keep some power until touchdown

thanks all for the help. It is too bad I learned it the hard way with passengers on board, but it is a good lesson for me to be consistent in the future with passengers or not.

This would be:

Rationalization & Projection, wonderful little defense mechanisms. I always like pointing this stuff out because I don't see many CFI's paying attention to the psychological, taught in the FOI. :)


As for the carrying in more speed, I don't know what you consider to be too fast but I use 60-65. I don't do it because the reasons you mentioned, however. Instead I do it to give me a better feel on the controls, dropping bellow 60 on a 172 starts to get sloppy by my standards. Heck the airplane controls as is are too sloppy for my liking. I enjoy moving the controls and seeing the aircraft immediately react, makes me feel in control.

I always prefer faster approaches for this reason, I slow it up to 60 by my planned level off, energy management. I level off at 30-50 feet and allows the rest of the speed to bleed off nicely putting me just above the runway at about 40-45 knots slowing rapidly for the final flare and touchdown.

Bingo! I've flown with a bunch of people who are afraid of the short field approach speed... The reference speeds are there for a reason, few cases (gusts, etc) do people need to carry more airspeed. One suggestion for the OP is generally with a 172 a heavy landing is softer with a more shallow approach and keep the nose down a bit in the ground effect and smoothly, slowly increase back pressure until the mains touch the ground. The idea here is to slow your descent rate without losing too much energy, and slowly bleed the energy without increasing descent rate too much.

You have the right idea.....patience. Roundout, and be patient with the flare, adjust back pressure little by little.

Nice point! Honestly the FOI is a joke, but not for the reason most think. Most think that nothing in there is applicable and once you get to CFI'ing, you never really use it. I think its a joke because everything is useful, but there's not nearly enough, especially in the psychological areas. Teachers are taught how to work with students of different types, but we get barely a paragraph on behavioral learning. It really needs to be expanded.

Also Pearl, keep in mind that we are not saying that it is the case that you are using these particular defense mechanisms, just that its something to be aware of.

Agreed 200 percent. I am sure you have read a few of my posts here on this topic, specifically multiple intelligences (MI) in the classroom and the differences between western/eastern learners. If you haven't you should definitely google the MI stuff, there is a ton on it and it is a wonderful tool for any CFI. You can even test your students to find out which MI they have and test yourself so you know how you teach and how they learn, takes about 15 minutes to take the test.

This is great stuff. I certainly got more than I expected. I am fascinated by the psychology behind this. It helps me understand how I dealt with such a situation. I guess it all goes back to saying that a greased landing always makes the pilot look good in the minds of passengers and vice versa...