GA safety bulletin on landing issues released by CAA

CAA, the British aviation authority, has recently released a safety bulletin about the increase in the occurrence of landing related incidents in the past few months, following the COVID break from flying.

According to the report, about 70% of all general aviation incidents in the UK have involved some sort of landing difficulty. Most of those have been down to pilot errors, like the loss of control or landing in the undershoot. CAA points at rustiness, bad judgment, or the lack of muscle memory as the underlying causes.

It is wise, after a long lay-off, to do a few circuits on familiar surroundings of home base, before heading off to another airfield. This should help abandon bad habits and get the mis-remembers skills back. Choose a nice, calm day, without the crosswinds and practice general handling at height, which incorporates exercises relevant to landings, such as slow flight, stalls, and recoveries.

The bulletin also reminds ourselves that the circuit airspace has the greatest mid-air collision risk and other pilots can also make mistakes, so we should lookout, think, fly defensively and be ready for the unexpected.

You can download the bulletin, called CAP1950, from the CAA website at https://www.caa.co.uk/CAP1950.