Toughest landing you ever made...

bidderswede

New Member
Just wanted to get some stories going...

I flew into Dallas Love field with a student a couple of years ago, in a C-172.
We were doing the dual long IFR x-country, in the middle of a summer afternoon. The weather was typical 90F+, with partly cloudy skies at about 6000ft, light to moderate turbulence, and this day very strong winds.

We were cleared for the 31R ILS about 20 miles out.
ATIS reported the winds at 26035G45 (or close to it), and it seemed like it took 30 mins to fly that approach. (Didn't help that I needed to visit the lavatory for a nr 2).
After FAF, his app plates ended up in the bagage compartment and at that point he wanted me to take the controls, and remove his goggles, (I agreed).
A Southwest Airlines, coming in on the parallel rwy reported 300ft drop and 20 kt loss of airspeed, and I had similar issues.:panic:
( Just to clear up future questions.. Yes, I would have done a go around if I wouldn't have had a VERY important meeting with Mr. LAV).

Landing: Full Right rudder and alot of left aileron (good thing it was a high wing airplane).
After getting all three wheels on the ground (had to wait a while for the right one to drop), I had to make a right onto the twy to get to the FBO we were going to, and it took alot of power and right brake to even get the airplane to do a slight turn to the right.

Somehow we made it to the FBO, and I got to the meeting just in time.

I have an interesting story about the departure too, but I have typed enough for this thread.
 
During my first bit of training (I was maybe 12 years old) landing a C172, I start to round out a little bit early, realize it, and make a slight correction by letting out some back pressure.

Well, my CFI wasnt going to have that... We basiclly stalled it on from 8 to 10 feet off the ground... If he would'nt have said I GOT IT, I would have known to at least add power first.

I think I even have it on video somewhere. lol
 
Funny you should bring this up. I've made plenty of bad landings, but the toughest might have been today. Last landing of 12 month recurrent mu-2 training (required from the Federales On High by SFAR). The winds are something like 70 degrees off at 20G30 or so, and the CP, who is the saltiest of the salty freightdogs, fails an engine. He's given me one normal circuit to get used to the winds, but they're kickin and I'm not Superpilot. Long story short I do a nice wide pattern, but still overshoot the final to the point that the tower asks us to confirm that we're "correcting" since we're about to run over the SWA on the parallel. Get it lined up, but now I'm way, way low. I'm using flaps 5, rather than 20 or 40, on the theory that less drag is good when you're on one spinny thing. As we near the threshold, the CP, who probably eats nails (the metal kind) in his off time, is saying "you can have the engine back whenever you want". We go screaming across the threshold at 150, flat as a pancake and still cocked about 20 degrees in to the wind. At some point I don't remember, we touch down and it takes a good 2/3rds of the ~7k runway to slow down to taxi speed (admittedly without heavy braking or reverse thrust). There was a definite odor of burning rubber, too. We touched down around 135 or so (4 knots under tire-shredding speed), and Mama Mitsu's extremely face-saving gear made it feel ok. No limitations exceeded, nothing broken, nobody hurt, but my face was about three shades of red. As we're taxiing off, the CP, who, again, probably thinks Chuck Norris is a huge •, says "I did not like that at all". 8410 is signed, and it made my day. But I don't plan to make my day that way ever again. Good times.
 
I was about two weeks after my first solo, and I was cruising around Mt Desert Island over Northeast Harbor and the bottom of Somes Sound. Well I see this dense layer of sea fog forming and moving really fast toward the north (where the airport is). I'm gunning this 150 as fast as it will go. As I turn final I'm flying straight toward this wall of fog that is maybe a 1/4 mile off the south end of the runway (I'm landing to the south). As I touch down the fog has made it over the numbers on the far side of the runway. I can barely find the turnoff to our ramp, the AWOS is reporting 10 SM and no clouds. Maybe not physically the toughest landing but mentally it was.
 
I was about two weeks after my first solo, and I was cruising around Mt Desert Island over Northeast Harbor and the bottom of Somes Sound. Well I see this dense layer of sea fog forming and moving really fast toward the north (where the airport is). I'm gunning this 150 as fast as it will go. As I turn final I'm flying straight toward this wall of fog that is maybe a 1/4 mile off the south end of the runway (I'm landing to the south). As I touch down the fog has made it over the numbers on the far side of the runway. I can barely find the turnoff to our ramp, the AWOS is reporting 10 SM and no clouds. Maybe not physically the toughest landing but mentally it was.


I know what you are talking about!
I was based in Rockland, Maine, KRKD, and I have NEVER seen fog moving in so fast before.:panic:
 
Mine would probably be when I was learning how to land (Go figure) and I was coming in for a landing at Runway 28 at KSYR. Winds were about 15 gusting 25 variable and as we were in the flare, I flared a little high and we had a bit of windshear that just me and my CFI smack right into the runway. It was a good thing we landed on the mains....... After that landing my CFI jokingly asked me if I was trying to lower field elevation...
 
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