After landing, parking and securing
The flight is not over at touchdown: clearing the runway, the after-landing flow, shutdown, the postflight walkaround, and getting passengers off a live ramp.
12 min read · Airport operations and procedures
After this lesson you can
- Say why no after-landing item is touched until the airplane is stopped clear of the runway, and what happens when that rule is broken.
- Run an after-landing, parking and shutdown flow, and name what each step protects.
- Perform a postflight inspection that would find the damage a preflight is too late to catch.
- Get passengers across a ramp without depending on their judgment.
- Record a discrepancy so the next pilot inherits the information rather than the surprise.
Landing is the part everyone practices. The four minutes after it are the part that gets skipped, and they contain a surprising number of ways to bend an airplane or hurt somebody. The Airplane Flying Handbook puts the standard plainly: a flight is not complete until the engine is shut down and the airplane is secured, and a pilot should consider this an essential part of any flight.
The ACS agrees. After Landing, Parking and Securing is its own Area of Operation on the private checkride, with its own knowledge and risk items. This lesson covers all of them, in the order they happen.
The rest of this lesson
- 1.Nothing gets touched until you are stopped, clear of the runway
- 2.The after-landing flow, once you are stopped
- 3.The postflight inspection, and why it is not the preflight
- 4.Passengers on a live ramp
- 5.Writing down what went wrong
These 5 sections, their figures, the checks along the way and the end-of-lesson quiz come with the PPL track. Paid once, yours for good.
Key terms
Try to recall each definition before turning the card.