At this moment half of you are shaking your heads. You’re thinking, How can I make precise landings when I’m not even able to make it down safely? It’s a fair question. If you’re like every other student pilot in the world and still struggling to simply get it on the runway in one piece, making perfectly precise landings every time seems all but unreachable. Here’s a secret: It is. But that shouldn’t stop you from trying.
The pursuit of great landings reminds me of an old joke. A man finds a bottle on the beach and he pops the cork. A genie pops out and offers him only one wish. The man, not wasting any time, expertly draws a map of the Middle East and says he would like peace in that region. “This is impossible,” says the genie. “Make another wish.” So the man pauses, and says, “I’d like to make perfect landings every time.” And the genie says, “Let me see that map.”
It should go without saying that for even the best pilots, great landings aren’t a routine—they are a goal. And a worthy one at that. I think this is often lost on students, who have only their flight instructor as an example, many of whom make pretty decent landings day after day. It can be quite discouraging to see your instructor set it down seemingly perfectly every time while you struggle to keep the airplane in one piece.
The thing you don’t realize at this early stage is that this isn’t what’s happening at all. An instructor judges his own performance differently than he judges yours. What’s perfect to you may be sloppy to him.
This is an important point. In the beginning of training, we aren’t trying to make perfect and precise landings—we’re only trying to demonstrate good technique, solid decision making, and a basic level of skill. To use a sports analogy, you’re trying to make the team, not win the championship.
As Budd Davisson points out in this month’s cover story, “On the Numbers,” beginning on page 28, making great landings is hard because it combines everything we’ve learned up to this point. It’s flying’s final exam. And just like in school, every pilot learns a few tips and tricks. Regardless of how you go about it or what you’re taught, the underlying principle is universal—control airspeed and altitude. If you can do that and then level off at the right height above the runway, everything else will fall into place.
Easier said than done, right? In the first few hours, sure. But things will get easier, pieces of that principle will come together—and pretty soon you’ll be able to not only get it on the runway safely, you’ll be able to put it down in a pretty specific area. Maybe learning to land isn’t as hard as world peace, after all.
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