Soft-Field Approach and Landing (ASEL)

The objective: touch down as smoothly as possible and at the slowest possible landing speed, controlling the airplane so that the wings support its weight as long as practical — to minimize stresses from a rough surface and to prevent sinking into a soft one (AFH ch. 9).

The one structural difference from a normal landing: a degree of power is used throughout the level-off and touchdown. That lets airspeed dissipate slowly while the airplane is flown 1 to 2 feet off the surface in ground effect, so that when the wheels first touch, the wings continue to support much of the weight — which minimizes the nose-over forces that suddenly affect the airplane at the moment of touchdown (AFH ch. 9).

Everything else — approach, aim point, stabilized criteria — is the normal landing you teach in Task VII.B.

The same final-approach airspeed used for short-field landings applies here — the manufacturer's published speed, or in its absence not more than 1.3 VSO, ±5 knots with gust factor applied (AI.VII.D.S7; AFH ch. 9).

Why not faster: higher approach speeds may result in excessive float in ground effect, and floating makes a smooth, controlled touchdown even more difficult (AFH ch. 9). On this Task float is not merely inelegant — the entire maneuver depends on arriving in ground effect with just enough energy to hold the airplane off while power controls the settling.

Flaps: use of flaps aids in touching down at minimum speed and is recommended whenever practical. Two cautions — in low-wing airplanes flaps may suffer damage from mud, stones, or slush thrown by the wheels, and it is generally inadvisable to retract them during the after-landing roll, because flap retraction matters less than total concentration on controlling the airplane.

And do not steepen: there is no reason for a steep angle of descent unless obstacles are present in the approach path.

• Smooth, timely, correct control inputs during round out and touchdown, and for tricycle-gear airplanes keep the nose-wheel off the surface until loss of elevator effectiveness
• Touch down at a proper pitch attitude with minimum sink rate, no side drift, and with the longitudinal axis aligned with the center of the runway
• Maintain elevator as recommended by the manufacturer during rollout, and exit the "soft" area at a speed that would preclude sinking into the surface
• Maintain proper position of the flight controls and sufficient speed to taxi while on the soft surface
• Execute a timely go-around if the approach cannot be made within tolerances (S12), and analyze and correct common errors (S14)

Note what is absent: there is no touchdown-point distance tolerance on this Task. The graded quantity is how the airplane arrives, not where.

1. "Normal approach — same speed, same aim point, same picture."
2. "Round out starting. Now we level off about a foot up and stay there."
3. "Small power — that's what's holding us. Don't let it land yet."
4. "Nose coming up as the speed bleeds. Hold it off, hold it off."
5. "Mains touching — nose stays up. Keep flying the wings."
6. "Now a little power to ease the nose down… gently… nose-wheel on."
7. "Keep the yoke back. No brakes. Keep rolling — we don't stop on this surface."

Two lines to repeat every time, because they are the two failure points: "Small power" during the hold-off, and "Don't let the nose fall" after touchdown.

The rate of weight transfer. In nose-wheel airplanes, after the mains touch, hold sufficient back-elevator pressure to keep the nose-wheel off the surface — using back-elevator pressure and engine power, the pilot controls the rate at which the weight of the airplane is transferred from the wings to the wheels (AFH ch. 9).

Field conditions may even call for maintaining a condition in which the main wheels are just touching the surface but the weight is still supported by the wings until a suitable taxi surface is reached.

The point that makes this maneuver worth teaching: at any time during this transition phase — before the weight is on the wheels and before the nose-wheel is down — the ability is retained to apply full power and perform a safe takeoff (field length and obstacles permitting). Once committed, gently lower the nose-wheel; a slight addition of power usually aids in easing it down.

Because braking loads the wheel you are trying to protect. Brakes on a soft field are unnecessary and should be avoided: braking may impose a heavy load on the nose gear from premature or hard contact with the landing surface, causing the nose-wheel to dig in — and the soft or rough surface itself provides sufficient reduction in forward speed (AFH ch. 9).

The corollary students never expect: on a very soft field an increase in power may be needed to keep the airplane moving and from becoming stuck. Say it in the brief so it does not come as a surprise on the rollout.

Eight (AFH ch. 9):

1. Excessive descent rate on final approach
2. Excessive airspeed on final approach
3. Unstable approach
4. Round out too high above the runway surface
5. Poor power management during round out and touchdown
6. Hard touchdown
7. Inadequate control of the airplane weight transfer from wings to wheels after touchdown
8. Allowing the nose-wheel to "fall" to the runway after touchdown rather than controlling its descent

Items 5, 7, and 8 are the ones unique to this Task — and 5 is upstream of 6, 7, and 8. If power management is right, most of the list disappears.

Right instinct, wrong reason — and it is worth separating the two so the habit generalizes.

The correct high-round-out fix on any landing is to hold the pitch attitude constant until the airplane decelerates enough to start descending again, adding a slight amount of power if needed to keep airspeed from decreasing excessively and avoid losing lift too rapidly (AFH ch. 9). On a soft-field landing that power is already supposed to be there, so a student who "discovers" it high has actually stumbled into the technique.

Where it goes wrong: they add power and keep raising the nose, so the airplane balloons out of ground effect and then arrives hard. Coaching: "Power's right — now freeze the pitch. Let it come down to us."

The hard boundary stays the same: go around any time it appears the nose needs to be lowered significantly, or the landing is in any other way uncertain (AFH ch. 9).

