Quick answer: Most bad landings are decided on the landing approach, before the aeroplane reaches the runway. If you arrive at the threshold at the wrong speed, on the wrong path, or not aligned with the centreline, the flare cannot rescue it. The flare is where the landing becomes visible, not where it is made.
This is why students who spend months practising the flare often stop improving. They are polishing the last four seconds of a sequence whose outcome was set thirty seconds earlier.
The Three Things That Decide a Landing Approach
Airspeed
Approach speed is not a target to be near. It is the variable that governs everything that happens next. Five knots fast and the aeroplane wants to float; it will not settle, and the runway gets shorter while you wait. Five knots slow and you arrive with no energy to arrest the descent, which produces the firm arrival students describe as “dropping it in”.
Neither of those is a flare problem. Both are airspeed problems that show up in the flare.
The aiming point
A stable approach has a fixed spot on the runway that does not move in the windscreen. If your aiming point drifts up, you are undershooting. If it drifts down, you are overshooting. This single cue tells you more about your approach than the altimeter does.
Students who have never had this pointed out often fly approaches by altitude and distance instead, which works only when the wind cooperates.
Alignment
The aeroplane should be tracking the centreline before the flare begins, with drift already taken out. Arriving crabbed and hoping to sort it out in the flare is how you get side-loaded touchdowns.
The Test
On your next few approaches, ignore the landing entirely and ask one question at 200 feet:
- Am I on speed, within a couple of knots?
- Is my aiming point stationary in the windscreen?
- Am I aligned with the centreline, drift removed?
If the answer to all three is yes, the landing tends to happen more or less on its own. If the answer to any is no, the most useful response is a go-around — and it is worth reading our piece on treating go-arounds as a normal outcome rather than treating one as a failure.
Why More Circuits Often Does Not Fix It
If the approach is the problem, then flying more circuits just gives you more repetitions of the same flawed approach. Repetition consolidates whatever you are actually practising, including the errors.
We have written separately about why more pattern work isn’t always the answer. The short version is that volume helps once the technique is right, and entrenches the problem when it is not.
Where to Go Deeper
Takeoffs and landings are the part of flying where good instruction pays off most visibly, because the margins are small and the feedback is immediate. Rod Machado’s The Art of Takeoffs and Landings eCourse works through the whole sequence — energy management, the aiming point, crosswind technique and the roundout — with the reasoning attached rather than just the procedure.
It is not a substitute for circuits with an instructor. It is the thing that makes those circuits productive, because you arrive knowing what you are trying to achieve.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are my landings inconsistent when my flying is otherwise fine? Almost always because the approaches are inconsistent. A landing is the last few seconds of an approach, and small variations in speed or path at 200 feet become large variations at touchdown.
What is the correct approach speed? Whatever your aircraft’s handbook specifies for your weight and configuration, flown accurately rather than approximately. The precise number matters less than holding it within a couple of knots.
How do I know if I’m overshooting or undershooting? Watch your intended touchdown point in the windscreen. If it moves up, you are undershooting and will land short. If it moves down, you are overshooting. A stationary aiming point means the path is right.
Should I keep practising landings if they aren’t improving? Not in the same way. If the approach is the problem, more circuits rehearse the error. Fix the approach first, then use repetition to consolidate it.
When should I go around? Any time the approach is not stable by short final — wrong speed, wrong path, not aligned. A go-around is a normal manoeuvre and a correct decision, not an admission of failure.
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