Accident Analysis

Stay the course, or change?

With the 2008 presidential campaign winding down as you read this, the word debate is enough to make many people run and hide. Political arguments come and go, but the truly lasting debates live on-and aviation has its share of those. Consult your favorite topical Internet bulletin board and look up the longest-running threads or the subjects with most replies to the original postings. You'll acquire a fine catalog of the subjects that keep pilots up on their soapboxes.

One of those is whether touch-and-go landings and takeoffs possess sufficient moral character to occupy their current place in flight training. Opponents say no because touch and goes aren't really landings, and they aren't really takeoffs. Meanwhile they present all the risks of both, as certain accidents clearly illustrate. Touch and goes, they say (sometimes heatedly) are counterfeits, and by implication, instructors who teach with them are counterfeiters.

Touch and go advocates indignantly blast that type of harsh argument as more of the same from cynics who just don't get it. Making use of touch and goes is practical, economical, and a way of dealing with busy airport traffic patterns. As for the accidents offered up by the other side in the debate, well, you can probably find fault with the way a particular touch and go was flown without throwing out the maneuver for all pilots in all cases.

What's true is that touch and goes do have characteristic vulnerabilities and risk factors. All pilots should know what they are. If knowing what they are is best accomplished through experience, let's stipulate that performing enough touch and goes to pound the risk message home is worth doing in safety's name, just as the reasons for practicing stall recoveries are safety-based.

Touch-and-go landings admittedly can be hectic. Lacking the full-stop landing's unhurried process of taxiing back to the end of the runway, reconfiguring the aircraft, and taking off again, the touch and go can make a nervous or uncertain student pilot feel even more uncomfortable. That's what critics dislike most about touch and goes, and that's where you'll find most of the susceptibility to error and accidents.

On December 18, 2007, that combination of factors during transition got the better of a student pilot entering a traffic pattern in a Cessna 172. "The student pilot stated that he entered left closed traffic for Runway 21 at the Talladega Municipal Airport, Talladega, Alabama," said a National Transportation Safety Board accident summary. "He landed and started to prepare the airplane for a touch and go. As he applied power he lost directional control of the airplane, went off the left side of the runway, and collided with a tree." Probable cause: "The pilot's failure to maintain directional control of the airplane."

Swerving left after applying power in a single is a predictable (and, therefore, avoidable) error, suggesting possible failure to correct for the yaw forces generated by a sudden increase in engine rpm. Take your time bringing up the power. If you opted to land, you should have plenty of runway in front of you; a gentle hand on the throttle will minimize directional mishaps. Right rudder pressure should be applied at the same time power is added. It's a matter of when to add rudder pressure, not if. How much? Enough to keep straight and no being shy about it! Even a mild-mannered Skyhawk can be demanding in this phase.

And while we're lingering on the subject of how much rudder is enough, you have to be looking out the windscreen to know whether your track has changed. At the same time, you need to retract flaps, retrim the airplane, and remove carburetor heat (in carbureted-engine airplanes). But the whole time, you can't be sitting there, head down, fumbling for a microphone, or transfixed by an instrument on the panel. Watch where you're going.

If touch and goes don't deserve blanket denunciation, what is it that makes them imprudent in one case and acceptable the next? Narrow your runway and you'll narrow your safety margin. Add a variable gusting wind; now you're adding risk factors at a rapid rate. This was the setup for an accident in Houston, Texas, on December 28, 2007, according to an NTSB summary. Once again the moment of reconfiguration for takeoff was when the trouble arose.

"The private pilot was flying multiple visual patterns on a 40-foot-wide asphalt runway. Winds were reported by the pilot as variable and gusting. The pilot stated that during the third touch and go, the wind shifted to a crosswind with a tailwind component. While reconfiguring for takeoff, the pilot perceived a faster than normal groundspeed. A gust of wind contacted the airplane's tail pushing the nose to the left. The pilot attempted to correct back to centerline but was hesitant to input an aggressive correction due to the faster than normal groundspeed. The left main gear ran off the runway onto the grass and the airplane departed the left side of the runway." The airplane went over after the nose gear dug into mud.

This time we also have the pilot's reflections on what might have prevented the problems: "On a NTSB Form 6120.1, the pilot reported that the accident could have been prevented with a more aggressive rudder input." Probable cause: "The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control. A contributing factor was prevailing crosswind."

A coherent debate on touch and goes isn't complete without examining official policy, and comparing it to what the proponents and opponents have to say. So, what does the FAA's Airplane Flying Handbook decree? Check Chapter 5, where takeoffs are discussed, and you'll find nothing. So check Chapter 8, the repose of official wisdom about landings. Not a word to be found there either. Officials do know that touch and goes are out there, and base certain policies on the maneuver. For example, look up specific airports, and you will find that restrictions are in place (for noise abatement) against performing touch and goes at certain times of day or night. Is that an official sanction? Unclear.

What's your view? For another perspective, see "A Different Kind of Landing" (August 2008 AOPA Flight Training).

A clever politician could assuage the sound and the fury of the debate by proposing that we reclassify touch and goes as a subspecies of the hallowed go-around, thus immunizing them against the harshest attacks. After all, go-arounds are to flight training what baseball, babies, and apple pie represent to political campaigns. Despite risks, go-arounds are undisputed lifesavers. It's unlikely that a "ban go-arounds movement" would ever fly. Over the long haul, then, the hidden value of the touch-and-go debate remains the educational component of the discussion for pilots.

Dan Namowitz is an aviation writer and flight instructor. A pilot since 1985 and an instructor since 1990, he resides in Maine.