Is landing an aeroplane the hardest part of flying?

Question

Hi! I'd like to know if landing is the hardest part of a flight, as I am saving up to learn to fly but would love a grip on the basics first!

To the untrained eye, landing merely involved slowly decreasing altitude will maintaining level flight until you touch down. What is actually involved, in simple terms (assuming conditions are favourable and everything is functioning normally)?

Answer 1

Yes. It is the most stressful part to. You need to look at several factors and lots of different things and make them come together. If you do anything wrong you are likely to land badly or crash.

Things to do.

Permission to land.

Line up with runway.

Control speed.

Control approach angle.

Look out for other planes.

Check instruments.

Make sure you can get out of a situation should things go pear shape.

Try to keep on schedule.

Air traffic control.

Weather.

Aircraft fuel.

Aircraft weight.

Flaps.

Air brakes.

Throttle.

Alttitude.

Bearing.

(OMG i need a pee)

Lots and lots and lots all at once.

Answer 2

It is the most stressful part of flying. Basically - landing is a controlled crash without the final BUMP. All landings are not under favourable conditions as the weather can change, motor problems, electrical problems etc.

Answer 3

Well,  try FSX   flight simulator X

but try fs2004 if your computers slow  

Answer 4

Rover, I am not a pilot, have never been one (airplane pilot, that is, but have piloted boats) but worked with them for a long time. It seems to me that the most difficult part of flying is making correct decisions. Pilots have to make thousands of them, and many of them are life and death ones. Even landing is filled with decision-making. Most pilots make decisions that are correct ones, and their training and knowledge help them to make the correct ones. Occasionally, they do make the wrong ones. An example is John Kennedy Jr., who decided to fly into a situation for which he was not trained, costing his life and two others. This is just one example that is familiar to most people, but not on a decision-making level.

Regards,

Dan

Answer 5

At first landing may seem like a difficult task but after a while it becomes second nature due to the practise a good instructor puts you through. Even cross wind landings become second nature as long as you have practised, which is what a good instructor will make you do.

The workload in the air a pilot can have tends to be difficult if not managed correctly.

A pilot needs to know what's going on with his aircraft and the surrounding weather constantly. He must keep a visual for other aircraft and maintain a correct heading. Fuel consumption has to be monitored and the engine has to be kept running efficiently.

Landing is just a contolled descent to a stall upon touchdown. Simple terms.

You work with the wind, not against it.

(That doesn't mean landing with the wind.)

If you got a stiff cross wind you set up appropriately and descend.

It's not the hardest part, it's the most controlled portion of the flight.

Answer 6

In short yes. I am not a pilot but I have flown hang gliders and micro- light aircraft.

Answer 7

Actually, learning to fly "straight and level" is the hardest part of flying. Landing is not very difficult to learn, matter of fact I taught many spouses of pilots to land in the event the pilot spouse was incapacitated in flight and since all they were interested was to be able to land the plane safely, the average time it took for them to learn was 5 hours.

There have been cases of non-pilots with no training whatsoever landing an airplane after the pilot was incapacitated in flight and another pilot talked them through the maneuver by radio from another airplane.

I usually describe the landing to a new student as a descent, followed by flying straight and level just off the ground as the airplane decelerates and touches down. When I teach, the student will probably land the airplane on the first lesson, but that doesn't mean that the student will be able to land on his own. I will be  talking the student through the approach and landing and may have to help a little with the controls.

A good instructor will allow you to have the controls from the first time you get in a plane and you will be doing all the flying, with some help from the instructor. During your pre-solo flights, you will practice a variety of maneuvers which will allow you to become familiar and comfortable with the airplane.

The first solo is only a stage during the flight training. It allows the student to realize that he or she can actually fly the airplane on their own and it is a confidence builder. After the first solo, the student will practice to improve the maneuvers he has learned and also learn new and more advanced maneuvers, cross country navigation both by dead-reckoning and by use of radios, until the time he or she is ready for the private pilot oral and flight test.

Look for a small airport near where you live and go there. Talk with the owner, flight instructors, pilots. Most pilots love to talk about flying, (some exaggeration will happen), and some may even take you flying.

Good luck, we need more pilots.

Answer 8

If you have a 10,000 foot long runway and a small Cessna, landing is relatively easy.  However, if you are putting that same Cessna down on a 700 foot grass strip with trees at both ends, it gets much harder!

Now, add a crosswind and rain or low light conditions.

So, bottom line is that the difficulty of the landing depends upon the landing environment.

Answer 9

I would say when learning the hardest part is learning all the maneuvers with hand eye coordination. Stalls and recovery especially. The hood time could be intimidating also.

Once you get your license I would agree with you that landings would remain the most challenging along with instrument time.

On landings, the easiest technique that works for me is keeping the nose tip focused on the numbers below, then after passing the threshold line, cutting power and flaring to the runway. Works like a charm. Only do this if there are no vasi lights, other wise, by all means use the lights instead.

listen to your instructor and follow what he says more than what you read here. Good luck.

I need more thumbs down to cheer me up.

Answer 10

Landing is most definitely the hardest part of airplane flight. I have landed an aircraft once in my life and it was the hairiest experiences that I can recall; and I've been in three serious traffic accidents.

