Most bad landings are a result of too much speed on final approach. It has become fashionable for instructors to play at airliner pilots and add speed increments for all sorts of things like aircraft weight, wind speed etc. when the manufacturer has built the aircraft to fly the approach at 1.3vs. The result is the aircraft using huge amounts of runway and the likelihood of excessive flare and PIO. When investigating ( for the owner ) a flight training organisation that was constantly flat spotting DA42 tyres I discovered that they mandated all sorts of speed increments added to the approach speed of 1.3vs and the explanation for this seemed to be “ the airlines do it “ . However the airlines add speed increments to a known landing weight, this FTO was flying the aircraft at weights considerably below the max landing weight that the flight manual approach speed was based on. The result being an approach speed of an approach speed of 10-15 KTS above ACTUAL 1.3vs, little wonder that the 700 m runway was challenging as even on a good landing half of it was used before the wheels touched the ground or worse the student pilot forced the aircraft onto the ground with flying speed and with little weight on the wheels the braking locked and another set of tyres ( at £250 a pop ) are written off.