• Surface first. Runway/landing surface selection is an ACS risk element (AI.VII.D.R1) and the reason the Task exists. Unless you have actual knowledge of the surface, teach the maneuver on a hard runway and simulate — a genuinely soft field that has not been inspected is a nose-over waiting to happen.
• Crosswind limits are lower in practice. You touch down at the lowest possible airspeed with the airplane held off in ground effect — the moment of least control authority — and the correction must still be increasing through the round out (AFH ch. 9).
• The go-around is live until the weight is on the wheels, and that is an advantage of this technique, not a footnote. Brief the trigger: drift, hard arrival, or any doubt about the surface.
• The exit is part of the maneuver — the ACS requires exiting the soft area at a speed that would preclude sinking into the surface (AI.VII.D.S11) and maintaining sufficient speed to taxi (S13). Brief the taxi before you land it.

Because the soft-field technique deliberately spends the airplane's energy margin, and each of these four attacks the margin that is left.

• b. Windshear — a sudden, drastic shift in wind speed, direction, or both (AFH glossary). The hold-off is flown 1 to 2 feet off the surface at the slowest practical speed with power holding the flare, so a shear-induced airspeed loss arrives when there is nothing left to trade. It is also a listed reason to discontinue a landing (AFH ch. 9). Teach the trigger, not the recovery: unexplained airspeed or sink-rate excursions in the round out mean go around
• c. Tailwind — raises groundspeed at touchdown on a surface where the soft or rough surface itself provides sufficient reduction in forward speed and brakes should be avoided (AFH ch. 9). You cannot brake off the excess, so a tailwind on a soft field is a distance problem you solve before the approach, not during the rollout
• d. Wake turbulence — a listed reason to go around (AFH ch. 9). It matters more here than on a normal landing because the recovery from a wake upset is a power-and-attitude maneuver, and you are already holding the airplane just above stall in ground effect. If you are following a heavier airplane, the answer is spacing, not technique
• R3b. LAHSO — the combination the student must see as contradictory: a hold-short constraint requires knowing the landing distance available and being able to stop within it (PHAK ch. 14), while the soft-field technique avoids brakes and requires exiting the soft area at a speed that would preclude sinking into the surface. As PIC you have the final authority to accept or decline any LAHSO clearance — and on a genuinely soft surface the correct instructional answer is to decline it. (Full LAHSO treatment in Task VII.B.)

The generalization worth giving the student: on this Task the go-around is live until the weight is on the wheels (AFH ch. 9), so every item above resolves to the same decision, taken earlier than they expect.

Because the drag from the soft surface acts at the wheels — well below the center of gravity — producing a nose-down pitching moment the instant the wheels take load. The softer the surface and the higher the load on the wheels, the larger that moment.

The technique defeats it on both terms at once:

• Reduce the load — keep the wings carrying weight as long as practical, controlling the rate at which weight transfers from the wings to the wheels with elevator and power (AFH ch. 9)
• Oppose the moment — hold back-elevator pressure to keep the nose-wheel off until loss of elevator effectiveness (AI.VII.D.S9)

This is the same physics as the soft-field takeoff read backwards, which is exactly how to teach the pair: on takeoff you move weight from the wheels to the wings as fast as possible; on landing you move it from the wings to the wheels as slowly as possible.

Because propwash over the tail is airflow the airspeed indicator does not know about. The AFH makes the point in the short-field discussion, and it applies with more force here: a small amount of power provides more airflow over the elevator, giving it more authority at low airspeeds to enable the pilot to flare — and there is a risk that low airspeed and a windmilling propeller blocking airflow over the elevator may make it difficult to flare (AFH ch. 9).

That is the mechanical reason "a degree of power throughout the level-off and touchdown" is not merely about cushioning the descent — it is what keeps the pitch authority available to hold the nose-wheel up at speeds below which the elevator alone would quit.

It also explains the matching failure: prematurely reducing power to idle on the round out results in a hard landing (AFH ch. 9, short-field common errors), because you remove both the lift-cushion and the pitch authority at the same instant.

Teaching consequence: close the throttle after the airplane is settled and the nose is being lowered deliberately — never as a reflex at the moment of touchdown.

The hold-off happens entirely inside ground effect — the airplane is flown 1 to 2 feet off the surface (AFH ch. 9), which for a typical trainer is a small fraction of a wingspan, where induced drag is reduced by roughly half at 1/10 of the span (AFH ch. 6).

What the student feels, and should be told to expect:

• The airplane does not want to slow down — reduced induced drag means the deceleration they are used to at altitude does not arrive
• The nose wants to come up more easily than expected, then elevator effectiveness fades as speed decays — which is why power is holding the flare
• Height judgment is harder than in a normal landing because they are holding an altitude rather than arriving at one; send the eyes down the runway at the 10° to 15° viewing angle and keep them there (AFH ch. 9)

Common error 4 — round out too high above the runway surface — is fundamentally a "where are my eyes" error, and it responds to the same coaching as in Task VII.B.

Use the demonstration-performance structure and put the energy-management idea in the explanation phase, on the ground (AIH ch. 9). Cover:

• Objectives and completion standards
• The precise actions the learner will perform
• The end result of those actions
• The safety procedures

Then invite questions before you walk out.

For this maneuver, the explanation that pays off is one sentence about energy: the approach is flown at the same 1.3 VSO speed as a normal landing so that arriving energy is predictable, and then power — not pitch alone — is what meters the last few knots away. A student who understands that will not close the throttle at the flare.

For the debrief, use collaborative assessment: the learner self-assesses first, then you compare your assessment to theirs (AIH ch. 9). It is unusually effective here, because the student can usually feel a hard touchdown or a dropped nose-wheel before you say anything — and self-diagnosis of a felt error sticks.

Then follow the AIH's rule on delivery: when pointing out areas needing improvement, offer concrete suggestions that help, and if possible, avoid ending the evaluation on a negative note.