captain-david-jacobson

Re-introducing the Jacobson Flare landing training technique

Re-introducing the Jacobson Flare landing training technique

The Problem

For over 100 years aviators have, for the most part, known WHAT we are trying to achieve when landing an aeroplane; it’s the HOW that has been so elusive.

My long-held view is that the visual approach and landing manoeuvre is the worst taught and most neglected topic in the entire flight training syllabus, both civil and military because, until 1987, there had never been a universal, quantifiable and consistently reliable approach and landing training technique. Flight training schools still attempt to teach outdated methods which date directly to World War 1 (1914-18).

The Solution

In order to land any airplane consistently well, pilots must know the answers to five important, yet simple questions, relating to their aeroplane type:

1. Where to aim?
2. How to aim?
3. When to flare?
4. How much to flare?
5. How fast to flare? (That is, the flare rate)

Let me pose this questions:

Have you ever seen a flight training manual or article, or a briefing offer a factual and complete answer to even ONE of these questions, let alone ALL FIVE?

Let us (re-) introduce you to the Jacobson Flare – the world’s first and only universal, quantifiable and consistently reliable approach and landing flare training technique.

While learning to fly at YMMB Moorabbin, Victoria, in 1965, at the age of 17 years, I regarded what I was taught then, in respect of HOW to land an airplane, as inadequate, to say the least. That view was only reinforced as my career in Trans-Australia Airlines (TAA) progressed from 1970, becoming Australian Airlines Ltd from 1987 and on to Qantas Airways Ltd following the merger in 1992 and the subject of landing training remains the ‘elephant in the room’, to this day. The silence on the subject of HOW to land, in flight training manuals from any source, is deafening.

Key considerations have been overlooked or ignored:

1. Many flight training schools still teach conflicting flight path control philosophies, ignoring the key requirements mandated by whether or not variable engine power (propellor aircraft) or thrust (jet aircraft) is available. This can cause coordination issues, affecting passenger comfort, flight path stability, inconsistent landing quality and, ultimately, serious flight safety issues.

2. The conventional concept of using flare height is flawed mathematically because, on a standard 3º final approach path, whether visually- or instrument-based, any vertical error, whether high or low, compounds x 20 times as a longitudinal error. The touchdown point ends up being deeper or shorter, respectively, along the runway. This applies equally to the manual and auto-flare manoeuvre, based on radio altimeters and GPWS calls. The standard 3º path angle is generally exaggerated in instructional materials’ approach profile diagrams, thus masking this critical issue. Check for yourself, with a protractor: it will measure approximately 25-30º – far greater than 3º.

3. The vertical dimension of flare height is invisible to the pilot; it’s an educated, yet unreliable guess of pilot eye height above the runway and it varies with every different aircraft. Even if flying just one airplane type regularly, this guess is inconsistent. A great many variables, summarized as aircraft, environmental (both airport- and weather-related) and pilot performance, apply.

4. Conventional landing training is almost entirely based on the flawed assumption that it can only be mastered by educated guesswork, backed up by nothing better than repetition and practice, to develop judgment and perception, ‘feel’ and ‘the look’ – NONE of which can be taught.

During that early training time from 1965, I had an idea, inspired by the celebrated 1943 RAF 617 Sqn ‘Dambusters’ application of simple triangulation for their bombsights and belly-mounted twin spotlights which fixed their height at 18m over water, at night.

Clearly, I had insufficient flying experience back then to act on that inspiration. Much later, as an experienced flight instructor and DC-9-30 training captain with Trans-Australia Airlines (TAA), I borrowed the Dambusters’ simple triangulation – used to great effect – and since 1985 have applied it to the development of a longitudinal flare point based on a visual fix, rather than the conventional and mathematically flawed, inconsistent guess of a vertical flare height.

Added to other key elements, this longitudinal flare point quickly became the basis of the World’s first and only universal, quantifiable and unassailable approach and landing training technique, in a Paper I wrote and presented for the 1987 Australian Aviation Symposium.

