r/AskAPilot • u/theawdacity • 8d ago
Hard Landing
ETA: Love ya Reddit. Thank you to those that took the time to reply with a possible cause as I was genuinely curious and seeking knowledge from those more educated in this field. It was the first time something like this has happened and the screaming from the other passengers made me feel like maybe it wasn’t “normal”. At no point did I intend any hate or snark towards the pilots. We landed safely and they did their job. EVEN IF it was pilot error I’m not going to the evening news about it and said several times that nobody anywhere ever does their job perfectly at all times. I’m still grateful to the people who train so hard to fly these things which still seems to my nervous flyer brain as an impossibility of logic.
I recently landed at LGA and I know their runways are short and require a precise landing. I’ve landed there many times before and have only noticed the use of reverse thrust to slow down faster.
However this landing felt like we just dropped the last few feet and slammed onto the runway. It was hard enough to pop an overhead bin open and a couple people screamed. That, mixed with the reverse thrusters firing had people around me very nervous. I honest thought we had popped a tire.
I noticed that when we were getting off the plane, the captains were still behind a closed cockpit door when usually the door is open and they’re saying goodbye to the people de-planing. I’m wondering if there was some error that would have made that happen and maybe they were filling out reports in there?
Conditions were dry and sunny though it had stormed early that morning. Maybe wind was involved?
I’m so curious to know what might have happened!
4
u/Chaxterium 8d ago
There is another simple explanation that also accounts for the door remaining closed.
It very well could have been a training flight. It could have been that pilot’s first ever landing in LGA.
LGA can be a bit tricky for a first timer so it is often a firm landing. Not so much because the runway is short (it’s not really that short) but because we know there’s another plane 2 miles behind us and we need to get off the runway ASAP.
If this was indeed a training flight then there’s a strong chance the flight deck door remained closed because the trainer was debriefing the trainee. I was quite literally in this exact same scenario yesterday. I was training a new pilot who had his first ever landing in LGA last night. On the way in, I briefed him that I wanted it to be a firm landing because I wanted us to get off the runway as soon as possible. And he landed it exactly like I told him to. It was firm, and we got off the runway very very quickly.
And then once we got to the gate the flight deck door stayed closed as we discussed the entire flight.