Every once in a while, a pilot nails a really difficult landing.  It’s a wonderful feeling to end a flight with a gentle float above the runway, wheels imperceptibly kissing the ground like a butterfly landing on a cheek.  Doing so can make a pilot feel confident, but confidence can be a double-edged sword.

The most challenging landings come as a result of trying to land in unfavorable weather conditions.   The most unfavorable of these are strong, gusty crosswinds, winds that come at you sideways and try to push you anywhere but where you want to go.   When they are variable and they gust, which is to say that they change both speed and direction unpredictably, it can feel like you are trying to wrestle a frenetic beast that is trying to kill you.

To do it well, you can’t be a brute.  Crosswind landings need to be finessed, for the simple reason that if you over-control an airplane and the wind drops out suddenly the end result can be ugly.  So you push gently, then harder, then relax, and tease and seduce the airplane gently to the ground.

One of my best landings was in Henderson, Nevada.  Winds were measured at about 15 to 20 miles an hour, but they were coming almost 45 degrees from the runway and were gusting to 30 miles an hour.  Strong winds that come right down the runway are typically not a problem, and in fact are desirable (unless they are gusty), because the airplane touches the ground at a much slower groundspeed.  But the larger the angle between the runway and the winds, the greater the winds will push the airplane away from its intended destination.

In practicing crosswind landings, the most widely accepted approach is called the side slip, in which the pilot puts the wing down on the side of the wind and lines the airplane up with the runway by using rudder.   The lowered wing corrects for the airplane’s drift while the rudder keeps the nose aligned with the runway.

The strength and direction of the crosswind in Henderson was such that putting the right aileron down (lowering the wing) couldn’t stop the airplane from drifting considerably to the left of the runway, even though I began my final turn early.   In order to make the centerline, I had to turn steeply and use right rudder instead of the left rudder I would normally use in a slip.   In other words, I had to fully turn into the wind while descending to the ground.   It was as though I had to create a separate runway in my mind toward which I was going to land straight ahead.  In fact, had the runway not been so wide, landing on a taxiway would have been a good option.

I reached the ground without experiencing the typical ground effect that would normally cause the airplane to float above the runway.   In fact, the main wheels touched down firmly over the centerline and the wind immediately pushed the nose on to the centerline, at which point I fully deflected the rudder to keep the airplane rolling as straight as I could.

I imagined the folks in the control tower watching the whole thing and applauding, which I am sure didn’t happen.  Neither of my passengers were pilots, so they seemed to have no idea what I had just accomplished, but the little Greek chorus of pilot homunculi in my brain were thrilled.

Now, that was a situation in which the controls were neither wrestled nor nudged.  It was the pilot version of Jonathan Swift’s “Carve to all but just enough, let them neither starve nor stuff.”

The deeper truth is that a large part of what occurred was plain dumb luck.  Winds were gusty, and a falling out of the gust at any point just above the runway could have really ruined my day.  The wind stayed steady enough for just long enough for me to make it to the runway.   I was not monitoring my ground speed, but I kept my airspeed up just in case the wind dropped out.   Because the winds were so strong, I undoubtedly touched the ground at a very low groundspeed, which made the landing much smoother.

The lesson in all of this, I believe, is to not be seduced into thinking that skill is operating when in fact it is luck.   I had control of the airplane, but so did the wind.   I was confident in my ability to land that day, but without recognizing the contribution that the momentarily steady crosswind made it is tempting to overestimate my own abilities.  Every landing is different because every wind is different, and while I do believe that each of us are capable of inching toward mastery, there can never be ultimate mastery of the thing we cannot control, that thing that Shakespeare called the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, the thing that for purposes of this post I will considerably less poetically call the crosswinds of life.