A good landing is any landing you walk away from. A great landing is when you can use the airplane again. Who doesn’t enjoy the classics? As humorous as these sayings can be, they occasionally do contain some nuggets of wisdom. For example, I would consider Captain Sully’s landing in the Hudson River a good landing, even a great one. Does it count as reusing the airplane if it spent some time earning revenue at a museum? It probably is not exactly what the expression meant, but we can make an exception.
When your aircraft is in tip-top shape and everything is working properly, you should be able to reuse the plane after each landing. Unfortunately, every now and then our beloved flying machines let us down. This can be caused by something internal, like an engine or propeller issue, or driven by external factors, like Captain Sullenberger’s bird ingestion. Most often, it’s because the pilot did something incompatible with continued flight, like trying to run the engine on an empty fuel tank. When this happens, it is critical that the PIC’s mindset change. No longer is the goal of this flight to reuse the airplane, especially since it now belongs to the insurance company. The goal is to use the fabulous technology and engineering to prevent injury to the lives aboard as much as humanly possible.