I have applied and taught this technique ever since 1985, for 18,000 of my 24,000 total hours’ flight experience, for many GA pilots and for all 50 of my airline first officer and command trainees.

Put simply, it is well proven – for thousands of pilots, in over 70 countries.

By invitation, I presented the Jacobson Flare at the complete series of 1997 Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) Flight Safety Seminars around Australia. The response by the pilots present at each venue was overwhelming; they wanted these answers which, to my knowledge, are not available from any other source.

The Jacobson Flare App is available for iOS for the average cost of flying just one single circuit in a typical light training aircraft. Compared with the cost of repetitive circuit training, the price is negligible: the advantages priceless. The cost is recouped in flying just one less necessary circuit!

The App answers all FIVE of the questions featured above and many more. It is essentially a 350-page e-manual, fully illustratedand explained with detailed text, and 6 video clips. It also includes a comprehensive Reference Section, with 5 vital, inter-active calculators that will serve pilots through an entire career.

Flight safety is greatly enhanced and there are huge savings to be made for pilots, owners and operators, through significant time and cost savings in

• Reduced training time to first solo (at least around 50% reduction). See first solo stats – China Southern WAFC

• Learning the technique ONCE and then applying it to successive aeroplane conversions, through an entire career;

• Greatly reduced stress on students and their instructors;

• Reduced general wear and tear on aircraft undercarriage, wheels, tyres and brakes;

• Huge reduction in serious damage to aircraft undercarriage, propellers and airframe extremities, caused by poor technique or runway overruns;
• Greatly increased safety through reduced injuries and fatalities;
• Reduced runway occupancy times, for operators and for

You are invited to check out the testimonial comments from many experienced pilots, at https://www.jacobsonflare.com/testimonials/and much further information is available on www.jacobsonflare.com .

37 years ago, I developed a solution. However, the industry is yet to realise that it has a problem. The pathetic fallback, ‘We’ve always done it,this way’, is just not good enough, anymore.

If you agree, contact me and let us start a conversation on how you can introduce the Jacobson Flare to your Flight Training College training syllabus.

This has been a career-long campaign and I am now seeking your support to bring it to the attention of your flight training working group, with whom I should be pleased to work closely: to share my extensive experience in researching, developing, proving and teaching the Jacobson Flare – in GA and airline aircraft types ranging from sailplanes to the A380.

I refer you also to this independent Paper on Landing Flare Performance, published by the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.

Before replying, please visit www.jacobsonflare.com and its various tabs. I commend The Jacobson Flare LITE.pdf as the best introduction yet to this subject.

Finally, here is a response from former RAAF Air Commodore John Chesterfield ; one from former Head of Standards and Testing Barry Carpenter; and one from prominent aviation theory school Head, Bob Tait.

I look forward to yours.

With kind regards,

Captain David M Jacobson FRAeS MAP

B737 Captain MEL (Retired Qantas Airways Ltd Feb 2010)

+61 419 346 336

david.jacobson@jacobsonflare.com

 

Wishing you many safe landings

 

Captain David M Jacobson FRAeS MAP

 

Would you care to experience that unsurpassed sense of accomplishment, derived from executing consistently beautiful landings, more often?

For starters, Download the FREE Jacobson Flare LITE, our no fuss/no frills introduction. Here we demonstrate, step by step, the application of the Jacobson Flare on a typical grass airstrip at Porepunkah, YPOK.

 

We invite you to browse the consistently positive comments on our Testimonials page. Many pilots, of all levels of experience, have downloaded our Apps. Read about their own experiences with the Jacobson Flare technique and the App.

Then download the COMPLETE Jacobson Flare app – for iOS. You’re already possibly paying $300+/hour to hire an aeroplane: You’ll recover the cost of the app, in just ONE LESS-NEEDED CIRCUIT. Moreover, you’ll have an invaluable reference tool, throughout your entire life in aviation.

