When to pull throttle idle on landing.

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Steven Sesto

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Steve
What’s up all. Hope you had a good new year. Got a question:

me and my instructor have been arguing about my landings for the past couple of weeks. He wants me to pull throttle to idle right when I cross the numbers. But I’m still like 2 wing spans higher than the runway. I am arguing with him telling him that I think I should stay at 1500 RPMs until I round off and then easily pull back throttle during my flare to dissipate airspeed. Anyone have any thoughts? I just feel like when you pull the throttle back right over the numbers the plane wants to down real fast and then you play the game of trying to catch up with it and pull it back up

thanks
 
The answer is it depends, every single landing is different. Using a proper approach speed will leave you just enough energy in the plane to round out, flare, and touch down nicely with minimal float. If you're a touch high on the glide slope, i.e. coming in steep, you'll want to pull power earlier and glide down to your aim point. Remember, the maneuver of landing is all about dissipating your potential and kinetic energy until the plane stops flying, ideally an inch over the runway. The longer your engine is spooled up, the more energy you're pumping into the plane, which still needs to be dissipated before touchdown. Keep power in too long and you'll be eating up lots of runway fast, along with the common tendency to try and force it onto the ground too fast, making much more opportunity for bounces, porpoising, loss of control, etc.

It sounds like you need to work on your timing and anticipating that sink when you pull the power. Gotta let that nose down(this is what most students have trouble with), and keep pitching for the proper airspeed(airspeed is king), and trim is your friend.

Personally, i found that practicing power-off landings helped me a bunch to understand and get a feel for the energy management. I struggled for a LONG time with timing my flare, but absolutely greased my first power-off. Now i typically pull power to idle as soon as I know the runway is made and landing is assured. But over the numbers is a great reference point to hone your skills and establish consistency to build upon them.

Stick with it, and be open to what your instructor is telling you. Arguing doesn't make a great learning environment. Good luck
 
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You’re paying your CFI for his/her knowledge and experience. They are hopefully teaching landings to lots of students in addition to having mastered the skill themselves. I’d be cautious in contradicting my CFI (or find a new one).

I’ve been taught power off when the runway is made which is usually somewhere on short final before the flare.

As suggested above, fly some power off side approaches (power to idle abeam the numbers). My CFI/Is routinely tell me I’ve lost the engine abeam the numbers. It’s an energy mgt exercise.

Good luck!
 
Steven Sesto said:
What’s up all. Hope you had a good new year. Got a question:

me and my instructor have been arguing about my landings for the past couple of weeks. He wants me to pull throttle to idle right when I cross the numbers. But I’m still like 2 wing spans higher than the runway. I am arguing with him telling him that I think I should stay at 1500 RPMs until I round off and then easily pull back throttle during my flare to dissipate airspeed. Anyone have any thoughts? I just feel like when you pull the throttle back right over the numbers the plane wants to down real fast and then you play the game of trying to catch up with it and pull it back up

thanks
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I tend to pull to idle quite a bit before the numbers...but I'm old school and I also like altitude on approach...I see lots of youngins' "dragging it in" being very low.

But as @Fearless Tower said, why are you arguing with your instructor?
 
The only time I would expect my student to keep in the power as long as you like is if they are on the backside of the power curve and dragging the plane in low and slow. Otherwise, during a normal approach on glide path or high, I want to see them cut the power as soon as they feel the runway is made which should be sooner than the numbers, especially if they are high. The hard part is getting them to believe the plane has made the runway. Simulated engine outs and no flap landings seem to help them acquire better judgment in this area.
 
If you have landable runway underneath you, you don't need power (unless you have a real messed-up approach). This is the time you should be adjusting to a minimal energy landing.
 
What plane are you flying? If it's a typical Cessna trainer, that's a really bad idea and if it's a typical Piper trainer, that's a bad idea. Two random reasons it's a bad idea - you will use up much more runway than normal and won't get the energy management practice that could make the difference if you ever find yourself behind a engine that decides to die. There's others, too, like spending too long flaring and floating will make crosswind landings a massive pain in the patooty.

There's no one spot to pull the throttle to idle, and I'm sure there's lots of different ways that instructors teach this, but I've yet to meet an instructor who advocated for landing with so much extra power. For a reference point, the only time my instructor had me keep the power in when we were already over the runway was when practicing soft field landings (a teeeny bit of power made those smoother and softer, but I was flying a Hershey-bar Archer) and when I'd be coming in lower or slower than I normally did, and it was always power to idle just as I began to flare. Once you are raising the nose, you really don't need the extra power unless you're already too slow or have the plane in a bad attitude. I preferred coming in a bit high on final and using slips and flaps as needed, which meant I was usually power to idle long before the numbers.

