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No. Any Navy pilot is skilled enough to flare. The descent rate necessary to land on a carrier is 600-800 feet per minute, which would literally break the lan
by psunavy03 3y ago
No. Any Navy pilot is skilled enough to flare. The descent rate necessary to land on a carrier is 600-800 feet per minute, which would literally break the landing gear on any airliner, or at least cause a hard landing inspection to have to be done to the airframe looking for potential damage.
Airliners and civilian aircraft "hit hard" for two reasons usually. Either the pilot mildly goofed the flare and "dropped it in" slightly at the end, or else the runway is slick and/or short. In which case, they are aiming to put the aircraft down early and somewhat firmly so they can get on the thrust reversers and/or brakes quickly. A nice greaser of a landing tends to allow the aircraft to float awhile in ground effect, and sometimes the runway is short or slick enough that style points don't count.
- BobaFloutist 3y ago> Either the pilot mildly goofed the flare and "dropped it in" slightly at the end It's funny, I'm sure it's much more difficult in a plane, but this sounds like such a similar experience to thinking you've braked smoothly but accidentally having your final complete stop become sharp because you've overestimated how much speed you've shed.
- psunavy03 3y agoIt's more or less the same thing. You look down the runway as you break your descent rate, and then use your peripheral vision to kind of ease the aircraft down smoothly. But the whole time you're doing this, you're bleeding airspeed and eventually the aircraft doesn't want to fly any more. So if you end up just a smidge higher than you thought . . . clunk. If you really screw it up, you need to go around, or else you'll have a hard landing. Which is embarrassing at best and career-ending at worst depending on what it does to the aircraft.