Download the COMPLETE Jacobson Flare App for iOS devices now.

 

We invite you, also, to review our new, FREE companion app,

offering a convenient way of staying abreast of our latest blogs.

 

Download the Jacobson Flare NEWS App for iOS devices now.

How to land a plane.. Our favourite FAQs.. #5 What controls what, on final approach?

We share some valuable insight to a perennial, yet vital question: One which is often explained, poorly.

FAQ #5 ‘I was taught that airspeed is controlled with the elevators and rate of descent is controlled with the throttle. Is this not correct?’

The concept of ‘elevators controlling path angle and power/thrust controlling airspeed’ for normal, powered approaches is not new. The use of the primary effects of the flight controls is essential in achieving a stable approach path on visual and instrument approaches in ANY airplane and has been widely and wisely utilised for decades, by civil and military aviators.

Using the secondary effects of the flight controls, i.e., ‘elevators controlling airspeed’, is certainly valid when gliding, or on a forced landing caused by partial or total loss of engine power or thrust; and is clearly unavoidable when climbing. These are all cases when power/thrust is at a fixed setting, necessarily.

The dubious concept of ‘power/thrust facilitating rate of descent on a normal, powered approach is very clumsy and unintuitive, especially for student pilots, in light airplanes and is totally ineffective on larger/faster airplanes.

The rate of descent on final approach is a function of just two variable factors: flight path angle and groundspeed. Certainly, the variation of power/thrust can facilitate a change in path angle, at a given indicated airspeed, but it does not directly control rate of descent. In any case, it is a very second-hand way of flying an approach and offers no stability. A roller coaster flight path is the inevitable result, leading to unstable approaches. This is one of several major reasons for inconsistent and poor quality landings.

Another critical issue is to consider the two common errors that student pilots (and licensed ones, also) who have been taught this inaccurate method, make frequently:

1. High and fast, on final approach; and/or
2. Low and slow. In each case, the initial response, for a pilot trained to think that the elevators control airspeed will COMPOUND both problems.

The pilot who is HIGH will pitch UP, making things worse and the pilot who is LOW will pitch DOWN – the LAST things the pilot should be doing, to resolve each error! A third major issue is that the roller coaster flight path ensures that the threshold crossing height of the aircraft will be totally inconsistent, making landing judgment and touchdown points quite haphazard.

As if all that is not enough of a problem, the situation worsens at a most critical phase: the flare point. A pilot, pitching the aeroplane with the elevators to control AIRSPEED, now needs to transfer the purpose of the elevators to pitch the aircraft to control the FLIGHT PATH ANGLE. What a ridiculous moment to completely redefine the flight path control philosophy! It defies all logic.

A further point (apart from greatly improved passenger comfort) is that by flying a stable approach with a more-or-less constant body angle, the lowest angle we can see over the nose of the airplane is also more-or-less constant. This fact is crucial in facilitating the Jacobson Flare’s unique visual fix for the initiation of the flare itself – inspired by the 1943 RAF 617 Sqn ‘Dambusters’ – and is responsible for the automatic self-correction of the pre-calculated flare fix for variations in landing flap settings, approach path angles, runway slopes and discounting the height illusions caused by varying runway widths.

“But this is just contrary to the way VFR training is frequently taught. I went through several instrument instructors, and never found one who could adequately explain why we (CFIs) teach aircraft control differently to VFR and IFR students. Your explanation was right on, and satisfied my thirst for that understanding with an easily to implement and repeatable solution.” (Mark Santacroce, USA)

Mark was dead right – that aspect has long bemused me, also. Why teach the correct method when IFR, and the flawed ‘speed descent’ method when VFR? After all, the airplane doesn’t know the difference between IFR and VFR! But it does know the difference between a powered and a glide approach And that is the arbiter.

However, this aspect is only a part of the ‘How to aim?‘ second step in using the Jacobson Flare. All five steps must be applied for this comprehensive technique to be applied consistently well.