It might help to think about it this way - when you change the configuration of one part of the plane, you'll probably have to change another thing at the same time. When you add flaps, you have to simultaneously gently push the nose down or reduce power a little if you want to eliminate the plane's desire to climb when you add that extra lifting power. As you come over the numbers on landing, as you ease the power out, gently begin to put back pressure on the yoke. If you're starting to sink and fast after pulling the power, slightly increase the angle of attack. It'll take practice to figure out how much pitch increase you need to maintain a similar descent speed as you had with power, but you'll find if you're maintaining a good descent speed, once you find ground effect, it'll help smooth and slow down the descent to the runway surface as much as keeping that extra power in did. As a plus, you'll be more likely to be in a good energy management state and less likely to have problems with bouncing or oscillations.
 
It depends. And it's part of what makes learning to land well a challenge. Enjoy the challenge.
 
drummer4468 said:
pull power to idle as soon as I know the runway is made and landing is assured.
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Dingdingding! Any power left in after the runway is made is just extra energy to dissipate.
 
MauleSkinner said:
I argued with my instructor when I was 17 and he was 21 because I was smarter than him. :rolleyes:
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Salty said:
I've had instructors that were wrong more than once. It doesn't sound like this one is wrong though.
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Obviously instructors can be wrong, but we're talking about a basic flight skill, not a piece of factual knowledge that can be verified in a book. The instructor knows how to land, the student does not.
 
They key here is having an intuitive feel for the energy of the aircraft. You need enough energy to flair and land smoothly, but not so much that you'll float into the next county.
 
My biggest problem with landings was reluctance to pull the power, hence flying the plane right into the runway which is a mild version of controlled flight into terrain and what beats up trainers’ landing gear. The right way to do it is to lead the plane gently into not wanting to fly anymore and time it so that happens as the wheels touch down. If you’ve configured everything else right, you don’t want or need power once over the threshold.

I understand where you’re coming from with the feeling that if you pull the power the plane will “come down real fast”. I suppose the other thing that beats up landing gear is the plane stopping flying a little high and indeed falling down hard (CFIs? That wasn’t my main problem.)

If everything is configured properly the plane won’t drop like a brick by pulling the power. Others have talked about configuration better than I can.

For me, in training, I had the firm idea that power = safety. Airspeed = safety. I “felt” safe as long as I had the right angle of attack, airspeed, and power. I found myself with a visceral reluctance to let go of any of that all the way until I was back on earth. This is where some experience flying gliders might really have helped get over that hang up.
 
I also pull my power abeam the numbers on downwind in most planes. I also agree with others... if you're arguing with your instructor over this, he needs to find a new student and let you go! You're paying him for his instruction and arguing over something so simple... and he is right!!!

I had a weak instructor early in my training. He just wanted to build hours and move on to the airlines. When he did move to the airlines, my next instructor was a retired corporate pilot who didn't take any lip from me. I learned more from him than I had before or have since.
 
Rushie said:
My biggest problem with landings was reluctance to pull the power, hence flying the plane right into the runway which is a mild version of controlled flight into terrain and what beats up trainers’ landing gear. The right way to do it is to lead the plane gently into not wanting to fly anymore and time it so that happens as the wheels touch down. If you’ve configured everything else right, you don’t want or need power once over the threshold.

I understand where you’re coming from with the feeling that if you pull the power the plane will “come down real fast”. I suppose the other thing that beats up landing gear is the plane stopping flying a little high and indeed falling down hard (CFIs? That wasn’t my main problem.)

If everything is configured properly the plane won’t drop like a brick by pulling the power. Others have talked about configuration better than I can.

For me, in training, I had the firm idea that power = safety. Airspeed = safety. I “felt” safe as long as I had the right angle of attack, airspeed, and power. I found myself with a visceral reluctance to let go of any of that all the way until I was back on earth. This is where some experience flying gliders might really have helped get over that hang up.
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If you're dragging the plane in behind the curve with power, as the OP might to be, then pulling power will indeed cause it to "come down real fast":

Steven Sesto said:
I just feel like when you pull the throttle back right over the numbers the plane wants to down real fast and then you play the game of trying to catch up with it and pull it back up
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However, if that's the case, then you're not going into the flare with enough energy.

I'm not an instructor, but the solution seems to me to be pulling the power much earlier, when you're higher and faster and the plane isn't going to "come down real fast," and flying the plane down to the runway in a glide at the right speed. Too slow--with power or not--is going to result in a firm landing.

If I were the OP's instructor (or mine) I'd pull power on long final and let the OP try to make it to the runway. Maybe doing that a few times would settle the argument.
 
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FlyingTiger said:
The only time I would expect my student to keep in the power as long as you like is if they are on the backside of the power curve and dragging the plane in low and slow. Otherwise, during a normal approach on glide path or high, I want to see them cut the power as soon as they feel the runway is made which should be sooner than the numbers, especially if they are high. The hard part is getting them to believe the plane has made the runway. Simulated engine outs and no flap landings seem to help them acquire better judgment in this area.
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that's how I do it. Less need to use as brakes to catch the first couple taxiways on our runway.
 
