, take off, climb, level off, turn, descend, and land. Those who make it look easy, who move the controls slowly and sparingly in-stead of abruptly, whose family and friends look forward to flying with them rather than dread the experience — they are the smooth operators.
My instrument instructor preached smoothness. He challenged me to transition to climbs and turns and descents so smoothly that my passengers would think we were still flying straight and level. That's quite a challenge when you're still learning to stay upright flying on the gauges, but it was a valuable lesson — then and now.
Smoothness has as much to do with transitioning from one phase of flight to another as it does overall competency. It's what happens between straight-and-level flight and a standard-rate turn that characterizes a pilot as rough or smooth. We all have to know the technical part — how to turn the yoke and push the pedals to begin a coordinated bank ending in a standard-rate turn. To do it smoothly, however, means initiating the bank very slowly and gradually increasing the bank angle, applying slight back pressure on the yoke before the airplane begins to descend, and beginning the rollout well in advance of reaching the desired heading.
Part of being a smooth pilot is having a feel for what the airplane is doing and how it will react to changes. You can sense its movement through the air, the power from the engine, and the pull of the propeller. You can detect a change in attitude almost before it begins. You know doing this will result in that.
You also have to care about your passengers. You want them to feel safe and to be comfortable and confident in their pilot. Most people who aren't pilots have little understanding of flying, and they are wary of small airplanes. They are bothered by steep or abrupt climbs, turns, and descents. They are frightened by rapid and gross power changes, especially power reductions. They hate turbulence. Weather is a major concern. If we fly smoothly and avoid these conditions, we avoid most of the anxiety-inducing situations for passengers.
My friend Doug and I recently went up for an instrument refresher flight. Doug had me fly a night ILS approach to a circle-to-land on the opposite runway. "And," he added, "I want you to be super-smooth. Pretend there are some very nervous passengers in back. Keep them happy."
Making passenger comfort a primary objective increased the already significant level of difficulty of the approach. Using the autopilot helped a great deal, but I had to be smooth with it, too. At one point, the approach controller cleared me to a new heading, and I reached up and spun the horizontal situation indicator's heading bug counterclockwise to the new setting. The airplane immediately banked and Doug, playing the part of nervous passenger, immediately yelped. Lesson learned: Whether hand-flying or autopilot-assisted, make any transition in aircraft attitude gradual. I should have used the heading bug with the same sensitive touch that I was striving for on the yoke, pedals, and power.
The payoff for our practice came the next day when we flew with Doug's wife, Betty, and another passenger. I handled the controls and autopilot while he worked the radios. Along with arriving safely on time, our objective was to give our passengers a smooth flight.
I think we succeeded. At least, that's what our passengers said when we climbed out of the airplane on the ramp. However, I had almost flunked. Approaching the airport from the south, the controller cleared us to descend, and I started down. As the VSI needle dipped below 500 fpm on its way to 1,000 fpm, Betty demanded to know why we were going down so fast. I explained that I wanted to avoid flying through the puffy cumulus clouds and the bumps hiding within them, so I was trying to descend though a break in the clouds.
That seemed to satisfy Betty, but I could see that Doug had spoiled her. He is a devotee of smooth, easy-on-the-ears, passenger-pleasing 200-fpm descents, and my descent did not meet the standard.
All was forgiven when I flared and the airplane settled lightly on the mains. A smooth end to a mostly smooth flight.