First Ever Landing

This one’s jumping back to my FO days. A very big day. My first ever passenger flight. It’s from London to Zurich and back, with me in the first officer seat, a training captain in the captain’s seat, and another training captain sat behind us on the jump seat (3^rd seat at the back of the flightdeck) in case it all really goes tits up. A training captain is a captain that’s got an extra qualification enabling them to train new cadets like me, as well as putting captains and first officers through their paces in our simulator assessments every 6 months (more on that later). I feel somewhat sorry for the 200 people boarding today who have absolutely no idea they’re about to be flown by someone who’s never landed a plane full of passengers before.

I’m pilot flying on the outbound sector so I fly the aircraft out to Zurich. By the time we make our approach it’s nighttime. Not only have I never landed with nearly 200 people onboard, but I’ve also never done a night landing in an A320 (bar the sim) so this will be interesting. It feels as though the last 2 years of hard graft have so far been leading up to this point. I’m nervous but focused. I want to nail my first ever passenger landing for the passengers as much as for myself. The initial part of the approach goes well and as we drop through the final 50ft, descending towards the runway at 700 foot per minute, I action my routine of ‘eyes to the end of the runway, cut the throttle, slight pitch up’ and just as we’re about to grace terrafirma with our presence a bright red light flashes in my face along with a very loud audio ‘PRIORITY LEFT!’

The training captain has used his takeover button on his sidestick to take control of the aircraft from me. My heart sank. How had I managed to fuck this up? The plane touches down under his control and as we’re decelerating on the runway the captain tells me we’ll have a chat about it when we’re parked. I felt absolutely gutted but turn my focus to the task in hand, which is now a monitoring role until we’re parked on the gate.

During the chat he sternly told me that I’d flared the aircraft too early and too fast, meaning we would’ve floated outside the touchdown zone, in which we have to land otherwise we go-around for another attempt. I was confused as I felt I’d flared at exactly the right point and was confident I was going to fly the aircraft onto the runway within the touchdown zone, but maybe I had to re-calibrate my perspective? My confidence took a bit of a hit and I felt I’d essentially failed at the task I’d come out to do today. 2 years of hard work and I can’t even land the fucking thing?

During the turnaround the button pushing captain disappeared off to the toilet, during which time I got a tap on the shoulder from the much friendlier training captain on the jump seat. He told me he saw absolutely nothing wrong with my approach or flare, and didn’t feel the captain actually needed to takeover. I’m really grateful to him for saying that, as if he didn’t, I genuinely wonder how differently the next few flights could have gone for me.

I’m going to make quite a controversial statement here but as with lots of things in life, I believe a fair bit of operating an airliner is actually to do with confidence. I’ve seen multiple other cadets who have had their confidence knocked with one or two bad landings, or bad simulator reports, and it sets them off on a downwards spiral when they weren’t previously having any issues at all.  

If you do one or two bad landings, you’ll get sent for re-training in the simulator. You know whilst you’re in there, your job’s potentially on the line which puts even more pressure on you to ace the landings. Some trainers home in solely on what’s going wrong rather than anything that’s going right, and the cadet ends up suffering and spiraling even more as their confidence gets knocked further and further with each critical comment and lack of praise.  Sadly, this has actually led to people being released from the company as once fine pilots suddenly can’t seem to land the thing.

For me, time in the right-hand seat should be spent building your confidence so when you’re in the left-seat, you’re both competent and confident. An overconfident pilot is a very dangerous pilot, but as is a pilot who lacks confidence. There’s a fine line between the two and I think it’s vital for first officers to find it before being able to progress. You need to be confident enough to assert yourself, manage the aircraft, and also be open and honest about mistakes.

As I finalize this diary now 10 years on, I can happily say I’ve since never ever had an issue with landings. Whilst I don’t hold it against that training captain for what he did, I think he was too trigger happy on the takeover button and maybe didn’t realize it could have a real detrimental and lasting impact on a cadets confidence. In the same token, I get he was probably just covering his own ass and being extra cautious. Ah well, a good lesson for me to learn should I ever want to go into training.