Why the 'hot' landings in India?
 

Its been a question I've had for awhile, but just never bothered to ask on here. So after my last couple days on a DEL/BOM/COK/IXE/BOM/DEL route with meetings along the way, I wondered why Indian airlines feel the need to land so fast? I'm not sure if there is a pilot that can explain this technically or if it is just the style of Indian airlines and how pilots are trained, but I just don't understand why all the flights hit the ground going so fast! Any wisdom?

No pilot 'slams' the aircraft into the ground for no reason. It can be weather/conditions, approach speed or simply the fact they have less runway before they turn off onto the taxiway. At some locations if you use the full runway you would have to turn at the end of the runway and backtrack, wasting time and fuel.

Quicker they land, quicker they get to the terminal, quicker they can start "boozing" !!!

Jet used to do this, as a part of "safety".

I had a hand in them changing their "training", but since I'm not flying much domestically, I'm not sure what the current situation is.

Basically all admission from the top was that they were taught this way - totally asinine, but given the fact that they have some clueless characters flying up front now, and minimal expats, it's very difficult to change these ingrained habits.

I did take a BOM-SIN and the return, SIN-BOM a few months ago, and the A332 was treated as badly as they were treating the B737's back a few years ago! (Oh yes, all local pilots...)

How difficult could it be, landing at Changi, in excellent conditions in the morning?? :confused: :eek:

Well, on an Airbus there is very little manual flying involved. The A32S (IC) and the A332 will glide in and flare pretty much automatically, so its not really the pilot who purposely slams the aircraft onto the ground. :rolleyes:

Thanks for the input, but I have the same feelings as SuperFlyBoy on this one, how hard is it to land in Mumbai, Kochi, Delhi, etc... in good weather, with a long runway and overall everything normal. I'd say it was also get drunk in the terminal quicker, but you can't really find booze in the airports. I'm going to go with just a lack of skills to smoothly glide the plane to the runway and keep my fingers crossed that they train their pilots to take it a little easier on the planes. Until then, I'll just have to keep enjoying these speedy landings!

Interesting - do you think I would be reporting inaccurate facts? And that the pilot/s has/have absolutely *no* control to screw up the landing on an airbus?? (save the rolleyes for the respective thread)

All I'm saying that as absolute laymen (and women) we have no knowledge as SLF on whether the landing was performed correctly or not by the subjective feeling of aircraft being 'slammed' into the runway. Airbus aircraft offer the flight crew a high level of automation to land the aircraft safely and effectively. SOP makes sure IC/9W pilots use the automation as much as possible to land the aircraft. 'Slamming' the aircraft into the runway may be required in certain conditions. If they make too hard a landing however the aircraft has to go into maintenance immediately afterward to inspect the landing gear. It is difficult to believe an airline has an SOP that calls for hard landings or tolerates repeated unnecessary hard landings that cause expensive damage to the aircraft in the long run. Modern equipment also tracks the the strains on an aircraft so operations and maintenance people will know what the flight crew did to the aircraft even if they don't report it.

In addition to landings, pilots in India bank steeply and change height fast.

I was told that this is because they are all former military pilots whose flight training consisted primarily of landing and taking off from aircraft carriers under hypothetical hostile fire.

I've always wondered this, and my wild guess was that it feels "hard" due to the type of concrete the runways are built with in India... but some other responses in this thread make more sense. Especially at BOM maybe a smooth landing would result in more taxi time as domestic and int'l flights seem to use the same runways (for e.g. a smooth landing for an int'l flight would bring it to the domestic part of the airport, resulting in a longer taxi to its int'l arrival gate?), or vice-versa. Makes sense but who knows. Glad you asked the question as I always thought it was just me.

On a similar note: (especially at BOM) I've felt that the runways are kinda bumpy.. more bumpy than I've experienced at airports outside of India. I've felt this for both take-off and landing (admittedly more while taking off, weirdly enough.) Is this my mind working overtime again?

Actually, if you look very closely in the airports, there is an IA VIP lounge that is separate then the IA J class lounge in all domestic airports. This is where the pilots/important IA people hang out before their flights and yes...there is plenty of free booze in there.

Well, be advised that the only aircraft carrier India had was the Vikrant (decommissioned), and now the Viraat. Most of the aircraft used were Harriers, which are VTOL - don't know if they actually landed normally as a winged aircraft (as on an aircraft carrier), but I guess they might have...

However, in comparision, one can check out SAS (SK) pilots, who also are ex-DK/SE/NO air force, but who can properly land their planes...but they do not have any aircraft carriers that I know of...

I will elucidate on this later - too tired to detail my response properly!

Very correct. This is the feedback I received from one of the expat pilots who were on the same flight as I was, deadheading, and one of their sunglasses ended up flying through the cabin from the rear biz seats, to my front bulkhead seat....well, the trade-off is landing gear (and possibly excessive airframe stress) being beaten up!

Yes, exactly - compare your statement above and add the inadequate runways (not flat), and you have even more stress on the aircraft...

Where did you get that from? The indian airline industry has grown soo fast in the past few years that they are churning out indian pilots by the dozen from various flight academies worldwide. When we visited the SAS facility (now Oxford) in ARN 5 years ago as part of a do, they had 20 9W pilots in training on the 737NG sims. There is no intentional cowboy style flying going on. Many US pilots also confess to have worked for 'USG' ie the military before joining a commercial airline and I asked them if the military training helps. They all said that when training for commerical flying instructors take extra care to root out any traits they learned in the military that may be detrimental in commercial aviation.

During my trips to Indonesia, I have noticed that Garuda 737 pilots use extremely fast approach speeds, even during landings in ideal weather and at airports with long runways. Those speeds seem to increase in the event of any sort of wind or weather. I could not believe how fast we landed the other day at BTJ during a sustained 10 mph breeze; far faster than any American or European-operated 737 would have landed in similar conditions, in my experience.

Please tell us how many operational aircraft carriers Indian Navy has!
The reason given sounds like an argument from urban legend. There was a time, most pilots were ex IAF. That's no longer true. The Navy has far fewer pilots than the IAF does.Also, my belief was, please corect me if I am wrong, that militray transport pilots are the mones who made it into commercial aviation. I have not heard of any military transport planes landing on an aircraft carrier nor do they perfomr the "tricks" you are talking about.