No one has to describe what makes a touchdown perfect on a calm day--you know it when you do it. Or you can invent your own standard, such as whether you get stopped before the fixed-distance marker on the runway, can clear at a particular taxiway, or whether the child snoozing in the back seat remains asleep until you shut down on the ramp. But land on the same runway in a gusty crosswind with fully deflected rudder and ailerons, and you'll judge perfection by other parameters. Or, clear the wires into a short, narrow, tree-lined gravel strip. In this case the perfect touchdown means you plant the aircraft firmly right where you aimed it, and get stopped with runway to spare. Yes, the touchdown may awaken the sleeping child, but believe me, it's still perfect.
The first tip on a list of ways to achieve perfect touchdown ought to be this: Be able to explain what you are trying to accomplish in order to land. Flight instructors know that if you can explain a maneuver on the ground, you can do it in the air. If the explanation is faulty, it's like a diagnostic X-ray, giving an instructor a starting point for helping you improve your landings--or any other maneuver that isn't going well.
Between the time when a final approach begins and when the airplane taxies peacefully to a runway exit point, the pilot performs a series of connected but procedurally independent tasks to bring it to earth. Can you describe them? Crossing the threshold at the end of the final approach glide, the pilot begins a roundout, essentially a momentary leveling off a few feet above the runway. During this phase deceleration continues while descent is arrested. Any residual power being carried on the final approach may now be brought back to idle. Ground effect will be present.
Once this phase has stabilized, the aircraft is allowed to descend again, cuing the pilot to begin the next stage: the flare. The flare has three goals: One is to rotate the aircraft to the proper nose-up attitude for touchdown. The second goal, accomplished with the same back-elevator input, is to slow the aircraft a few knots more to the desired touchdown speed, usually minimum controllable airspeed for the configuration being used. All this while keeping the rate of descent to almost nil (your third goal), alternately known as "holding it off," at the proper height above the runway until touchdown occurs ever so gently.
Doing all this requires exquisite timing and is the point of most frustration for those who struggle with landings. What's so vexing is that if you only accomplish two of the three goals well while mismanaging the third, it feels like you made a bad landing. You didn't. You just need to work on your timing through practice, as does everybody else. So that's the chalk talk. Now for some tips you can use when your hands are on the controls and your feet are on the pedals.
1. Look a good distance down the runway during your landing. Looking too close to the moving aircraft blurs the images, distorts relative motion, and creates an urge to rush things. This single adjustment can lead to vast improvements in landing.
2. Be patient. Rounding out, flaring, holding off, and touching down takes time. Next time you are watching a skilled pilot land an aircraft like yours in calm air, count off the seconds from roundout to touchdown. You may be surprised at how much time goes by.
3. Grasp ground effect. This aerodynamic phenomenon that alters the airflow over a wing, reducing its angle of attack and drag, occurs about a wingspan above the ground. It is your friend during a landing. Use it to advantage and, most important, learn to anticipate its presence. One caveat: If your airspeed is excessive, ground effect will aggravate the problem, resulting in a long "float" before touchdown.
4. No overblown control inputs allowed. As with other maneuvers, small control inputs should keep you pointed in the right direction (rudder), over the center line (aileron), on speed and descending at the desired rate (elevator) during gusty conditions, crosswinds, or changes of wind direction. Larger corrections will leave you fighting yourself, not the wind.
5. Pilot power. Keep your hand on the throttle. Tiny adjustments can keep your approach in order. Since no aerodynamic change occurs in a vacuum, remember that the aircraft will attempt to respond to your adding or reducing power with pitch responses. Why? The aircraft is trimmed for the airspeed it was flying the last time you adjusted the trim tab. Power changes will cause it to attempt to seek the pitch attitude that maintains that same airspeed at the new power setting. Anticipate this tendency and apply slight elevator pressure to counteract these pitch forces as you make your throttle changes.
6. Keep 'er pointed down the runway. Whatever else is going on right now during the landing, make sure that an imaginary line through the aircraft's tail and nose is pointing straight down the runway centerline. With enough practice the slight rudder inputs needed to do this will happen unconsciously and not compete for your attention with other tasks. Remember that the power adjustments mentioned above may yaw the aircraft left when adding power or right when reducing it. Correct with rudder.
7. Keep your options open. The easiest landing to perform is one that you do not have to perform. That's where being ready for a go-around comes in. Knowing this option is available takes the pressure off and that lets you relax. If all is going well with your landing, continue. If not, make corrections. Still no good? Go around, try again. Don't worry about external issues such as the next people waiting to fly the aircraft, or the fear of being scolded by your instructor--which shouldn't happen anyway if you opt for a go-around. If you are flying at a towered airport and a go-around wasn't expected, clue them in, but only when time permits. Fly the airplane first, and remember that the folks in the tower can see you and they already know you are back in the air. They'll cope.
8. After landing, please don't drop the nose. Keep holding that back-pressure after the main wheels are down. Relaxing the so-called aerodynamic braking prematurely could thump the nosewheel down on the runway and cause the aircraft to surge forward, or make an excursion off the centerline. Which would spoil your nice landing.
9. Do your exercises. Slow flight and power-off stalls, practiced at a nice safe altitude, show you how your training aircraft will behave, feel, and respond to control inputs when it is just above the runway during landings. Understand this aspect of why we learn these maneuvers; let the work help you improve your landings. The practice will also improve your general ability to manage your aircraft's airspeed, directional control, and altitude control in the speed range--and configurations--you'll be using down there on the approach.
10. Airport as simulator: Add realistic visual cues to your training sessions by using the longest runway in your area for practice. Here's how: Fly just above it (without landing) at slow speeds, with flap deflections, to drill on directional control, altitude management, and crosswind corrections. This could be the best therapeutic work you ever do toward sharpening your landings skills. The value lies in the fact that skating just above that long runway gives you prolonged practice in flight phases that, in a real landing, only last for a few seconds.
11. Relax, this is fun stuff. If you think your landings can be a lot better, don't be negative about the way they are now. Think of how far you have come already; think about all the skills you have already acquired if you are at the point where you can agonize about your landings along with the rest of us. Really, relax. During practice, it's common to observe a student pilot suffer a surge of anxiety before each touchdown, so desperate is he to crank out a good one this time. But that's a self-defeating proposition. Nervousness leads to jerky control inputs, and the landing quickly comes apart. Not letting yourself become stressed about each landing means not making it a competitive exercise. Don't compete with other students; don't compete against yourself. It will come. Sooner, if you lighten up.
12. Fly your favorite ship when solving your most difficult problems. I can hear the hard-liners scoffing at this one, but it's one of my favorite pearls. "An airplane's an airplane! If you can fly this one, you should be able to fly that one. Bah! Humbug!" they'll say. Of course they are right. But here's the thing: If you have a favorite trainer among those from which you can choose at your flight school, there's something about that aircraft that makes you happy. Perhaps it's something tangible, perhaps not. In either case, you're in a better frame of mind when you fly that one than when you fly the others, which makes you more likely to have a good flight. The goal right now is to get you to fly your best, and if that's what will do the trick, do it.
So, review the elements of a landing. Practice the individual flying tasks separately, then get used to combining them for the real deal. Learn not to rush; there's more time than you think. The truth is that most landing problems are just a matter of timing the movements of your hands and feet when the descent rate, deceleration rate, nose attitude, and touchdown all beg for attention at that most frustrating, or sweetest, final moment of a flight.
Dan Namowitz is an aviation writer and flight instructor. A pilot since 1985 and an instructor since 1990, he resides in Maine.
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