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Dan Moore
other airplanes with different landing techniques, it might be wise. But in the PA46 world, this is simply not wise. If you do, the nose wheel will “plop” down on the runway, and if there’s any crosswind, the rudder pedal input will
be excessive to one direction or the other, and the airplane will dart in that direction. Make sure you “fly the nose wheel to the ground” early in the landing sequence. You are not flying an F16.
Poor airmanship is also to blame. It is a fact that some pilots have more money than aviation sense. Aviation sense is built upon aviation experience, and there is certainly a learning curve in any pilot’s growth in aviation. Simply put, the PA46 is not an airplane for rookies, even if you have the coin to move up quickly.
The PA46 is not hard to fly, but neither is a Ferrari is hard to drive. You would not hand the keys of your treasured sports car to your 16-year-old grandson, would you? Nope. You’d want him to gain some experience, wisdom and see that he can combine the two together to create a mature and capable driver—the same thing with the PA46. Ensure you are a capable pilot with sufficient experience flying
in the clouds in airplanes that are of lesser capability than the PA46. Then, move up slowly with the best training you can find.
I believe many of you might think, “The way Joe writes, he must think landing a PA46 airplane is easy.” Nope! Landing is undoubtedly the most challenging part of most flights, and I’ve had my share of landings where passengers asked, “Were we shot down?” But, becoming good with the landing sequence for your PA46 can certainly be mastered. The smoothest landings don’t necessarily mean that you made the best approach or have proper control inputs. It means you “timed it right” and rescued a terrible situation.
If you have proper technique, even the times when “didn’t time it right” will result in safe landings that won’t hurt your airplane. I tell people frequently that “the PA46 is an easy airplane to land, but it is not easy to land it smoothly every time.” Simply put, the gear is stiff, there’s not trailing link landing gear, and it is “short-coupled” (the distance from the main gear to the nose gear is not long). But, you’ve got everything you need to make a good and safe landing in an incredibly high-performance airplane.
I hope the rash of landing accidents stops soon. But, again, I suspect the answer is going to be better training and better piloting.
Factory Direct
Joe Casey is an ATP, DPE, CFI (A/H), MEI, CFIG, CFIH, as well as a U.S. Army UH-60 standardization instructor/ex- aminer. An MMOPA Board member and chair of the Safety Committee, he has been a PA46 instructor for 14-plus years and has accumulated 11,800-plus hours of flight time, 5,000 of which has been in the PA46. Contact Joe at: joe@ flycasey.com, or by phone at 903.721.9549.
MMOPA MAGAZINE MAY / JUNE 2021 33