Cracking the Crosswind Code in Aviation

If you’re having trouble with these landings, you may not be using enough control authority.

Joseph "Jeb" Burnside

Friday, January 02, 2026 at 08:00 AM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Travis Tingle

Aviation Safety focuses on risk management and accident prevention, providing information on basic and advanced technique, accident analysis, and practical advice on how you can develop the judgment that will keep you in the air and out of the NTSB’s files. [Credit: Aviation Safety]

Key Takeaways:

The author experienced a decline in crosswind landing proficiency due to pilot rustiness and challenging weather conditions at his home airport.
Despite being familiar with crosswinds and standard techniques like the sideslip, the author initially struggled to execute smooth landings.
The key to regaining his landing "elegance" was realizing he needed to apply more control input, particularly almost full rudder, than he had been previously.
The ultimate takeaway is that pilots should respect crosswinds and not hesitate to use the full control authority available in their aircraft.

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Between several weeks of downtime at the avionics shop and a bunch of personal distractions, my piloting skills had accumulated a layer of rust back at the end of 2023. By then, what I and a few million of my closest friends had hoped would be a dry and benign Florida winter turned soggy, overcast, and windy.

It was OK weather if you wanted to climb to altitude and go somewhere, especially somewhere downwind with better conditions. But the kind of flying I needed wasn’t the straight-and-level-in-cruise kind. Instead, I drastically required some basic pattern work, along with a few more approaches, all of which is done down low.