I make some good landings when I solo, and especially when my instructor is on board. Several weeks ago, I had a full airplane with passengers and some baggage on board. I made a thriller of a landing which was quite embarrassing to me. The poor thing bounced, ballooned, porpoised, okay maybe I am exaggerating, but the landing was just horrendous. How does weight affect flaring? Is it preferable to keep some power when heavily loaded as opposed to going idle soon when it's lightly loaded? Do you have to bully the controls and perform the flare more abruptly? Or do you just do everything the same as when lightly loaded?

 

Think what you're doing in the flare. The plane should be in a steady condition with a constant airspeed somewhat above the stall speed and constant vertical speed. What you're doing is turning that excess speed above the stall into lift to arrest the descent. You're trying to reach stall, zero vertical speed and the runway all at the same time. With a higher gross weight, the plane will have more inertia coming down. So it's going to take more energy to stop the descent.

The other thing to think about is your CG. The elevator will feel different at forward and aft CGs. With an aft CG it won't take as much force to rotate the nose.

 

Carry a little bit more power into the flare than you normally would at light loadings. And if you "bounced, ballooned, porpoised" just add power and go around instead of trying to force the airplane to do something it isn't ready to do.

 

Maybe by keeping the power in, you've actually added too much thrust and kept the airspeed too high, in which regardless of how you flare, you have too much lift!!!! Controlling the trade-off of pitch for airspeed, power for descent-rate is critical here. If you're in a C172, add maybe 5 kts at most for a fully loaded plane vs. you solo, anything more is going to cause float and other problems.

 

I honestly believe that you're over thinking this. After seeing a bunch of good landings and having a bad one under a slightly different scenario, it would be very easy to look at the scenario and blame that. Throw in your embarrassment and it would be even easier.

So you had a bad landing. It happens. Its unfortunate that it happened with passengers, but even airline pilots bounce one in every once in a while. You're not flying a jet that is much more weight sensitive, its just a small plane. Just relax and do better next time. The more you think about how to do stuff differently under minimally different circumstances, the more you're going to screw up a technique that you seem to have down quite well.

I'd say just keep on keepin on. If the next couple times you go up with a heavy load the same bad landing happens, then maybe its a systematic problem, but don't go changing everything just because of one bad landing.

 

Without having seen it, there's a strong likelihood that you are correct. There are a large number of pilots who approach at too high an airspeed to begin with - well above Vref for the max gross weight when solo in the airplane. Adding speed to the approach for more weight just makes the problem worse.

OTOH, if you're used to flying alone or with one other person, the effect of being at gross on lift, load factor and CG can take getting getting used to. I had a very good student who had a little trouble with one of the 172s in the fleet because it was just a little nose-heavier than the others. Those small things do make a difference for newer pilots. In which case it's a 250 said - get out there and practice at the higher weight (and varying weights) until you're more comfortable with the need for minor variation of technique.

 

This thought went through my mind. The only concern I had was of safety of my passengers. I was initially shocked by making such a bad landing after having made some great ones. I know that I got the technique right and it has nothing to do with my inability to make a nice flaring. Things just got a little out of hand. This was my first time with passengers and I think I was not concentrating as hard. It is a good lesson for me to fly the airplane and concentrate very hard especially during the landing. I should not be distracted by my passengers. I admit, I was trying to show off a little because the approach was just amazing, coming in by the shore and making a 30 degree turn to final. I was just mesmarized by all this (and thought of how mesmarized my passengers were) and simply forgot to do something very critical. Never again!!

 

I know, crazy isn't it!?!?!?!

My experience in the last few years dealing with our customers, whom are owner/pilots, is that about 75% of them carry 5-10+ kts extra on final than they should. I have yet to see a good and justifiable reason for it. I just like short landings also. It's really bad when they get in the turbo-props, because they feel they can do it because now you have the magic "reverse" option.

 

GREAT LESSON! Don't you think?

Its too bad it had to be learned with passengers on board, but some lessons can't be simulated and have to be experienced in real world situations. Thats why they call it experience! Maybe you flared to high, maybe not at all, maybe you weren't fully focused, maybe you just plain had a bad landing, and maybe it wasn't as bad as you thought it was. Whatever the reason is, only you can play it back and figure out what went wrong. However, remember that the right level of self critique is important. Make sure you focus on it enough that you learn from it, but not so much that it ruins your confidence and messes up your technique.

 

I think this is beat into them by nervous CFI's, check airmen, DPEs, and Feds. I think they instill that faster is better for 2 reasons:

1) The faster you are, the more margin for error to reduce the likelihood of a stall. A check airmen who has never flown with a student has no idea how the student will react, or if they even will if they are 5 kts slow, but theres much more comfort in 10 kts fast. Rule #1 of checkrides - don't scare the examiner.

2) IIRC, the PTS for pvt at least is +10/-5 kts. In a way, the FAA has said that if you're not going to be right on speed, faster is better. If you've got 15 kts of wiggle room and you're not on your game, goal would be to be 7kts from either limit...thats fast in this case.

I also think that the idea behind it is that I'm much more likely to die if i stall 200ft AGL than I would going off the end of the runway at 10 kts. <-Though, I'm with you, there's no reason to ever be close to either scenario.