Will long flare cause heavy landing?

  • :sleeping:Today my hands are floppy and mind is in chaos. When playing the sim in this situation, landing feels badly.

    Pulled stick a bit more and A320 almost stopped losing height at 10 feet. With speed dropping, finally the plane landed, not very hard, with a vetrical speed about -120 fpm.

    Searched on the net, instruction from a real airline says this will not cause heavy landing if situation isn't very very bad. But AFS2 don't have G meter on airliners yet. So I don't know how many overload I had.

    Seems there are many experienced pilot here, help me figure out please, did I just make a heavy landing?

  • The low cost airline pilots remember their hard won performance A qualification and know exactly how dangerous it is to float down far past the calculated touch down point with the cabin at 100 percent occupancy and with multi leg fuel on board onto what might be a minor airport short runway with adverse wind and with less than perfect braking action.

    A safe greaser in a large plane is just a reduction of the descent rate with no trace of a float.

  • Try Singapore Airlines sometime: always a hard landing at whatever airport: and, nearly always one wheel at a time, regardless of wind direction. ;)

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  • In the AFM, you won't find a section that define good or bad landings. But, in the limitation section and emergency procedures/abnormals section, they do define the line for hard landings. In every jet I've flown through out my career, a landing at 600fpm or more required a hard landing inspection. If over max landing weight, 600fpm is lowered to 360fpm. I always considered that an odd number. The manual would also address bounced landings which basically said re-establish the landing attitude.

    To the original question, yes, prolonged flare can lead to a hard landing, but more likely a tail strike. The landing geometry consists of crossing the threshold on glide path and airspeed. Initiate the flare at the proper flare height and touch down no less than VREF - 5. This will happen with a normal approach and flare. Once you move outside of those parameters, you are subject to risks. The problem with a prolonged flare is that you allow the airspeed to decay and a higher than normal pitch is established. At some point, the aircraft runs out of airspeed and the aircraft drops onto the runway instead of being flown on to it. Touching down less than VREF - 10 with higher than normal pitch angle certainly almost guarantees a tail strike. If your flare was high enough, you could indeed exceed the manufacturers max landing fpm as it drops to the runway. On the other side of the coin, your prolonged flare could result from being faster than required for the approach. In this case, you waste runway and risk an over run. Guy once told me while flying a leg, the most worthless blocks of concrete are the ones already behind you and the ones beneath you.

  • Do flight simulators adequately reproduce 'ground effect'? That cushion that landing commercial aircraft seem to sit on for a few seconds prior to touchdown. In forty years of working in a control tower, I've seen every type of landing. Short, long, floated, bounced, bounced twice, touch-and-go, over-pitched, wheelbarrow and crosswind with wing-down or drifted. In flight sims I've probably done them all but I cannot seem to simulate a float with ground effect.

  • Do flight simulators adequately reproduce 'ground effect'? That cushion that landing commercial aircraft seem to sit on for a few seconds prior to touchdown. In forty years of working in a control tower, I've seen every type of landing. Short, long, floated, bounced, bounced twice, touch-and-go, over-pitched, wheelbarrow and crosswind with wing-down or drifted. In flight sims I've probably done them all but I cannot seem to simulate a float with ground effect.

    The most common ways to get into a float situation is to be fast or a flare more than the typical 2 to 3 degree pitch change. The text book flare mainly diminish the sink rate and the plane is flown onto the runway. There are some circumstances that could put you in a float situation.

    1. The winds are pretty gusty and you are carry your gust additives up to 20 knots max on approach. The manuals have rules such as, half of the steady state winds above 10 knots plus all of the gust up to 20 knots. Each aircraft has some minor differences on how you add gust additives. We laugh in the gulfstreams because they tell you to bleed your additives crossing the threshold. In the G550, we pull power to idle at 100ft and drive her on in. They bleed speed slowly and you might lose 5 knots by the flare point, but that's it.

    2. You are flying a heavy type aircraft with large wing engines and the approach and landing speeds are held high at light weights to ensure you have air minimum control speed in the event you go around single engine and use all of that thrust. In this case, again you may end up in a little float. The 777 with it's large engines will keep the approach speed higher at those light weights.

    3. Lastly, you are just having a bad day and ended up fast on the approach because you were too high and couldn't bleed the speed or you raised the nose to 4 to 5 degrees in the flare and prolonged.

    Mainly, if you are faster than the normal approach speed for your weight, you will float with a normal flare. There are plenty runway over runs because a jet was fast, entered the flare, floated midway down the runway before touching down and not being able to stop. I have also seen where a jet is too fast, touched down, but the aircraft did not settle well enough. The ground spoilers would not deploy and the reversers could not be deployed. The plane was so fast that the weight on wheels switches could not be made allowing spoilers and reversers. With out the weight on the wheels, the brakes are not as effective.