Ancient Greek Philosophy and Perfect Landings

One of my students, Sebastian, has learned to land.  During the process of learning, it hasn't always been perfect or pretty, but as of Tuesday, he's been keeping them consistently safe.  The old "fly low and slow down the runway" trick is what did it for him.

But, the last landing that day ended with a slightly sideways bump, and it disappointed him.  Bringing it back to the ramp, I asked him to tell me how it went.

"I needed more right aileron, and more left rudder," he said.

And so, I was once again reminded of Aristotle's writings.

And now, you guys are thinking "Hmmn.  I'm pretty sure Aristotle didn't know anything about airplanes." And you're right.  But in his Ethics, he did have some pretty good ideas about the delicate art of getting things right.  The upshot of it is: "Doing the right thing, at the right time, the right way, and for the right reason."

So, the next question is: "How are we to know what the right thing, at the right time, the right way, and the right reason even IS?"  And the answer is: "Practice."

When you're landing an airplane, nothing is ever going to be exactly the same.  You'll be at all kinds of different weights, with different people in the plane with you, and at different points in the flight, as you burn fuel.  The air will be different temperatures and have different densities.  And the wind changes like... well, it changes like the wind.  Like many things in life, squeezing a great landing out of an airplane depends on a myriad of changing circumstances and timing.

 It took me a long time to realize this, because my first flight instructor, Jerry, wasn't an Aristotelian.  He, like many of my colleagues in this industry, was a Platonist.  In "The School Of Athens" by Raphael, the difference between the two is represented by the two central figures:

Plato, on our left, has his hand elevated with his index finger pointing up.  Aristotle, on our right, has his hand down and his palm level.  Both of these poses were meant to represent how each philosopher understood the ultimate nature of reality.  Both men are also, rather anachronistically, carrying what appear to be leather-bound copies of the books they wrote.

Plato (and Jerry) held that the physical world in which we live is merely a pale imitation of True Reality, which consists of  "ideal forms" of everything that has ever existed or might exist. Up there in some kind of heaven, where he's pointing, is the perfect idea of... (a table, a musical performance, a '67 Chevelle, a pretty girl, a crosswind landing).  The world we live in, being made of atoms, is at best a flawed representation of the divine ideas.

Aristotle's gesture means "No, no, you've got it all wrong, This Right Here is the real world."  Our ideas about things are made up from all the various examples of stuff we find lying around.  But those abstract ideas are not what's "real."  Anything with substance and essence is describable as a "This-Here-Thing."

I should probably note that when Jerry held up his finger like Plato, he meant "Listen Up," and when I hold my hand down like Aristotle, I usually mean "Keep your wings level," but neither of us are as profound.

When Jerry was teaching me to land, he (like many other instructors and pilots) took the position that there is such a thing as a Perfect-Ideal-Form of "landing" that we can never actually achieve, but to which we must always aspire.  The only way to come close to The Perfect Landing is by adopting a nearly religious adherence to certain "ideal" procedures and techniques, while despairing of the shabbiness inherent in this material world and our own sinful fallibility.

As an Aristotelian, I found this infuriating.  So, it took me an awfully long time to learn to land.  But, the FAA doesn't distinguish between Platonic and Aristotelian worldviews. So, a legitimate alternative is available for me and my student.  The quality of your landings is not merely a happy accident which follows a mechanical process- good landings, like Aristotelian Ethics, are an art, not easily quantifiable, display different qualities under different circumstances, and require skill and discernment born of practice.

Sebastian, thinking like a Platonist, evaluated his last landing on Tuesday as falling short of an Ideal, for the want of greater control inputs.  "I needed more right wing down, and more left rudder."  Alas!  If only he had followed procedure more closely, he would have come closer to the theoretical Form of a good landing!

Andy, thinking like an Aristotelian, replied "That's right.  You needed more right wing down, and more left rudder... this time.  But just seeing what went wrong this particular time isn't going to help you in the future.  There's three things I can point out that will."

1.  Doing touch-and-go landings is all very well and good, and it keeps you mentally flying.  But when you called for a full-stop, you were committed to the idea that you were putting the wheels down and keeping them down.  That made you "give up" flying the instant you felt the wheels touch.  Don't.  You are still flying until you've pulled off onto the taxiways.
2. Committing to the landing also got you thinking "up-and-down" instead of forward.  Remember, follow-through is important when you're swinging a golf club, karate-chopping through a board, or landing a plane.  When you fly as low as you can stand it, direct your attention to the far end of the runway.  Then, stay over the center line by tilting the wings, and point it straight with your feet.
3. Let the plane land itself.  Don't try to chop the power too quickly, or flare too hard, or too early, or try to plop it down at any particular point.  Do nothing to "force" the landing.  Slow down the way you always do- bring back the power, don't let the nose drop, and...  Slow.  Down.  And.  Wait. 

Sebastian went flying with me again yesterday.  Our lesson this time was on soft-field technique.  We touched down the mains and kept the nose up in a "wheelie" until we lifted off again.  We had a witness in the back seat who actually recorded several of his lovely landings with her camera. Good job, Sebastian.  And thank you, Aristotle.

Oh, Dear.

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

But... I break my rambling, pointless, soul-searching rants up into discrete paragraphs.  And, I don't do drugs and I've never had to spend time in rehab.  This thing must be broken.

Silly Rule #93

Working with an instructor candidate today, I was reminded of Silly Rule #93.  Specifically, 14 CFR 61.93(a) through (e), which deals with the endorsements a student pilot needs for "cross country" flights.  This is the kind of thing that happens when the rules about one thing are written at different times by different people lawyers.  I wouldn't recommend clicking that link, by the way.  The relevant parts of that rule come to four pages long.

