WHAT IS A FLARE? And how to perform SOFTER landings? Explained by CAPTAIN JOE

dear friends and followers welcome back to my channel how to perform softer landings on my flight sim and what is a flare we'll clarify in this video and we'll look at a few bumpy landings and to see what we can learn from them so prepare yourself for some absolute greases and let's get started [Music] in aviation that very last phase of your flight prior to touching down with the main landing gear first followed by the nose wheel is the so-called flare it is the shortest of all flight phases but probably the best known among passengers as the outcome of your flare is at an absolute butter landing as plane spotters like to call it which looks and feels fantastic for the passengers and you as the pilot or it's the complete opposite and your landing becomes a youtube sensation and trust me it's only a matter of a split second between this [Music] or this if you want to see 15 reasons which could have been the cause for a hard landing check out the video right here okay let's talk about the flare in ball detail now first to note a flare is a technique a technique that varies from airplane to airplane for example when flying the cessna 172 the pilot sits only four feet off the ground and initiates the flare at about 10 feet but sitting in a boeing 747 where the pilot sits at 25 feet you initiate the flare much earlier now let's use the 747-8 as an example we're flying a standard ils approach onto runway 3-4 center in seattle at a 3-degree glide slope calm winds and a landing weight of 300 tons and we've chosen flaps 30 for landing now after using the opt it shows us that the expected reference speed vref with flaps 30 will be 149 knots plus a 5 knots additive giving us a target speed of 154 knots as mentioned calm winds meaning the indicated airspeed of 154 knots is also your ground speed so at 1400 feet you should be fully configured a thousand feet prior touchdown so the airport elevation is at about 400 feet flaps at 30 and flying your calculated target speed of 154 knots which gives us a descent rate of 154 knots times 5 equals 770 feet so let's make it 800 feet per minute your vertical speed indicator should be showing at 704 feet the automatic call out will say 100 at 604 feet minimum and then you call out continue if all parameters are within their limits and you briefly look outside to spot the runway now you maintain your 800 feet per minute and transition back and forth between the airspeed glide slope and localizer indications vertical speed and the poppy lights now once the threshold passes out of sight under the airplane's nose shift your view to the far end of the runway this will help you control the pitch attitude and then when you hear the 50 feet call out by the radio ultimate 50. this is your absolute attention alert as you are now only 1.4 seconds away from transitioning from a glide path descent rate into the famous flare then 40 feet and at 30 feet radial altimeter height which by the way is not your height above the runway but the measured height from the main landing gear to the runway you initiate the flare now pay attention because a lot is happening now at the 30 feet call out you gently increase the pitch by two to three degrees and you hold it there this will break the 800 descent rate at least by half now simultaneously you smoothly the throttles you'll instantly feel resistance on the control column pulling forward as the engines are spooling down which is a natural tendency of the plane as you decrease power the nose comes down but you are still flying this plane and you prevent it from doing so and you firmly hold the control column in the same position to maintain that pitch you then literally wait for the engines to spool down and once they reach idle the main landing gear should touch down now during the flare your speed will naturally bleed off as you are firmly pitching up and you're throttling back ideally only the five not additive the v ref then should be your touchdown speed now once the main gear has touched down your fingers quickly reach over to the reversers and pull them aft simultaneously the ground spoilers extend but the nose wheel is still airborne now with the ground spoilers extending the reversers opening and the autobreak kicking in the plane naturally gets a nose down tendency now to prevent the nose wheel from slamming into the runway gently hold that pitch and wait for the nose to come down slowly by itself and that is your flare completed and the next will then be the roll out phase now as mentioned before it is the shortest flight phase lasting only four to eight seconds and a thousand to two thousand feet beyond the threshold now this technique is more or less the same during crosswind landings except that the inputs have to be made to counteract the crosswind but breaking the descent rate at 30 feet remains the same but the counter inputs must be made and kept that the plane or the wings are level and on the center line until at least 70 knots or less okay let's do a quick recap be established latest at a thousand feet above airport elevation maintain the descent rate according to your approach speed and glide slope at 50 feet be fully alert look at the far end of the runway at 30 feet break the descent rate by adding two to three degrees on your pitch simultaneously throttle back hold the pitch and wait for the main gear to touch down by the way this technique of firmly holding the yoke to maintain the pitch after throttling back is the same if you fly a 747 or a cessna 152 an interesting side note this is why the airbus pitch mode on the fma switches from glide slope to flare mode giving the pilot a feeling as if he is flaring a conventional plane by pulling the side stick aft during the flare okay let's quickly have a look at a few flare mishaps okay good okay let's quickly have a look at the video in a slow-mo um there's a key thing you can immediately spot now look at the plane here you can tell that the colleague is nowhere near of initiating a flare neither is he pitching up you can't even see the nose going up meaning he this is more or less a landing without flare the plane has so much energy because the descent rate wasn't broken and so much speed that it just slams into the runway and that energy is just being forced into the main gear and then it just pushes it back up again giving it a balanced landing and it doesn't become any easier when you have to land a plane a couple of times after that as well all right yep okay okay let's quickly have a look at the slo-mo well you can clearly see here is that the colic is initiating the flare you can see the nose coming out by two to three degrees but he's done it too late meaning the plane didn't even have the chance to actually break the descent rate it still was coming down at a really high speed so i assume he initiated flare let's say 20 feet and that just didn't give him enough space to actually smooth out and use that air speed to smooth into that flare or into that transition to come down at a slower descent rate and then he just planted the plane into the ground you can also see there was a bit of a bounce to it still too much energy in the plane jumping it off the runway and then you have to land it a second time good old evelyn a330 oh boy okay that's what you would call a long flare so what happened is that the colic has initiated the flare maybe a little bit too early or maybe a little bit too harsh meaning it wasn't actually breaking descent he was completely cutting it out meaning he's leveled off and then the plane sort of glides along uh which is obviously not correct and that sort of causes then a long flare can be very dangerous and because you're obviously missing your touchdown zone and then you fly or flare into the runway and at one point you actually have to touch down otherwise you run out of runway so that decision making am i going to touch down or am i going to perform a go-around can be very very tricky doing a long flare believe me when i say this is something you need to practice i've had my fair share with bumpy landings and you get better and better with experience so start off slow practice with no wind first and work your way up to a 90 degree crosswind landings another video will be coming soon on how to flare during strong crosswinds and the better you get challenge yourself to land at madara airport in portugal and use my landing video as a guidance right here also please comment below what expressions you use for a soft or hard landing i am so excited to see what you guys call them that's it for today thank you very much for your time here's your checklist subscribe to my channel check activate the notification bell check follow my instagram account check perform a touch and go at my website where you can get this beautiful plane right here and don't forget a good pilot is always learning wishing you all the [Music] best [Music] you

Channel: Captain Joe

Views: 512,961

Keywords: how to land a plane, soft landing, captain joe, captain joe landing, what is a flare, how to flare a plane, flaring, landing technique, hard landing, crash landing, bounce landing, ryanair landing, how to fly an ILS, glideslope, localizer, how pilots land, flight simulator, MSFS2020, 747-8, boeing, airbus, A380, zfnhva, tech, pilot facts, can a passenger land a plane, how to land a 747, how to land an Airbus

Id: MMGPay_y2qo

Length: 10min 21sec (621 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021