The full discussion on this and many other related topics may be found in The Jacobson Flare App for iOS, available on the App Store .

 

Wishing you many safe landings

 

Captain David M Jacobson FRAeS MAP

 

Would you care to experience that unsurpassed sense of accomplishment, derived from executing consistently beautiful landings, more often?

For starters, Download the FREE Jacobson Flare LITE, our no fuss/no frills introduction. Here we demonstrate, step by step, the application of the Jacobson Flare on a typical grass airstrip at Porepunkah, YPOK.

 

We invite you to browse the consistently positive comments on our Testimonials page. Many pilots, of all levels of experience, have downloaded our Apps. Read about their own experiences with the Jacobson Flare technique and the App.

Then download the COMPLETE Jacobson Flare app – for iOS. You’re already possibly paying $300+/hour to hire an aeroplane: You’ll recover the cost of the app, in just ONE LESS-NEEDED CIRCUIT. Moreover, you’ll have an invaluable reference tool, throughout your entire life in aviation.

Download the COMPLETE Jacobson Flare App for iOS devices now.

 

We invite you, also, to review our new, FREE companion app,

offering a convenient way of staying abreast of our latest blogs.

 

Download the Jacobson Flare NEWS App for iOS devices now.

A gift for all flight Instructors – anywhere

One of my favourite authors, the American pilot Richard Bach (Gift of Wings, Biplane, Illusions and many more) stated, beautifully:

‘Learning is being reminded that you know something; Doing is demonstrating that you know it; and Teaching is reminding others that they know, also.’

It’s been said, ‘there is nothing more perfect than an idea whose time has come’. However, change in any person or organisation – let alone an industry –can be regarded either as a threat – or as an opportunity.

I would invite you to regard this as a golden opportunity for the industry – and a major gift for you, both personally and professionally. This is a valid toolkit that you can add to your skillset as an instructor, yet one that has benefits for the rest of your own flying careers.

You may be considering the decision to embrace my Jacobson Flare, the world’s first and only universal, quantifiable and unassailable approach and landing training technique.

You may also have never heard of it – until now.

Either way, please, be assured that your experience and qualifications to date are very much respected and valued; your instructing skills and talents are not in any way in question – though you have probably continued to learn and to grow in the role, as many others have done.

Richard Bach also wrote: ‘There is no problem, without a gift for you in its hands.’

Any training organisation and every instructor and teacher must, from time to time, re-evaluate what they teach and how they teach it. I feel certain that somewhere, sometime, you must all have wondered if anyone else felt, as I did in 1965 and then knew by 1985, that the landing manoeuvre was the most neglected and non-standardised sequence in the whole flight training syllabus.

We’ve all wondered why the landing is sometimes difficult to learn and even more difficult to teach. I believe it is because, for nearly 100 years until 1987, there has been no underlying framework.

My original idea, inspired by the RAF 617 Sqn ‘Dambusters’ of 1943, was simple: apply triangulation to apply a fully visual fix to the landing flare point, instead of a guess of vertical height. Turns out, it worked, but it’s become just a part of something much more than that.

I was seriously encouraged to research and develop an explanation for what I had observed for 20 years. I wrote a paper in 1987, for an aviation conference and, over the intervening years, developed what is now known as the Jacobson Flare. The explanation is still very simple but is now a complete approach and landing system: a defined and visible eye path, from joining final approach, right through to touchdown, easily applied to any fixed-wing aeroplane. It’s predictable, consistent, universal and fully quantifiable.

Somebody once said, ‘There are 3 or 4 things that a pilot must know, to land ANY fixed-wing aeroplane consistently well. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are!!’

