Ah, crosswinds. One of those skills that brings out the best and the worst in pilots. As an instructor, I see firsthand how pilots struggle to master these techniques. Crosswinds force the pilot to balance throttle control, pitch attitude, speed, and altitude, all while fighting to maintain runway centerline alignment.
As a CFI, I tend to use a very analytical, building-block style of instruction. If a student is having difficulty with a complicated maneuver, I like to break it down and devise a series of flight exercises that teach first one component skill, then another, and so on until complex proficiency has been built up. As an aid in teaching crosswinds, a few years ago, I purchased the X-Wind 200 crosswind landing simulator. Using the simulator, I can create for students a safe, completely controllable crosswind training environment. I can demonstrate and teach each component skill and build students up to the complex set of skills used in crosswinds.
After thousands of landings in the plane, and hundreds of hours teaching students in the simulator, I’ve watched the light come on in students’ eyes when things finally click. I see the big lessons they struggle with most. These are the biggest lessons I’ve seen students learn during crosswind training.
1. Feet first. By far, this is the most important advice I can give any pilot working on crosswinds. If there’s an order of operations in a crosswind landing, using feet to control the rudder is priority number one. If a pilot understands the importance of rudder control, a lot of things become significantly easier.
Why is this worth special emphasis? For one thing, it’s in direct contrast to the way most pilots approach landings, with their hands moving all over the place and their feet barely moving. As humans, we are used to using hands far more than feet and end up doing everything with them. This may be true in most aspects of life, but in flying we use our feet. And in taking off and landing in a crosswind, the feet become critical.
2. To begin any slip, start with your feet. Why is this a new idea? Well, for one thing it is exactly opposite from what the FAA says in the Airplane Flying Handbook. There it says to lower your wing first, and then use rudder to counteract the resulting turn. That’s how I was taught as a student pilot, and I believe this is how most CFIs teach slipping flight today. In reality, both the aileron and rudder controls are likely moved at the same time, so does it matter?
It does. Starting with your feet is important. It takes care of the first priority first. In a full forward slip, full rudder should be applied and then the ailerons can be used to manage direction of flight. Sideslipping for a crosswind landing is substantially easier to learn and master if you first start off with rudder control to align the airplane with the runway centerline. Once the airplane body is parallel to the runway centerline, aileron control can be used to find a bank angle that cancels drift.
Watching a pilot slip by lowering the wing first is an exercise in overcorrecting. They constantly tweak the bank angle, then the rudder, then the bank angle, then the rudder. Everything is so much easier and more stable if the pilot starts with the feet and applies rudder control first.
3. Once aligned to the centerline, stay aligned at all times. On final approach to a crosswind landing, the airplane starts out in a crab and must be pulled into a sideslip. As I mentioned above, the first pilot control should be rudder, to pull the nose parallel to the runway centerline. Then a bank angle is established to hold the centerline. Staying parallel to the centerline is critical, even if the airplane has drifted to one side of the centerline. Any sideways movement to get back to the centerline should be done with the airplane still parallel. In practice, we can swoop the airplane from one side of the runway to the other and back to the centerline, all the while maintaining the body of the airplane perfectly parallel to the runway centerline. If at any time in a crosswind landing, you find your student to the side of the centerline, you should instruct him to begin a swoop back to the centerline, staying obsessively parallel throughout the swoop.
Why is this so important? At any time during a gusty crosswind landing, the winds may change and the airplane may touch down sooner than intended. It is critical that the airplane be parallel to its motion down the runway so that the wheels are not sideloaded and the airplane doesn’t tip over.
4. A stable bank angle makes for a stable landing. If you sit and watch people land in crosswinds, you’ll see there are two types of pilots—those who maintain a stable, consistent bank angle, and those who wag their wings back and forth all the way in. Bank angle controls horizontal drift. A stable bank angle is the only way to hold the airplane steadily over the extended centerline. A constantly changing, ever-wagging bank angle can only result in constantly drifting right and left with the airplane never fully under stable control.
