Don’t Panic About a Bumpy Plane Landing
If you are a nervous pilot, any turbulence can be alarming. It is especially bad when, upon landing, you come closer to the ground. There are many bumps and bumps that can seem intimidating when they happen, but they are not something your pilot is not trained with.
Mike Arnault interviewed pilot Shannon Pereira for The Points Guy, asking her about the most common weather-related landing problems. Some of them look so intimidating that they have a fan base of people filming them for our horror viewing purposes.
Pereier’s reassurances may not completely rid you of fear, but the next time you land on bumps, you will at least know what is going on.
Cross wind
This is the most common problem when Pereira approaches the airport both during takeoff and landing. Passengers rarely notice this, she says, because pilots perform a maneuver to compensate for a problem called “wind control.” This means they do not run directly parallel to the runway; instead, they deflect the rudder and steer the nose of the aircraft in the same direction:
Then, as they take off to land – raising the nose so that the main landing gear touches first – the pilots will again use the rudder to align the aircraft with the runway center line. This is an old hat for Pereira who flies the Embraer E190.
“Obviously, you want to avoid these side loads on the landing gear, but the aircraft can handle it,” she said.
Even if it looks intense from the outside, these shenanigans mean that everything inside the plane appears to be relatively smooth.
Wind shear
By comparison, wind shear, which is described as the sensation of a plane “falling out from under you,” can be terrifying. This is because the wind speed suddenly drops as the plane is heading towards the ground. The closer you are, the stronger the sensation and the higher the likelihood of danger. But don’t worry – the pilots have fantastic aerial work for that too.
“Where we know there is wind shear, we will change the power settings to add more power and reduce the number of flaps, and enter at a higher speed,” explains Pereira. All US commercial aircraft built since 1993 have a wind shear warning system to help pilots deal with this problem, as wind shear can have a dangerous outcome called “microbursts.”
Microbursts
There have been plane crashes associated with micro-explosions, when a wind column quickly descends over a small surface area. When the column hits the ground, it is pushed outward, causing a sharp jump in wind speed. The plane will pass through it and will immediately encounter a “downward strong and constant gust of wind, followed by a tailwind” at the exit. They are difficult to predict, they arise out of nowhere and can lead to the loss of control of the aircraft, even for an experienced pilot.
But don’t panic, because we have the technology to handle even this scenario. Pilots work with air traffic control units that have a low-level wind shear warning system that can predict when microbursts will occur around the landing site. They also have faster, more recent weather information that they can share with pilots.
Communication prevents many potential accidents during takeoff and landing, and pilots have a detailed contingency plan if landing conditions are unsafe. This is called go-around and goes something like this: if the pilot cannot land, he will fly again.
“We train a lot on simulators. When it comes time to leave, we are not shy, ”said Pereira. “We would like to land for the first time, but there will be good reasons to leave.”
If you are driving over bumps and the pilot decides to postpone the landing and make another lap, do not panic. They are just trying to keep you from getting even more shocked.