Well, I contend that there are actually 5 things and I can share them with you, right now:

1. Where to aim?
2. How to aim?
3. When to flare?
4. How much to flare? And
5. How fast to flare? (i.e., the flare rate)

Now, I don’t know of ONE reference book or training manual, (not even from the manufacturers such as Airbus and Boeing, or ANY airline), that answers even ONE of those questions, let alone all five. Remember, I’m speaking of ANY fixed-wing aircraft, sailplane to the A380! The Jacobson Flare answers every one of these questions, simply, factually and accurately. The mathematically based arguments are unassailable.

Much more information can be found on www.jacobsonflare.com and it would be great if you would be prepared to do a little research, after reading this. I commend the About and Testimonials tabs, the JF App Preview video and the Jacobson Flare LITE. This is all about sharing information, finessing landing instruction and providing cost-effective training for your students, while minimising wear and tear on aircraft and greatly increasing competency and safety levels.

With respect to competency levels, we even have a means of measuring your students’ levels of competency – not only in the approach and landing, but for all sequences.

Finally, for any further information, you are most welcome to contact me, via these contact details.

 

Wishing you many safe landings

 

Captain David M Jacobson FRAeS MAP

 

Would you care to experience that unsurpassed sense of accomplishment, derived from executing consistently beautiful landings, more often?

For starters, Download the FREE Jacobson Flare LITE, our no fuss/no frills introduction. Here we demonstrate, step by step, the application of the Jacobson Flare on a typical grass airstrip at Porepunkah, YPOK.

 

We invite you to browse the consistently positive comments on our Testimonials page. Many pilots, of all levels of experience, have downloaded our Apps. Read about their own experiences with the Jacobson Flare technique and the App.

Then download the COMPLETE Jacobson Flare app – for iOS. You’re already possibly paying $300+/hour to hire an aeroplane: You’ll recover the cost of the app, in just ONE LESS-NEEDED CIRCUIT. Moreover, you’ll have an invaluable reference tool, throughout your entire life in aviation.

Download the COMPLETE Jacobson Flare App for iOS devices now.

 

We invite you, also, to review our new, FREE companion app,

offering a convenient way of staying abreast of our latest blogs.

 

Download the Jacobson Flare NEWS App for iOS devices now.

You will appreciate the Jacobson Flare … when the penny drops

After more than 100 years, pilots are still being taught to land by guesswork. Triangles have been around a lot longer and work much better.

Since flight instruction started to become more formalised during and following World War One, pilots have pursued the consistently perfect landing. ‘What’ to do is generally understood; the ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘how’ involved in landing an airplane has been far more elusive.

The conventional wisdom on landings has been that it just takes indefinite hours of practice to finally ‘get the hang of it‘. And many of us did get the hang of it – some faster than others. Many others didn’t and gave up, or were ‘scrubbed’ off a flying course.

Sadly, many have died in the process – and still do, to this day.

For those who did get to first solo and beyond: What then? How did you go on your next airplane type conversion? Or in a decent crosswind? Or at a different airfield? Or at night? The only conventional and honest answer is … ‘by trial and error and with difficulty’.

The Jacobson Flare technique is the quantifiable explanation of what pilots have been trying to achieve by repetition, feel and guesswork, with varying results, for over 100 years.

Apart from the simple and logical solutions to determining where to aim and how to aim (at an appropriate initial aim point on the runway), how much to flare and how fast to flare (i.e., the flare rate), the unique key to the Jacobson Flare is the eclipsing of a longitudinal flare point, short of the initial aim point by the airplane’s windscreen lower visual cut-off angle.

This flare cut-off point is easily derived for any fixed-wing airplane that flares for landing; it can even be applied to the autorotation manoeuvre in helicopters. The essential thing to understand is that while the flare is still commenced at the optimum flare height, that height is visually recognised by the flare cut-off point ahead, on the ground, which corresponds to that height.

Triangles have had 3 sides for a very long time and to this day and, historically, we only ever used 2 of them: the hypotenuse (slanting)  side represents the pilot’s eye path and the opposite(vertical) side represents the flare height.

