Flying The Flare

The ideal flare results from one continuous motion, beginning with raising the airplanes slight nose-down attitude to arrest the descent, all the way through touchdown on the mains in a nose-high attitude. Few of us are that good-or that lucky-so we fall back to doing it in stages: pitch slightly up to slow the descent rate and begin decelerating, wait for the effect to be known, then add more nose-up. Rinse, repeat. The timing and rapidity with which we pitch up the second time depends on everything thats happened before on this approach: How high are you? How fast? How much power are you carrying into the flare? How heavy (or light) is the airplane? How stiff is the headwind youre flying into, if any? Based on the answers to these questions, well either add more nose-up input or hold what weve got. Then we do it again until establishing the desired nose-up pitch attitude, right above the runway at stall speed.

Editorial Staff

Wednesday, April 22, 2015 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

While an ideal flare is a single continuous motion, most pilots execute it in stages, progressively pitching up based on various factors like altitude, speed, and aircraft weight, until reaching a nose-high attitude at stall speed.
Crucially, pilots should never lower the nose beyond a level attitude during the flare to prevent dangerous nosewheel touchdowns or bounces.
If a ballooning event occurs or the pitch is too high, the correct action is to relax nose-up input, establishing a shallower pitch to allow for safe deceleration.

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The ideal flare results from one continuous motion, beginning with raising the airplane’s slight nose-down attitude to arrest the descent, all the way through touchdown on the mains in a nose-high attitude. Few of us are that good—or that lucky—so we fall back to doing it in stages:

pitch slightly up to slow the descent rate and begin decelerating, wait for the effect to be known, then add more nose-up. Rinse, repeat. The timing and rapidity with which we pitch up the second time depends on everything that’s happened before on this approach: How high are you? How fast? How much power are you carrying into the flare? How heavy (or light) is the airplane? How stiff is the headwind you’re flying into, if any? Based on the answers to these questions, we’ll either add more nose-up input or hold what we’ve got. Then we do it again until establishing the desired nose-up pitch attitude, right above the runway at stall speed.

Unless we’re very high at this early stage of the flare, we should never lower the nose beyond a level attitude to descend to the runway. Doing so risks touching down first on the nosewheel, presuming your ride has one, but even if you’re herding a taildragger, you don’t want to lower the nose very much. Doing so changes the airplane’s trajectory back toward the runway; if you’re lucky, it’ll only bounce. If you’re not, it could be the first cycle of a pilot-induced oscillation, which is a whole ‘nuther topic.

Instead, a ballooning event—or simply pitching up too high—is better corrected by establishing a shallower pitch angle, usually done by relaxing nose-up pitch input and allow the airplane to continue decelerating.