@WingsWaterAndWheels ok I agree, on runways with barely any margin it’s also a good SOP to have that decision reference, absolutely.
@LeSving I couldn’t agree more. To me the go round if I’m not comfortable, is my automatic reaction. I can then consider how I might get more comfortable on the next approach or should I go elsewhere.
One has to be a bit careful about being prescriptive of where you cut power, whether you reduce before the flare, on the approach or during the flare IMO depends very much on the aircraft, its weight, wind conditions etc. For me no matter where you do it, it needs to be done smoothly to achieve the best landing.
Be careful in a Robin 400 though because the best kiss landings mean that the nose wheel can shoot you off in the direction you don’t want to go if you don’t put a bit of forward pressure on the stick to put enough weight on the nose wheel. (Note I did write “can” and also I write this because I am assuming maxbc is training or has trained in France. No disrespect intended.)
maxbc wrote:
That looks right. 1.3Vs (+Ve) on final, cut the power when the runway is reached with certainty, and soon after start the flare
What I learned ages ago when taking the PPL was 1500 rpm, 80 mph at approach (C-172). Cut power before touch down. For ULs we do it the same way as they do in the air force. Idle at initial point and glide all the way down, airspeed according to the POH on final. On short field/bush, forget all that (just remember what is short or long depends on the aircraft). I remember at one field, sadly it doesn’t exist anymore, you had to follow the river between the trees, then 45 degree left and 3s later touch down 
There is a similar one however. Depending on how fast the aircraft can descend, you can either fly up a small valley, then 90 degree left and land. The other way is to fly straight in, but then over a small hill, making the final very steep, essentially following the hill down. Works just fine with the Savannah, not sure I even would try it with a Cub.
Even at ENMO things can be hard due to wind and up/down draft as WWW explained (downdraft at the other end can be much worse). Two deadly accidents there in recent years. One was probably caused by wind at take off from a touch and go. At those places, if things doesn’t look OK (like 100%), then there’s no question: make a go around. And even if you do make a go around, the danger isn’t over. That is true regardless of aircraft. The accident mentioned was done with a 180 hp RV-6.
We have discussed and talked about these things in the local community, and also on national basis. Stabilized approach, doing the same procedures and so on will only get you so far. A go around has the property of saving your a$$ when things get outside your comfort zone. Try again and do it better based on experience from the previous approach(es). However, IME it looks like the back bone reflex of doing a go around simply doesn’t exist, because this has never been practiced for real when training for PPL. Then, when things get tough or unexpected (hectic, and no time to think), the reflex is to “salvage” the landing instead of going around. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Then there are these one way strips where you have to decide at some point well before landing. Continuing from that point if you are not sure, is very stupid of course. It’s also very easy to get over confident. It doesn’t take many perfect landings before you think the next landing also will be perfect, like out of the blue. Stuff will for sure happen, and no one is immune. As long as you can walk away, it’s OK
gallois wrote:
I was taught to use 1.3Vs + Ve on final.
That looks right. 1.3Vs (+Ve) on final, cut the power when the runway is reached with certainty, and soon after start the flare. By the time you touch down speed will have crept down. If you ever heard a stall horn just before touchdown, you’re around 1.1Vs (and it’s around this point that doing a go-around is very tricky).
If you end up in this situation : little runway left, an animal pops, etc., and are considering going around then the decision is hard to make.
Avoiding this situation in the first place is obviously preferable, but I think this is the reason why we see similar accidents. Pilots get surprised by their speed, or by the runway getting eaten up really fast during a too strong flare.
hazek wrote:
But for runways I don’t think it’s needed.
I did write for ‘shortish’ runway, in my case I use this for grass airstrip of less than 500m in length and in the area they come with some sort of extra challenges around: ant ENMO, the private airfield just east of ENVA the river just before the threshold when landing facing south sometimes generates some updrafts, but I also experienced downdraft from it. So you need to be prepared for the downdraft. If you get some updraft, the decision is fairly easy since you will suddenly be way higher than you need. But it all depends on the situation when you get on that part of the short final, which can lead being almost on your desired path but not quite. There are trees on the other side, so having a reference point to be able to make the decision without any thinking is a good thing.
For seaplane it becomes even more important in glassy conditions, because then it’s hard to predict how long it takes before touching the water, so your landing distance gets very unpredictable…
For runways I don’t think picking a spot is needed. If performance was calculated with sufficient margin it’s all about hitting your targets and having the discipline to try again in case you don’t. Is it looking like you’re overshooting your aiming point? Go around. Are you too fast? Go around. Are you too high or too low? Go around. Do you have tailwind? Go around. But otherwise a safe landing should be accomplishable.
For seaplanes you don’t know how much LDA you have before hand so you measure it by overflying it and then you might make a mistake so best to have an additional indicator. But for runways I don’t think it’s needed.
I trained a lot at our home base on a over 13k ft long runway and we nearly always have to land at intersections as per regs. One could easily develop a bad habit of being imprecise as there would be a Spa’s runway lenght of runway before the intersection on either side. But our instructors are very strict, and especially on progress checks you were not allowed to land short. Nor were you allowed to land long. So you had to aim well. I think I had one landing so far where I landed long at the very beginning still as a student pilot and it was because I didn’t appreciate what a slight tailwind can do to your landing distance. Arguably I should have gone around then and landed opposite runway but it turned out ok despite my long float and 800m runway. Being precise with my aimpoint and approach speed and not wasting any runway coming over the threshold helped me there a lot.
