When is it appropriate to grease a landing?

Greasers are lucky landings. Nobody on this green earth can do them consistently. They are not a criterion of a professional landing. You do not get paid extra for greasers.

On all my landing I aim to be on speed, on glide path, and to land in the touchdown zone. I a greaser comes out of it, great, if not, oh well.

I would have to agree with Angelfuree, I think this was a result of trying to grease the landing. I don't see how a professional pilot aiming to land on the markers on a very short runway can over flare like that.

Fly the plane to your aiming spot, pull up the nose slightly, put the airplane on the ground, get it stopped, and go stand at the door and take the passengers remarks like a man(or woman).

My last flight into Key West a passenger made a remark to the captain about the landing and she said said its either put it on the ground or end up in the water. Now that's a professional landing and answer.
 
Wow, I didn't mean to make this thread become a debate of whether it was a floater or a greaser...and my question was rhetorical. My point was the guy DECIDED to continue the landing once he knew he had consumed half of the runway having only 2700 ft of pavement left . I would have gone around.

I flew into Toncontin as a passenger in a 757, and the pilot wasn't able to set himself up well for the approach. Wanna know what he did? He went around. Instead of landing unstable, he decided to give the approach another shot. I don't think any of the passengers complained.
 
Trip7 said:
My last flight into Key West a passenger made a remark to the captain about the landing and she said said its either put it on the ground or end up in the water. Now that's a professional landing and answer.
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Haha, I like the response.
 
My favorite....

You've just taken part in a "floater..." You floated way longer than necessary in order to get a smoother landing....Then the pax and flight attendants say what an awesome landing it was. Seems to reinforce the behavior. The smart ones realize right after the fact that they ate up too much runway. The dumb ones pat themselves on the back.
 
not there :laff:

I was watching that thinking "really... really?" then after the landing I couldn't help but think "that landing wasn't even that good, it most defiantly no worth killing the breaks for that."
 
Is it too much to ask for the professional to provide a touchdown that is both adequately short and on target, and soft? Or is that too much?

Its not "either or," touch down softly and on target. Its just a matter of timing.
 
ppragman said:
Is it too much to ask for the professional to provide a touchdown that is both adequately short and on target, and soft? Or is that too much?

Its not "either or," touch down softly and on target. Its just a matter of timing.
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That all depends on what you define as "professional". Most, I say again, MOST transport category aircraft landing data is based on touching down at a given sink rate. That given sink rate will usually result in something more than, as you describe, a soft landing.
 
400A said:
That all depends on what you define as "professional". Most, I say again, MOST transport category aircraft landing data is based on touching down at a given sink rate. That given sink rate will usually result in something more than, as you describe, a soft landing.
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True, but what I'm saying is some energy management. The guy in that vid knows as he's going around the turn that he's going to be fast when he rolls out, so let your speed drop (not unsafely, but a little) in the turn then you're on speed for at least a normal touchdown.

Also, a slower speed at actual touchdown = less landing distance. Speed is not the way to grease a landing as far as I'm concerned. I didn't always think that, but its true.
 
surreal1221 said:
Yeah, gonna have to side with wheels on this one.

After the initial flare, when "they" realize they're still floating I see a hint of lowering the nose.

Now, I don't know about the 737, but landing on the nose on any transport category airplane can't be too good. As they continue to float, in an effort to protect the nose they obviously increase back pressure to hold the nose off, but I wouldn't say they were trying to grease it on.

At least that's my thought.
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I have to agree with you there. That's not mentioning the fact that the end of the whole ordeal ended in quite a hit, from what I saw.
 
AngelFuree said:
Why would you ever want to grease a landing by eating up half the runway when it's this short? I nominate this pilot for a future Darwin award.
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We can't know his motives, but I doubt he was trying to "grease the landing." It's more likely that he carried too much speed and altitude through the turn to final to avoid being close to the hill on final (that's a difficult approach) and was unable to get the aircraft into a landing attitude in the touchdown zone.
 
Thinking back to when I first started flying the RJ (or 121 in general) I think at first you tend to want to make the landings "soft", because somewhere in your mind that equals a good landing. As with anything though, the more you do it the more you understand what goes into a truely "good" landing. Ya know, that whole experience thing everybody talks so highly about.
 
WMostellar said:
We can't know his motives, but I doubt he was trying to "grease the landing." It's more likely that he carried too much speed and altitude through the turn to final to avoid being close to the hill on final (that's a difficult approach) and was unable to get the aircraft into a landing attitude in the touchdown zone.
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Read my previous post below.
AngelFuree said:
Wow, I didn't mean to make this thread become a debate of whether it was a floater or a greaser...and my question was rhetorical. My point was the guy DECIDED to continue the landing once he knew he had consumed half of the runway having only 2700 ft of pavement left . I would have gone around.
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Trip7 said:
My last flight into Key West a passenger made a remark to the captain about the landing and she said said its either put it on the ground or end up in the water. Now that's a professional landing and answer.
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Was in EYW today and I'm pretty sure the CA lowered the field elevation a tad. You do what you gotta do..it's pretty hard to get a greaser in there. I'll get my chance to plant it at Key West on Monday..
 
I try to make the landing smooth for the passengers, but my biggest thing is to be right on glidepath, airspeed, and centerline. In certain airplanes smooth landings are hit or miss and often rare, like in the Dash 8. At least in our Dashes a lot has to do with the airplane. For example, ESE is a smooth lander but HRA is horrible...etc.
 
JaceTheAce said:
I try to make the landing smooth for the passengers, but my biggest thing is to be right on glidepath, airspeed, and centerline. In certain airplanes smooth landings are hit or miss and often rare, like in the Dash 8. At least in our Dashes a lot has to do with the airplane. For example, ESE is a smooth lander but HRA is horrible...etc.
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I hold glide slope until landing is assured, then I reduce power and try to set down as early as possible. Why? Primarily so that I make sure that there is no runway behind me when I land on an icy runway.
 
Part of my briefing tonight going into KBUR on RW8 was, "....I will not float! This WILL be a firm landing in the touch down zone, full reverse and brakes will be used. If you see any speed, altitude deviations, please call them out."
 
Lots of good things being said...in principle. But as for the particular "near-incident", we have a shaky camcorder with parallax error and we weren't anywhere near the cockpit. Nobody got hurt, brakes didn't (apparently) catch fire..."any one you can walk away from" etc etc.
 
There are some runways where the topic of greasing shouldn't even come up, that was one of those runways... I notice when I ride in the back, most pax are startled at how the plane slows rather than the actual touchdown.
 
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