Full Flaps on Landing... Always?

[Dave Krall CFII]

Now for a totally different perspective...

<snip>At an unfamiliar airport I fly a standard pattern every time. And my "standard" pattern includes 30 degrees of flaps on any runway over 2500'. 40 degrees of flaps in a straight tail 182 requres much more precision in the round out and flare than 30 degrees does. This combined with the extreme nose down attitude produced by 40 degrees of flaps isn't worth the less than 1kt difference in stall speed when I'm at an unfamiliar airport. A greased landing with 30 degrees produces much less wear and tear than a "thump" with 40 degrees.

Why not practice a little more until it can be greased in at 40 degrees, no matter what the familiarity of the surroundings of the surface being landed upon?

 

[gismo]

Why not practice a little more until it can be greased in at 40 degrees, no matter what the familiarity of the surroundings of the surface being landed upon?

Chances are the difficulty Tim was referring to is as much the result of avoiding 40 degee flap landings as the other way around. I suspect that if he routinely used full flaps it would become second nature.

 

[Dan Thomas]

Chances are the difficulty Tim was referring to is as much the result of avoiding 40 degee flap landings as the other way around. I suspect that if he routinely used full flaps it would become second nature.

With full flaps the deck angle is lower (nose is low) and the flare will require more pull and a larger change in angle to the nose-up attitude. Some pilots have trouble getting it and end up touching down flat (which means the airplane is still travelling too fast) or even bouncing the nose off the runway and starting a porpoise. Or ballooning. They might blame the full-flap approach as the source of their trouble.

The trick is to do it as the textbooks will tell you: Don't wait until you are two feet off the surface before beginning the flare, but get the power off and the nose coming up in the "round-out" which should start between 15 and 30 feet above the runway. This not only gives more time to get that nose up where it should be, as the rate of change is much slower, but it also gets rid of the unnecessary speed before touchdown. Some are afraid of stalling if they do it, and those people should go to altitude and stall the aircraft with full flaps and see just what the deck angle and indicated airspeed are by the time the bottom falls out. Very enlightening.

Dan