5. If the airplane can’t be aligned to the centerline, don’t land here. How do you know if the crosswind is too much for the airplane? Do you listen to the ATIS and estimate crosswind components? Do you check a crosswind diagram on your kneeboard? All that is good, but here’s an additional tool. If there isn’t enough rudder to bring the airplane parallel to the runway centerline, there isn’t enough rudder authority to complete the landing in the current conditions. Go around. Try again and see if the winds die down on the next pass, or find an alternate airport.
6. Feet are immediate. Hands have a delay. Or more accurately, in a crosswind landing, rudder control is immediate and drift control is delayed. What does this mean? To understand this, you have to ask yourself two key questions.
Question 1: In a crosswind landing, what do the feet control? Answer: Yaw. And it’s important to note that yaw control is immediate.
Question 2: In a crosswind landing, what do the hands control? Did you answer drift? Because technically, that’s not quite right. Did you answer bank? Still not right. The correct answer is roll. Hands only control roll. If you want to swoop sideways to cancel drift, your hands first initiate a roll. Given time, the roll results in a bank angle. Given time, the bank angle has a horizontal component of lift that cancels drift.
If you understand this, you can see how the feet can make quick, light changes to manage alignment. Pilots who don’t understand the delay in drift correction tend to overcontrol and make too-big aileron movements. Instead, they should think about making smaller aileron movements, waiting patiently for the airplane to react to the changes before making more changes. Pilots who are adept at crosswind landings have quick, light rudder control, and patient, stable bank control.
7. A sideslip is a sideslip is a sideslip. A sideslip is used throughout the approach and landing in a crosswind.
The stable bank angle used to establish the sideslip on the approach is the same stable bank angle that should be held as the airplane enters ground effect, rounds out level, and flares to lose speed. The same technique—feet for parallel. Stable bank angle—holds true for responding to gusts and turbulence.
A number of pilots think that once the airplane is in the flare the wings should be leveled to the runway. This is a classic mistake. The unconscious impulse to level the wings is responsible for a number of pilots drifting off the centerline and getting themselves in trouble. Keep sideslipping!
8. Touching one wheel down doesn’t change anything. Keep sideslipping! In a crosswind landing, the bank angle held during the approach and flare is there for a reason—to keep the airplane from blowing off the centerline. At touchdown, when one wheel has contacted the ground, the need for crosswind correction doesn’t go away. The airplane is still flying and very little weight has transferred to the landing gear. It is important to keep sideslipping.
After one wheel touches down, a number of pilots mistakenly bring the other wheel down as soon as possible, thinking it is
safer to have both wheels down. This is another classic crosswind mistake. The airplane is moving fast and the wings are still creating lift. Weight has not yet transferred to the wheels. By leveling the wing, the pilot exposes the airplane to the horizontal force of the wind and the airplane skids sideways across the runway or sideloads the landing gear.
At touchdown, what should be done with the ailerons? The answer is to hold the same bank angle held during approach and flare! Stare straight ahead at the end of the runway and use the ailerons to try to keep the bank angle from drooping. As the airplane slows down, more and more aileron input will be needed to maintain that bank angle, but this is the right thing to do.
Eventually, the ailerons will be at the stops, the plane will be unable to hold the bank angle any longer and will set down on the downwind wheel. Finally, enough weight has transferred to the wheels to make this safe.
A good sign of a stable, controlled crosswind landing is the airplane touching down on one wheel, and stably balancing on that wheel as long as possible until slowing enough to touch down the other wheel.
9. Every landing is a crosswind landing. Rarely is the wind ever straight down the runway. There’s always some degree of crosswind component, even if it’s small.
In truth, every landing is a crosswind landing. Luckily, the method I’ve described here—feet for parallel. Stable bank angle—works in all wind conditions. Don’t think of this method as a crosswind landing technique, but as a landing technique. It will work for a landing in calm or mild crosswinds as well as it does in gusty, moderate crosswinds.
Dan Dyer lectures and develops flight training materials in the San Francisco Bay area.
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