Landing training – imprecise for too long: Introducing ‘simple elegance’

The History

In the first place, the original pilots were self-taught. Their haphazard trial and error practices gradually blossomed into a loose collection of landing myths and methods that ultimately came to be regarded as gospel.

Surprisingly, for the most part these remain unchallenged by generations of flight instructors. The best explanation for this may be the law of primacy in education: people tend to believe implicitly what they are first taught, creating unshakeable views about any given subject.

Conventional landing training practices assumed manual landings to be non-quantifiable. It has been the most neglected subject in aviation. This is no longer the case, as the Jacobson Flare has ‘”the elegant simplicity of the safety pin‘. (Captain Glen Adamson, 1987)

An Inspiration

From an idea in 1965, inspired by the triangulation techniques of the 1943 RAF 617 Sqn ‘Dambusters’, the Jacobson Flare has enabled precise comprehension and command of the landing manoeuvre.  Since 1987, it may now be regarded as a skill rather than, historically, an ‘art‘.

Along with clear guidance on ‘How to Aim‘ and ‘How to Flare‘ components, this treatise discusses the development of a practical and tolerant landing training technique. A universal and consistent landing flare that does not rely solely on a pilot’s peripheral perception of vertical height is introduced. Simple triangulation principles are applied to determine a visual fix for commencement of the flare.

The flare fix is derived from triangulation between the pilot’s eye path and a supplementary, pre-calculated longitudinal flare point. This flare point is located on the runway centreline, short of the aim point.

While maintaining an accurate eye path to the aim point, the pilot simply observes the transit of this supplementary flare cut-off point by the cockpit lower visual cut-off angle. This defines an accurate, consistent and tolerant flare fix, from whence the eye path to the aim point diverges and the landing flare commences.

“This (the path flown) is exactly what we have all been trying to achieve by guesswork. What is different here is the quantified explanation.” (The most common response to the Jacobson Flare by experienced professional pilots since 1985.)

No device or modification to the airplane is required, therefore no cost is incurred. Safety is enhanced and this landing training technique is pilot-portable across many airplane types. Now, landing an airplane can be explained logically, removing the mystery and the mumbo jumbo.