ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the visual information sources that a pilot may use to help him or her land the aircraft. The medium through which the pilot moves is the air. The airfields are equipped with an Instrumental Landing System (ILS) to help the pilot maintain the desired course during the approach phase of the landing procedure. The aircraft follows the ILS glide slope with constant flight speed. A soft and safe landing requires a touchdown sink rate between 0.5 and 1.0 m/sec-1, indicating that a significant reduction in sink rate is to be achieved in the flare or round out. For each landing, a large number of variables were recorded every 0.03 sec, including height, ground distance to runway threshold, sink rate, air speed, elevator deflection, and elevator force. The chapter concludes that the pilots not only wanted to make a soft landing, but that they also wanted to make contact with the runway at a specific point.
