Sunday, July 18, 2010

What makes a good landing?

On a recent trip, I had my best landing ever. The Best. Best best best. Super uber awesome. I have had some good ones here and there, and some really awesome ones on rare occasions. This one, blew all those away. Just incredible. Dare I say... perfect. I won't be able to best this one. Ever. It was seriously that good.

Throughout the whole trip, I had just about all good landings. There was one that wasn't awful, but was certainly more firm than the others. I still got some, "nice landing!" comments. So, when I pulled off the best landing of my career, I stood at the doorway of the flightdeck, saying good-bye to the passengers and not one single remark of any kind was made about my frankly, super-human display of landing prowess. Not one. *shrug*

Now like anyone who takes great pride in his/her trade, this did bruise the ego a bit, but I bounce back quickly. Truthfully, what it really did was make me wonder, "Just what is it that passengers think makes a great landing?" I have heard some passengers complain about a landing because both main gear didn't touch down at the same time. I had to laugh a little since anyone that knows ANYTHING about actually flying an airplane will tell you that in a cross-wind scenario, the correct technique involves touching the up-wind wheel down first. But, I'm starting to think there are other things which pilots and passengers aren't in agreement with for the "great landing" nominations.

Any ideas?

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