Clawing it back from the brink

I rounded up a less than stellar lesson with a less than stellar approach for landing.

The lesson had been bumpy and the approach even more so. So much, in fact that Bob relented and let me take off the hood early.

Biting back a cutting retort to ATC, who got a little unnecessarily snippy with me, I set up for final and landing.

I was waaaaaay high.

I’d kept my speed up a little too long and now simply didn’t have the room to dump the altitude like I needed. Not helped by the fact that I thought I was at full flaps but in reality had another notch to go.

So I dump the flaps and pray to the Gods of idiot student pilots that I’m going to be able to salvage this.

Still high.

The runway is approaching at an alarming rate, time for a slip. I point the ailerons one way and the rudder the other. The threshold is approaching and I’m still too high over it.

I twist both the control column and the lower half of my body until neither of them will twist anymore.

Here comes Charlie and I’m still burdened with an abundance of altitude.

I’m not panicking though, overshooting is always an option and although sooner is better I’ve still got time to make that call. I maintain the aggressive slip.

Here comes Foxtrot.

Maybe now is time to call it off; but wait is that a sinking feeling I have?

In this case sinking is good, it means the plane is struggling to fly. It wants to land. Let’s see this through to the bitter end.

Sure enough I touch down just after Foxtrot, with a little chirp of the stall horn. I’m firm but not aggressive with the brakes and it would actually seem that we have runway to spare.

I brace myself for the inevitable “roll of shame” down to Alpha but ATC relent and let me exit onto 33.

As I complete my post landing checks on Bravo I turn to say to Bob “well that landing just about sums up this flight, clawing it back from the brink.”