The unofficial way to land a Gulfstream G280 | Hacker News Reader

The unofficial way to land a Gulfstream G280

ericbutton.co

18 pointsEricButton21 comments

I get that what he's trying to do is decrease the rate of closure between the main gear and the runway at the last second by rotating the plane.... But isn't that going to be negated by the fact that pitching down increases your rate of descent for the airplane as a whole. The energy of the aircraft sinking has to go somewhere... Traditionally that downward motion is stopped by the flare.

Maybe this works for Eric here, the youngest G-280 pilot in the world according to his bio. I would rather my pilot just follow the checklist set out by experienced company test pilots working with multimillion dollar budgets alongside the engineers who designed the systems.

I think it is also affected by the slight increase in ground effect as the wing flies closer to the runway surface. so the pitching down is somewhat offset by the increase in wing efficiency--and probably a set of other interplaying factors. The G280 has huge barn-door flaps that extend well below the wing, so reducing the distance between these flaps and the runway may result in an appreciable increase in lift (the wing is affected by ground effect if it is <1 wingspan from the ground)

So it sounds like this technique would work for any aircraft with the rear landing gear aft of the center of lift? Or is this the g280 special for some other reason?

Possibly a combination of landing speed, center of mass, center of lift, landing mass and lift and quite importantly the size and load tolerance of the landing gear that makes this more possible on a G280 without the aircraft jumping around until the landing gear gives and your landing turns into a crash.

That said this reads like a bad idea overall.

Yes. also wingspan and wing sweep as well as flap configuration can affect how an airplane flies as pitch changes (and as distance to the runway changes). So while other aircraft might dramatically lose lift with this type of maneuver, the G280 doesn't.

Agree that it's a bad idea to get creative with flying airplanes.

That said, this maneuver might tend to reduce landing "float" which introduces its own set of risks.

But still not a good idea.

I am an extremely boring pilot; I read the flight manuals for the aircraft I am piloting, follow the checklists, read the NOTAMs, chart my course while paying attention to the weather and practice situational awareness.

Anything involving "unofficial", please ignore. It might as well say "One crazy trick to land a Gulfstreamm G280". I am sure the test pilots just missed it while developing the flight procedures.

Yeah i should've added, don't do this! or only do it in the simulator.

"But for the Gulfstream 280 there's a little-known technique that will enable the pilot to land smoothly with frightening consistency. The technique: moments before touchdown, the pilot pushes the control yoke forward, essentially flying the plane into the ground. To be clear, it is less of a "push" and more of a tiny application of forward pressure on the controls..."

Question is, when do you get to practice this? And, what is the downside when you get it wrong, the first few times?

This reads a lot like the fabled "three-point landing" that used to be a staple of early tricycle-gear fiction. Which did exist.

I first heard about it during simulator training (from an official instructor, no less) and tried it in the simulator.

This sounds similar to wheel landings in a tail wheel aircraft. The FAA says "relax the elevator" but "tiny application of forward pressure on the controls" sounds more apt.

https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/a... (PDF, see page 13-6)

Yeah but If you goof you make nose contact first and you have a really bad day

why is that bad?

You porpoise the landing. The front gear in just about every aircraft is not intended to take the weight that the rear can. End up in an unstable oscillation, until it gives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMmHYWjEmkY

Nosewheel should never be anywhere near to being the first thing to hit the runway. In a Piper, for example, this would be an easy mistake to make but if you're landing a Gulfstream with the nose that low-down, you're in serious trouble.

Do pilots actually read this and think "that's a good idea, let me try that next time"?

Seems like a bad habit to develop, IMO

horrible, especially since reducing thrust creates the same tendency as pitching the nose down... so just do what every pilot is trained to do reduce throttle into the flare and use nose up inputs to fine tune the landing

EDIT: there are times you want to nose down into a landing and thats typically in short field landings, but you are probably never doing that in gulfstream

On a G-280 the thrust line seems pretty high and aft.

Pure conjecture here since I've never flown one, but decreasing thrust might actually cause a nose up movement. That and my experience with pusher prop planes which very much have this issue.

Thinking about the 737-max which had the opposite problem of engines low and forward, where increasing thrust caused excess pitchup.

100% the nose should never be anywhere near nose-down. And there's a solid argument for never doing anything that's not part of the official training canon. But the fact that it works is fascinating.

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