14.17 What are some reasons for hard landings?

From FlightSim

I flew in yesterday, AMS-ATL-RDU. First time on an L-1011 by the way. Nice plane. Anyway: ATL-RDU was 757. I don't know what went wrong, but the we hit the runway hard, bounced back up again, and came down again very firmly. Followed by full thrust reverse and speed breaks, slowing us down very quickly. So, don't worry if not all of your landings are perfect. Real pilots have their bad days too. Other than that I want to thank Delta for two very nice flights (first time with Delta for me).

There are a couple of reasons for hard landings.

1. It's planned because the runway is short or wet. You have to prevent using up precious available runway distance while floating just off the concrete. The pilot has to make sure that the maingear tires are spinning up to activate ground spoilers and to enable the antiskid braking system to operate properly. A manual soft landing, softer than the autopilot can make them, is still possible, but only advisable on extra long runways.In this respect its worth mentioning that the FS autopilot landing technique of increasing nose up attitude is wrong for two reasons. You get maximum deceleration by full use of reverse and full use of the brakes. When you apply maximum reverse with the nose wheel off the ground a sudden engine failure will get you off the side off the runway straight away. So you have to land the nosewheel straight away.

2. A badly executed manual landing with or without a sudden change of wind.

3. With the modern training techniques it may be possible that the pilot landing the aircraft is making his very first landing on the real aircraft instead of on the advanced flight simulators they are using these days.

Antoon Amesz