Pilots who’ve been flying for many years or decades rarely spend much of their time in the air practicing takeoffs and landings. By simply making a half dozen or so trips around the pattern in between planning those trips to distant airports we can knock off the rust the best way possible.
Think about it: Takeoffs and landings involve just about every phase of flight there is: taxi, takeoff, climb, turns, level off, straight and level while maintaining altitude and track, descent and, finally, flare and landing. And it happens all in the span of five minutes, with lots of that time spent talking on the radio and performing quick finger work with configuration, reconfiguration and checklists.
