Finally accepted the fact.

[John McMurdo]

After 2 years of simming I have finally accepted that I probably never will perfect landing.  Hitting the center line AND hitting the touchdown zone on target while making a nice soft smooth landing (although I know in some conditions its better to make a firm landing)  I must admit I struggle to achieve all three at the same time. I practiced a lot offline before joining VATSIM, and even then when I first started flying on VATSIM I would use auto-land until my confidence had built up a bit.  Yep, landings are my real weakness. I know some say any landing you can walk away from is a good landing,  but being the perfectionist I am,  it would be nice to be able to say to myself, "That was a great landing" each time.

[Andreas Fuchs]

You should apply with Ryanair!

 

[John McMurdo]

2 hours ago, Andreas Fuchs said:

You should apply with Ryanair!

 

Okay,  so maybe I'm not that bad after all

[Torben Andersen]

Well, I'm not sure how much you can rely on a handheld mobile phone. It isn't easy to keep the camera steady at touchdown and a small jerk is enough to have it look like a terrible landing.

[Trevor Hannant]

They have a reputation...

[Andreas Fuchs]

And the touchdown noise is quite obvious.

[Michael Garrett]

Lol, as long as you're chasing those landings, you're on the right track. Nobody ever gets a perfect one each time. Mine are always good but rarely what I would call perfect. Maybe one or 2 ever. That's the fun of it. 😎🤷

[Andrew Crowley]

At least several of those videos are doctored.  On a couple of the Ryanair landings, a fake camera shake and touchdown sound effect occurs a full second or two before spoilers deploy.  If you thumped a 737 on anywhere near to the degree the video is trying to make it look, the spoilers would deploy instantly. 

This is true of at least a couple of the other videos too, where you can easily see that the energy state of the aircraft is nowhere near low enough to result in the kind of landing being depicted.  What's actually happening is the aircraft is in a normal flare during the time the fake jostling, touchdown, and crowd sound effects are playing. 

Ah, youtube.   ;)

 

[Andreas Fuchs]

Flare?? There was almost no flare in some of those landings. I and other passengers who have been clients of this "airline" have witnessed firm to hard landings.

[Alistair Thomson]

Reminds me of a flight I was in as a passenger, landing at Milan in an aircraft operated by an Italian airline. The weather wasn't too bad, but a bit misty and blustery. I had already acquired my commercial license, so you might say that I was engaged in the process. Looking left out at the crud I could see the ground approaching. The flare was started way too early and I knew the landing was going to be heavy.

That is an understatement. Most of the passengers were screaming as the aircraft performed several heavy touchdowns before finally stopping its crazy bouncing down the runway. We can all lose it, of course, and we all hope that we have the presence of mind to go around if it starts to go pear-shaped. But, ifs and ans were pots and pans... 

[Andrew Crowley]

5 hours ago, Andreas Fuchs said:

Flare?? There was almost no flare in some of those landings.

The average flare pitch change in a 737 is about a half a degree.  It manifests as a simple level off from a pax seat; you don't see any kind of pitch up. 

The aircraft definititively was not on the ground when the video was trying to depict a touchdown, or the spoilers would have deployed... or the touchdown was soft enough to momentarily fool the A/G sensing until the wheels spun up or reversers were deployed, which is of course not what the video is trying to depict.

The reputation of Ryanair I've always heard in the industry is more along the lines of being notoriously cheap and sometimes cutting corners on mx etc... but I've never actually heard anyone say they couldn't fly.  I've never flown on them myself but it seems unlikely the European aviation authority would permit their training and standards departments to turn line pilots loose at a lower safety standard than the rest of the industry.  ;)

Anyone can occasionally pound a landing.  I'm just saying that several of those in the video are fake. 

[Andreas Fuchs]

5 hours ago, Andrew Crowley said:

I've never actually heard anyone say they couldn't fly

Heavy landings do not mean that some cannot fly! And Ryanair's reputation is not that they cut corners on maintenance. The SOPs for cockpit crews are very strong and safe. They cut corners on passenger service and other things, they force customers to use their own website (=you cannot use a travel agent to book a ticket for you, they will not let you board the plane in such a case!) etc..

I do work with a number of ex-Ryanair-skippers and they all say that Ryanair cockpit crew get trained to be "monkeys": only do what is in the book or you won't get your banana. The book says that touchdown has to be at the touchdown markers (=1000ft down from the threshold) and that the touchdown rate is secondary. This causes these "positive landings". They monitor it through FDM (Flight Data Monitoring) and you will be contacted if you do not comply. Ryanair is super afraid of a crash or runway excursion/overrun with casualties, because this would harm their reputation gravely. Ryanair will have a fatal accident at some point, it is simple statistics. Like any other airline.

I have not flown with Ryanair in more than a decade and I will not use them in the future either, if possible. But that's my personal choice that stems from ethical considerations.

Edited October 11, 2022 at 09:33 AM by Andreas Fuchs

[Trevor Hannant]

Flown with them once - and hopefully that'll be the only time...

I used to spend a lot of time at Edinburgh Airport with the camera and everyone who visits the spotters mound there will tell of their hard landing reputation from what we've witnessed there.

[Andrew Crowley]

10 hours ago, Andreas Fuchs said:

And Ryanair's reputation is not that they cut corners on maintenance.

Oh, it is here ;)  But really... a 737 isn't hard to land.  None of that really applies to the point though, which is just that several of those videos are doctored.  This isn't my opinion, it's shown definititively by the spoiler behavior.  That was my only point. 

[Andreas Fuchs]

14 hours ago, Andrew Crowley said:

Oh, it is here

Maybe that is your opinion. From the people I personally know and how are or have been pilots with Ryanair, this was never a concern.

[Andrew Crowley]

Well that's good to hear and I hope it's true. What I meant by "here" was, in my part of the world.  Mechanics here scoff at Ryanair a lot more than pilots do; I really can't think of anyone I've ever flown with making a comment about them... but mechanics, yes several times. But you know how these things take on a life of their own in a culture... like simmers being convinced they always land hard, to the point that people even doctor videos to "prove" it.   😁

[nebojsa milosavljevic]

It would be interesting if it was the same pilot. They can't be all like that.

nebojsa

[Robert Shearman Jr]

On 10/10/2022 at 6:42 PM, Andreas Fuchs said:

Flare?? There was almost no flare in some of those landings. I and other passengers who have been clients of this "airline" have witnessed firm to hard landings.

Drop the hook, stabilize, and aim for the three-wire.  The suspension does the rest of the work.