How not to land an airplane!

I remember thinking "I should have taken the renter insurance"...

Less than 1% of the population in the United States holds any kind of pilot license. Learning to fly in the United States is not a cheap proposition. I was quoted around $5,000 to get my private pilot license. As with many things this number is based on several unrealistic assumptions. If you wish to learn to fly in most major metropolitan areas you can expect to spend between $5,000 and $10,000 and five months.

Learning to fly is a process, as you might expect. A good student that has spent years dreaming and studying about flying can usually taxi, takeoff and maneuver the airplane during his or her first flying lesson. Landing is a different story. During those early lessons your certified flight instructor (CFI) will at least help out on your landings. The first third of your training is geared toward that glorious day where you are able to kick your CFI out of the airplane and fly for the first time by yourself. Today, this takes place after about sixteen hours of instruction on average. (I soloed at 15.6 hours.)

Once you solo your training changes direction and you learn to navigate. You finally get to go somewhere. This is a big deal since most of us want to do more than just fly around the airport like bees flying around a hive. As with your early training this is a process and leads to you eventually doing a solo cross-country flight. No, you do not get to fly from the East coast to the West coast. The term "cross-country" has a specific meaning as determined by the FAA. It means that you have to land at least fifty nautical miles (one nautical mile is about 1.15 miles) away from the airport that you departed from. In the rest of this post, I will simply use the term "miles" for either "nautical miles" or "statute miles". In most cases pilots do not indicate one or the other since which is used is standard based on context.

I did my first solo cross-country flight from Lawrenceville, Georgia to Macon, Georgia. As an over-achiever this is not a bare-minimum solo cross-country flight. It is 78 miles from Lawrenceville to Macon and both airports are controlled. This route takes you within 2.5 miles of Atlanta's airspace. Hartsfield-Jackson Airport is the busiest or second busiest airport in the country depending on if you count passengers or airplanes. (Chicago's O'Hare is the busiest or second busiest airport in the country, again depending on how you count things.) I chose this route specifically to challenge me and force me to deal with a heavy radio workload.

The flight down to Macon was routine. I navigated to Macon with no trouble avoiding Atlanta's airspace and talking to Atlanta Approach for en route traffic advisories. The landing was not a great one but it was fine for a student with the number of hours that I had at the time. The return flight was not so smooth.

I left Macon and immediately after leaving the ground the oil door popped open. This is a small door in the nose of the airplane that we use to gain access to the oil dipstick to check the oil in the engine. I had closed the door but did not get it latched during my pre-flight. I notified the tower of my problem and requested a precautionary landing. This was no emergency but flying is an endeavor where caution is the better part of valor.I left Macon again and navigated back to Lawrenceville with no problems. Landing turned out to be an entirely different story.

Lawrenceville was calling for winds at 230 degrees at 4 knots. This is a very calm wind and the direction indicated that the winds were close to right down the runway. Pilots are always concerned about winds during landings because the wind will often try to blow you off of the runway centerline or literally blow you off the runway after you have landed.

The first mistake I made was paying too much attention to the reported winds and not watching the windsock and paying attention to the cross-wind corrections that I was making while approaching the runway. I listened to the wind report and translated it into "winds no factor". As a result I landed as if there were no cross-wind (the component of the wind that tries to blow you off of the runway).

Shortly after touchdown the plane swerved to the right. I tried to correct to the left and the correction combined with the cross-wind lifted my left wing. After a few worsening attempts to gain control I had decided that this was it, I would survive but the right wing was going to hit and I was going to destroy the plane. You are taught that when in doubt on a landing, go-around. I had also been taught that it was not too late to go around after you had touched down. I applied full power and figured I'd do a very late go-around. Power was like a miracle elixir and I re-gained control of the airplane and lifted off to give it another try.

I realized the mistake that I had made. Returning to land, I now knew that contrary to the reported winds I did indeed have a cross-wind to contend with. Ironically cross-winds have been something that I have done quite well with during my training. This time I touched down on the upwind wheel and maintained directional control on the rollout.

While taxiing back to the school I noticed that the wind sock was indicating a direct cross wind at about seven knots. Taxied back and let my CFI know about the events for the day.

So I am still here in one piece and the old adage says that a good landing is any landing that you can walk away from and a great landing is when you and re-use the airplane. What we mean by the adage is that landing is hard and every pilot has a few bad ones.

Here is the morale of the story... for other pilots out there.

• First, every landing is a cross-wind landing.
• Fly the airplane until all of the pieces stop moving.
• If you have enough runway it is never too late to go-around.

Fly safe!