Techniques and tips for great landings

Pat Flannigan has recently written a short post entitled “10 Ways to Mess Up a Great Landing” with his ten ways being:

1. Too much airspeed
2. Too little airspeed
3. Flare too high
4. Flare too aggressively
5. No crosswind technique
6. Wrong crosswind technique
7. Not transitioning eyes down the runway
8. Over-controlling the airplane
9. Not trimming
10. Unstabilized approaches

With that in mind, some time ago we had noted this proper landing techniques video from Jason Schappert of MzeroA.com which shows his techniques for teaching proper landings:

Of course, landings can get more complicated than what Pat and Jason talked about above when you start adding in other factors like grass or soft field landing strips, short runways, crosswinds (see here and here), tail wheeled aircraft or (god forbid) a water landing or one on a road – all landing subjects we have covered extensively over the past few years in various posts that you might want to check out here. With that in mind, perhaps its best to reiterate a final pilot word of wisdom:

Always try to keep the number of landings you make equal to the number of take offs you’ve made.