We're not flying airliners here. When I was your age (a long time ago) we were taught to pull the power to idle as we turned from downwind to base, and applied the flaps and adjusted pitch to vary airspeed as necessary to reach the runway. That's a bit extreme, but flying into ground effect with power on is eventually going to bite you. Too much speed means a flatter attitude, so you will either float a long way and maybe run off the runway, or you'll force it on and it will wheelbarrow off the side or start porpoising and bust something. Or you'll flare abruptly and balloon. All of it is bad.

Pitch controls not only airspeed but glide angle. The book speeds for most airplanes are less than the best glide speed, and so lowering the nose and increasing the speed will flatten the glide and take you farther. Pulling the nose up to kill the speed will steepen the glide and get you down shorter. Not at all intuitive, and so we see pilots diving at the runway when they're too high. Doesn't work one bit.

Too many students are afraid of stalling. They need their instructors to take them up to altitude and actually stall the thing, flaps retracted and extended, and see what the glidepath looks like and what the airspeed is when it finally breaks. Most pilots never get anywhere near the stall, even in the landing, and it thereby limits their travels to ten-thousand-foot runways. If they do go to some rural fly-in they're liable to wreck the airplane on that shorter runway, often grass, where braking is poor.

Primacy. Things first learned form the most unshakable habits. Learning to approach with too much power, dragging it in, is a bad habit.
 
Dan Thomas said:
We're not flying airliners here. When I was your age (a long time ago) we were taught to pull the power to idle as we turned from downwind to base, and applied the flaps and adjusted pitch to vary airspeed as necessary to reach the runway. That's a bit extreme
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That doesn't sound extreme to me at all... the way I was taught, you're pulling power too late! :D
 
Lowflynjack said:
That doesn't sound extreme to me at all... the way I was taught, you're pulling power too late! :D
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It usually works for something like a 172, unless there is a good crosswind that is on your nose in the base. Unless you're pattern is really tight, it won't work, and if there are other airplanes in the pattern they don't appreciate your not being in the lineup.

It doesn't work for a Champ or Citabria too well. Sure didn't work for my Jodel, which glided like a sack of rocks when the power was at idle. One does what one needs to do, but the average trainer, taken right to the runway with power, is just teaching the student some really bad stuff and limiting his future options. There is no need for that at all.

The quality of pilot training has suffered in the last few decades. I miss the old instructors who had flown in WW2. They knew their stuff, and the military training did not allow for personal interpretation and modification of the syllabus. One of my first instructors had been a Luftwaffe pilot.
 
I didn't argue with my instructor, but I just went back into flying after 25 years or so, and surprisingly I could still land a 172 pretty smoothly. The problem was that I did it my 'old' way, going to idle once I knew I made the runway and the speed was right, while this particular instructor insisted that I had to keep 1200 RPM well into the round up and flare. In my hands, that resulted in landings that took much more runway, floating for a pretty long time. It may be because I am 59 and the instructor was 28, but without arguing I told him I didn't feel comfortable flying with him and moved on. Did I miss the opportunity to learn a more 'modern' way of landing?
 
Sifossifoco said:
I didn't argue with my instructor, but I just went back into flying after 25 years or so, and surprisingly I could still land a 172 pretty smoothly. The problem was that I did it my 'old' way, going to idle once I knew I made the runway and the speed was right, while this particular instructor insisted that I had to keep 1200 RPM well into the round up and flare. In my hands, that resulted in landings that took much more runway, floating for a pretty long time. It may be because I am 59 and the instructor was 28, but without arguing I told him I didn't feel comfortable flying with him and moved on. Did I miss the opportunity to learn a more 'modern' way of landing?
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No. Leaving in a bit of power makes it easier to grease a landing, but it uses a lot more runway and you have more energy to deal with if something goes wrong.

I'll leave a bit of power in if I'm flying a non-pilot that's nervous about landing. Greasing it in makes them feel better, but it's not "better". Ideally, for maximum safety, you want to be done flying when your wheels touch down, which means you'll hit a bit harder.
 
Rgbeard said:
So, you've moved on already, and this situation is in the past?
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I personally moved on, but I believe the OP is still arguing with the instructor, which is not a good place to be. In his case I would say the instructor is right, but there may be personality issues at play that make the situation more complicated. Flying should be fun, and maybe sometimes a second opinion from a different instructor could help seeing our own mistakes. I had few instructors in my life, the first one was from air force training, and was wonderful. Most very good, a few not so much. The very last one literally started crying with me saying he hated instructing and wanted to stop. Changing instructor can help, sometimes.
 
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