The adjacent (horizontal) side was simply ignored. If the flight path angle had been drawn more accurately at around 3º, instead of the typical 25-30º, it would have been recognised that the adjacent side is approximately 20 times larger than the opposite side. This means that any vertical error, made in guessing flare height, compounds 20 times longitudinally along the runway, greatly increasing the landing footprint. Moreover, the vertical side is invisible to the pilot.

In contrast, using a longitudinal flare cut-off point in determining a visual fix means that any error made in assessing the flare cut-off point position, in relation the the initial aim point, is reflected by only 1/20th of that error, vertically, making the flare initiation point much more accurate.  Moreover, the flare point, not to mention the entire landing flare manoeuvre, is fully visible to the pilot and tolerant of error, making the Jacobson Flare eminently suitable for unmarked gravel and grass airstrips.

The flare point calculation is only made once, for each airplane type (or variant) and the technique actually self-compensates (geometrically) for variations in flight (approach) path angle, runway slope and landing flap angle. The vertical height illusions, encountered when landing on an un-familiar narrower or wider runway can be discounted with a consistent and fully visible, longitudinal flare cut-off point, rather than a conventional guess of flare height.

 

So triangles and their structure work much better than antiquated guesswork.

When the penny drops, your ‘aha moment‘ will make you smile and that’s when the value of the Jacobson Flare will be appreciated.

 

Wishing you many safe landings

 

Captain David M Jacobson FRAeS MAP

 

Would you care to experience that unsurpassed sense of accomplishment, derived from executing consistently beautiful landings, more often?

For starters, Download the FREE Jacobson Flare LITE, our no fuss/no frills introduction. Here we demonstrate, step by step, the application of the Jacobson Flare on a typical grass airstrip at Porepunkah, YPOK.

 

We invite you to browse the consistently positive comments on our Testimonials page. Many pilots, of all levels of experience, have downloaded our Apps. Read about their own experiences with the Jacobson Flare technique and the App.

Then download the COMPLETE Jacobson Flare app – for iOS. You’re already possibly paying $300+/hour to hire an aeroplane: You’ll recover the cost of the app, in just ONE LESS-NEEDED CIRCUIT. Moreover, you’ll have an invaluable reference tool, throughout your entire life in aviation.

Download the COMPLETE Jacobson Flare App for iOS devices now.

 

We invite you, also, to review our new, FREE companion app,

offering a convenient way of staying abreast of our latest blogs.

 

Download the Jacobson Flare NEWS App for iOS devices now.

The Jacobson Flare NEWS App – Bug resolved

To our valued Jacobson Flare NEWS App subscribers:

We became aware of a bug affecting the operation of the News App: It has now been resolved and we apologise for any inconvenience.

 

For future reference, all the articles in the JF NEWS App can always be accessed via the Blogs tab on www.jacobsonflare.com .

 

Wishing you many safe landings

 

Captain David M Jacobson FRAeS MAP

 

Would you care to experience that unsurpassed sense of accomplishment, derived from executing consistently beautiful landings, more often?

For starters, Download the FREE Jacobson Flare LITE, our no fuss/no frills introduction. Here we demonstrate, step by step, the application of the Jacobson Flare on a typical grass airstrip at Porepunkah, YPOK.

 

We invite you to browse the consistently positive comments on our Testimonials page. Many pilots, of all levels of experience, have downloaded our Apps. Read about their own experiences with the Jacobson Flare technique and the App.

Then download the COMPLETE Jacobson Flare app – for iOS. You’re already possibly paying $300+/hour to hire an aeroplane: You’ll recover the cost of the app, in just ONE LESS-NEEDED CIRCUIT. Moreover, you’ll have an invaluable reference tool, throughout your entire life in aviation.

Download the COMPLETE Jacobson Flare App for iOS devices now.

 

We invite you, also, to review our new, FREE companion app,

offering a convenient way of staying abreast of our latest blogs.

 

Download the Jacobson Flare NEWS App for iOS devices now.