• The way it's supposed to work:  Student pilots are not supposed to do cross-country flights of more than 50 nautical miles, unless their flight planning and weather have been checked by an authorized instructor, who signs a logbook endorsement authorizing it.  This endorsement is good for that day, that flight only, in that particular airplane, under the stated conditions.  It's supposed to be very tightly controlled.

• Inexplicable fact:  A student pilot flying solo can fly from one airport and land at another one 99 miles away, WITHOUT getting that special one-time-only cross-country endorsement.  In fact, it's perfectly legal for them to accomplish a flight that is LONGER than the "long solo cross country" flight required for the private ticket (61.109(a)(5)(ii)), as long as it involves more than the minimum required three airports... and yet it doesn't count towards meeting that requirement.  It wouldn't even count as "cross-country experience" at all.

If the Federal Aviation Regulations were computer code, it would crash.  The problem is that "de-bugging" it requires an act of Congress.  To show you the situation, here's a map of various airports... but I suppose it could also be used as plans to build a tinfoil pyramid hat:

Let's take "Jane," a student pilot. If she's been endorsed to fly solo, 61.93 prohibits her from:

1. Conducting a solo cross-country flight, or any flight greater than 25 nautical miles from the airport where the flight originated, 
2. making a solo flight and landing at any location other than the airport of origination..

That confines her to the small blue circle, encompassing airports "A" and "B" in my little picture, here.  She cannot land at airport "B," UNLESS she's been given an endorsement to go there for the purpose of practicing takeoffs and landings.  Technically, that's a "cross-country" flight, but it does not count as "cross-country experience" unless the airports are 50 miles apart.

Yeah, I know.

So, before Jane even gets a "Solo cross-country" endorsement, she can bop back and forth between A and B as much as she pleases.  She can't break the blue circle and expand out into the red one until her "Initial Solo Cross-Country Endorsement."  Then, items 1) and 2) above have been trumped.

That means that Jane can go as far away as she likes... as long as she doesn't make a "cross-country" flight that involves a landing at another point more than 50 miles away.  Jane could fly all the way across Texas, turn around, and come back, providing she didn't land anywhere else.  Doing so without refueling would be a nifty trick, but you get my point- to get "cross-country experience," she's gotta put her wheels down,* and in order to do that, she's supposed to get that super-special endorsement of the day.

However, she can also be endorsed to make repeated flights to airports more than 25 miles away from her "original point of departure," but not more than 50.  So, with separate multiple-use endorsements for each airport, she could bop back and forth between A and C, A and D, A and E... as I've shown with red lines with double-headed arrows, or maybe that's the edges of my tinfoil hat.  I'm going to need one of those by the time I'm done with this.  I also seem to have spelled "ACADAE," which, I suppose, must be the Greek gods of cross-country travel.

Ergo, Jane could take off from A, fly West to C, take off again, fly East back to A, then touch-and-go departing straight off for D, despite the fact that C and D are more than 50 miles apart.  And, she can do so without the endorsement that says that an instructor checked her flight planning and dispatched her for that solo cross-country flight.

What Jane could NOT do is fly directly from C to D without stopping back at A (the green line).  That would require the special endorsement.  Someone has lost sight of the fact that it's easier to just keep flying.

What's less obvious is that I could endorse Jane to fly back and forth between C and E, as well as D and E, as well, as long as all of these airports are within 50 miles of "the airport from which the flight originated" (airport A), and I have provided instruction back-and-forth between all of these segments of "the route."  So A-C-E-D is also a possible flight which would not need the one-time-only (green line) endorsement, and it also describes what we've just done to Silly Rule #93, if we were playing tennis against it.

I'm sorry to say that this is not merely hypothetical.  Several years ago, a Designated Pilot Examiner in my district got into an argument with a Private Pilot applicant about this... and lost.  "Jane" accomplished the A-C-D-A flight, calling it her "long solo cross country" flight of more than 150 miles total, in accordance with part 61.109(a)(5)(ii).  The examiner, familiar with the area, said:

"Hey, this doesn't count.  You never went more than fifty miles from your original point of departure.  You're not eligible for this checkride."

Jane, who had read the rule pretty carefully, said:

"Like fun it doesn't count.  It doesn't say you have to go more than fifty miles away.  It says 'one leg' of at least fifty miles.  C to D counts as cross-country experience, and I had to get the endorsement that said my instructor checked my flight planning, and everything."

Jane appealed the examiner's decision to the Flight Standards District Office.  She must have written a hell of a letter, or been a lawyer or something, because they sided with her and suspended his DPE certificate for 30 days.  I suppose it also helps that she was technically right.

But at the same time, the examiner wasn't crazy, because cross-country flights are supposed to look like the A to F route, taking students away from the comfort zone of their immediately local area, where they might actually have to (gasp) navigate!  And, you have to consider that the A-C-E-D-A route, while actually longer and more complex than the A-C-D-A route Jane flew, does NOT satisfy 61.109(a)(5)(ii), because none of the "legs" between airports are more than 50 miles apart.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go into my tinfoil cubicle, where I receive transmissions from outer space that let me interpret FAA regulations.

* footnote- "Jack," flies bombers for the USAF. He takes off from Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany, flies 2500 miles to bomb the bejeezuz out of Wherever-istan, refuels from a KC-135 on the way there and on the way back... and lands back home.  He never squeaked a wheel more than 50 miles away from where he took off, so according to the FAA, that's a "Local" flight, not a "Cross-country."  For that reason, the "landing at a point other than the point of departure" language was deleted from the cross-country requirements for the Airline Transport Pilot Certificate, but remains in place for the Private and Commercial Certificates, and the Instrument Rating.