I agree about picking a spot by which if your wheels are not on the ground and you are in control, you should go around.
That goes alongside 172driver’s comment about leaving it too late before deciding to go around.
@maxbc your training is obviously different to mine. I was taught to use 1.3Vs + Ve on final. By the time I got to the round out I would be more concentrated on where to flare and lowering myself as gently as I can to my touch down point. Served me well so far.
But I will agree if you ask many pilots what your speed on final should be with and without various stages of flaps or with or without a strong headwind most will quote what they have been taught. Some don’t even realise how this changes from aircraft to aircraft.
To give one example a DA40D has a full flap landing distance required of IIRC 650m of which around 320m is ground roll.
Without flaps and carrying say 10knts extra for the fact that you are not using flaps you will be stamping on the brakes hard to stop before the end of a 1000m runway.
In France most training pushes hard on if you are not sure about anything “go around”. Far too many accidents have been caused by not doing so.
I would be surprised if your instructor does or did not teach the same.
Most important of all is:- to know your aircraft (POH)
Secondly is to know of any problems at the place you are going to land.(VAC, notams, weather)
The rest you need to use judgement but if you are not sure “go round”.
0fficer wrote:
1. A safe abort point is a physical identifiable location where you should have touched down at or before. For long runways it can be the middle of the runway, but for shorter runways like Spa it might be somewhere between the threshold and 200-300m down the runway. The key is to brief yourself on downwind something along the lines: “If I’m not down and braking abeam the windsock, I’ll go around”.
That is something I learned during my seaplane training. You first do an inspection of the water area where you plan to land, and during this pick up a reference point. if you touchdown before this point (on a lake it could be a jetty on the shore, a group of trees, a house…) you should be able to stop safely before any obstacle, if not, you go around. On water, it’s more important since you don’t have any precise information about how long the place is so you need to figure everything by yourself.
I later started applying this for wheels planes on smaller runways since I found out that it also make sense there because that means you can evaluate things ahead of time at a point where you are not rushed (for example on downwind or earlier, you should have plenty of time and brain power available to guest estimate something) instead of having to guess while trying to land your airplane (at which point you have little time to think and less brain power available).
My conclusion is that this could usefully used by most pilots, at least when landing on a shortish runway…
I don’t see how your argument holds up.
Now that I think about it something like this happened to me a while ago, which illustrates the problem.
It was early during training, I was doing short solo hops soon after my first solo (I had less than 20 hours). That consisted in going to a nearby airfield with my instructor, and right after doing it again solo.
That time I went to LXFU with 500m DTHR on each side (so the remaining runway for T&G is about 950m, much smaller than my LFPT base). When solo, the aircraft behaves measurably differently from when the FI is there. So, I had just done the T&G with my FI, and was now doing the T&G without him. In this situation, I did not use full flaps (arguably a mistake, but understandable at that level of experience, and I was not told to do so for T&Gs on reasonably long fields). In this situation the aircrafts takes really long to deplete its speed (I think my approach speed was slightly high too). So I remember starting to see the runway being used up as the aircraft was struggling to slow down, and worrying about the trees at the end. I don’t think I ever was in that much danger, but I was still really worried and surprised by the amount of runway used.
From that point on, I always used full flaps when doing solo T&G on a <1000m runway, and I then corrected and better monitored my approach speed.
It’s easy to see how someone may be used to a runway with a certain weight configuration, and, when the aircraft is a lot lighter, float a lot more and take more time to touch down. It could also happen with a different aircraft with different control weights (doing too much flare), or different aerodynamic behavior. We are taught to touchdown at 1.1Vs, so up to that point you can get caught up by not enough runway left (or wildlife etc.) and initiate a go around, which is where it’s really dangerous.
My anecdote was not a bounce but the same problem could happen after a bounce : yes you will have some speed when bouncing, but if you continue the landing you will deplete the speed and eventually touch down at 1.1Vs and have used up a lot of additional runway.
The answer provided by @0fficer is exactly the kind of tool that helps deciding when to safely go-around.
Mine too. But there comes that time.
3 times I have had to initiate a “remise de gas” (go around)on descending to around 30ft on short final when someone has not looked or listened and pulled onto the runway at just about the point I was aiming.
So its go around starting with flaps up to the approach setting, level off ,full power Vyse, climb, positive rate gear up, flaps up.
I’ve only trained it OEI in a Sim but trained it a lot so that it is ingrained. I was fortunate in that at the ATO I was with we could use the sim free of charge during downtime.
What I find frightening is that there seems to be a number of pilots who despite saying they looked, cannot see a DA42 arriving at only 20 or 30ft on final.
I asked an instructor about this and he said actually a larger than 30% of the pilot population might not notice it. In human factors theory they show a slide of a city from an aircraft coming into land and take it off after 2seconds and ask you what was wrong there. Apparently, some 30% don’t notice the helicopter in front of them in the picture.