I am not a certified pilot but I do on occasionn get to have at the controls of a buddy's Cessna 172. Unless it is an emergency I will never attempt another landing.

Answer 11

It's interesting how attractive this question was to answerers who are not pilots.  Most of the answers are incomplete or are matters of uninformed opinion.  Please don't buy the garbage about "controlled crash landings."  It's either controlled, or it's a crash landing--one or the other, but not both.

A "controlled crash landing" is what you were doing a few seconds before you make an uncontrolled crash landing.  So stick to real landings, okay?  They are much easier.

Landing an airplane (or aeroplane) is, for most people, the most difficult aspect of flight for the beginner, when first learning to fly.  Later, when a pilot becomes more experienced, landing becomes routine, and, though it always requires attention and a high level of respect for the forces of nature and the things that can go wrong, landing does not continue to be the most difficult part of flying.

To experienced professional pilots, the most difficult parts of flying are managing marginal weather conditions (icing, thunderstorms, downbursts, wind shear, and the like) and flying holding patterns.  These are obviously not issues for the beginning student pilot, but if one continues to advance one's flying skills, these will eventually become the dominant issues.

Only a poorly-trained pilot would suggest any of the "techniques" mentioned in previous answers.  It's nice to have VASI, but no serious pilot relies on it exclusively.

Landing an airplane is a process of acquiring the visual impression of the runway environment, as framed in the visual field of the pilot's eyes, and then using one's experience and basic skill to maintain the proper balance of airspeed, rate of descent, power, and angle of attack to bring the airplane to the runway threshold just above stall speed and with the tires six feet off the runway.

To learn what to do next, get a female dog and take her for walks.  To complete the landing, do what your dog does when she needs to pee.  That may sound like a joke, but when you start to actually make your own landings, you'll see what I mean.

The point I'm making is that there are tight limits to what can be explained about landing until you do it yourself.  FSX and other PC based flight simulators are of absolutely no help in this.  You have to get out there and herd the aluminum for yourself.

Which do, first chance you get.

Answer 12

I can't add much more than some of the seasoned veterans have, except for this.  I had been flying after getting my license for about 6 years before it all came together for me about the power curve, picking a spot, and airspeed management.  Until then, I still did the "chop the power" technique too.  After that, controlled, powered flight in the back part of the curve became one of the best challenges I've faced in aviation, and precision landings became a reality.  I don't think I was unsafe BEFORE it all clicked, but I am definitely more precise and predictable now, and I really can feel the airplane.  There is a good reason why you spend so much time doing slow flight, it's not just an exercise.  

Is landing the hardest part, not for me.  The hardest part is being prepared for eventualities, always being vigilent and always considering the risk to me and my passengers.  The mental stuff was always tougher than the stick and rudder stuff.  Resisting the urge to "buzz the house" on your third local area solo is the real tough stuff, and it is stuff like that that kills a lot of folks.

Good luck.

Answer 13

I concur with all of the answers that state that judgment is the hardest aspect of flying.  There are a lot of times that pilots have to admit that the flight can't be made... It could be weather, skill level, physical or emotional fatigue... It's not easy to make that kind of call.  Everybody has a little bit of "hero" mentality that needs to be suppressed sometimes.

Situational awareness and multitasking is also difficult to learn.  When controlling the plane may seem like enough work alone, it's also important to create mental pictures of who and what is around you by using landmarks, radios, and your own eyes.

As far as the physical skills of flying are concerned (as opposed to mental), landing is one of the more complex maneuvers.  I'm not saying that it's necessarily the most difficult thing to do, but it is fairly complex.  It requires manipulating all three axis of the aircraft independently with changing speed and control inputs, all while venturing into the region of reverse command, which is commonly called the "back side of the power curve".  All of this while managing power, sink rate, airspeed, and wind drift.  Landing is really the integration of 5 or 6 separate skills into a single task.  The trick is learning each of those skills before trying to do them all together.

Answer 14

In favorable weather, your explanation basically is it. The simplest approach for landing is the visual, which means you do not use autopilot or radio navigation to land. the tough parts of landing are a few things: getting the correct glide slope (some airports have visual aides for this), flaring at the end, and sometimes using ILS (instrument landing system)

Answer 15

I don't want to put you off or anything but I was told this by a Pilot...

'When a Pilot lands an Aircraft it is in effect a Controlled Crash landing, as planes were not engineered to land or take off.'

Answer 16

To the beginner, landing is the most challenging aspect of flying.  In reality though, the hardest part of flying is the management of everything.  This is something a new pilot doesn't think about at first because the flight instructor is handling that.  Eventually, the physical aspect of flying will become second nature, even landing.  Dealing with adverse weather, things that break, emergencies, passenger disturbances (if you get into airline flying), deciding when/where to divert due to weather or congestion... managing all of that is what becomes challenging.  

At first, it will seem like all a pilot has to do is physically maneuver the plane from point A to point B.  Once you gain more experience, you'll realize that physically controlling the plane is the simplest part of the job.  As a Captain/PIC, you're really a manager.  This is why, during an emergency, I would rather have my first officer actually fly the airplane.  That way, I can concentrate on handling ATC, checklists, passenger announcements, procedures, etc.  That's the stuff that an inexperienced pilot will mess up.  Flying an ILS approach and landing with one engine shutdown, that's the easy part.