Normal and crosswind takeoffs and landings, and the go-around

What this lesson is for: teaching normal and crosswind takeoffs and landings and the go-around from the right seat, and being able to let somebody else's approach go wrong, intervene at a point you named in advance, and teach the go-around as a decision rather than a maneuver.

This is where the intervention threshold stops being a paragraph and starts being your hands. In air work there are thousands of feet between a mistake and a consequence. In the pattern there are seconds, which means the decision has to have been made on the ground.

Read:

• FAA-S-ACS-25, tasks AI.VII.A, AI.VII.B, and AI.VII.N, in full. Write down the tolerances.
• FAA-H-8083-3C, the takeoffs and landings chapter, including both crosswind landing methods.
• standards/MANEUVER-LESSON-SHAPE.md, addition 2.

Deliverable: Three things. First, write the preflight ground lesson you will teach on takeoffs, landings, and the go-around. This is one of your seventeen P3 plans, covering a normal takeoff and landing. Second, the demonstrated crosswind component for the airplane you will fly, from that airplane's own approved material. Third, memorize the six stabilized approach criteria and the gate. You will say them without reading them, and you will be teaching them for the rest of your career.

You have been flying takeoffs and landings since lesson 13. What is new today is that you are responsible for somebody else's landing, and the only tool you have that always works is the go-around.

Teach it as a decision with a trigger, not as a maneuver with a procedure. A Student who flies a beautiful go-around and never chooses one has not learned it. Your job is to install the trigger, and you cannot install a trigger you have not defined.

North Aero's stabilized approach criteria

School policy, not regulation, and you teach them as such:

On final, by 500 ft AGL: on centerline, on the intended glidepath, at the target airspeed with no more than a small correction in progress, in the landing configuration, and with the power setting steady. Any one of those missing at 500 ft AGL is a go-around.

Six items. Know them without the paper.

1. The normal takeoff, and what your Student will look at instead of what they should.
2. The crosswind takeoff, and aileron in from the first foot of roll.
3. Directional control on the roll, which is a rudder skill.
4. The normal approach and landing, and the sight picture from the right seat.
5. The crosswind landing: two methods, and teaching one of them well.
6. The stabilized approach, its six criteria, and the 500 ft AGL gate.
7. The go-around as a decision. Trigger first, then procedure.
8. Go-around mechanics: power, pitch, configuration, in that order, and the trim that follows.
9. The balked landing from the flare.
10. Teaching from the right seat when the sight picture is still new and the runway is close.

A simulated emergency is coming. You will not be told when.

The scenario: the balked landing. Your Student flares high, floats, and does not go around. You have to call it, and if the call does not produce action, fly it.

The go-around from the flare is the version that actually hurts people, because it starts with low energy, low altitude, a nose-high attitude, and full flaps. It is worth being ready for.

1. Teach your preflight ground lesson, including the six criteria from memory.
2. Demonstrate normal and crosswind takeoffs and landings from the right seat, narrating.
3. Demonstrate a go-around, including the trim change.
4. Talk your instructor through the pattern, calling the go-around at the gate.
5. Handle the balked landing.
6. Take the airplane at the threshold, out loud, three-way, at least twice, in the pattern.
7. Critique, self-critique, then listen.

1. You deliver the preflight ground lesson on takeoffs, landings, and the go-around, covering all seven items of the brief, and state the six stabilized approach criteria and the 500 ft AGL gate from memory.
2. You fly normal and crosswind takeoffs and landings to commercial pilot tolerances from the right seat while narrating continuously, and do not go silent in the flare.
3. You demonstrate a go-around, applying power, pitch, and configuration in that order, and name the trim change as it happens.
4. You call a go-around at or before the 500 ft AGL gate on an approach that does not meet the criteria, out loud, without prompting.
5. You teach the go-around as a decision with a trigger, and can state the trigger separately from the procedure.
6. You intervene on the balked landing within two seconds of the float continuing, either by directing the go-around or by taking the airplane.
7. You correct a crosswind takeoff roll before drift develops, rather than after.
8. You take the flight controls using the three-way exchange, out loud, in both directions, at least twice in the pattern, including at least once when the airplane was not offered.
9. You deliver a critique naming the error, its probable cause, and the correction for at least two of the errors flown.
10. You deliver a self-critique before hearing the instructor's.

Standard 4 is the lesson. Everything else is flying you can already do.

Falling short does not block lesson 35. No proficiency gate. It triggers the visibility rule in policy/REMEDIATION-VISIBILITY.md. If you do not call the gate today we will fly this again first, because short and soft field work has less margin, not more.

• Teaching the go-around as a procedure and never as a decision.
• Waiting past the gate to see whether it comes together. It does not come together, and you knew that on the ground.
• Reading the six criteria instead of knowing them.
• Correcting on final what was caused on downwind.
• Teaching both crosswind methods and neither well. Pick one, teach it properly, mention the other exists.
• Aileron going in after the drift starts.
• Steering with the ailerons and correcting drift with the yoke.
• Retracting flaps fully before the climb is established in a go-around.
• Not resisting the trim-driven pitch-up. That is lesson 33's trim stall, in the pattern, for real.
• Going silent in the flare, which is the busiest three seconds in the circuit.
• Letting a float continue because the landing might still work out. It might. That is not the standard.
• Quoting a crosswind component from a different airplane.

Every trigger below is checkable in one second, on purpose.

• The airplane is not on the runway centerline extended below 200 ft AGL.
• Airspeed reaches 1.1 Vso on final without correction applied.
• The airplane floats past the midpoint of the runway and no go-around has been started.
• The nose is pushed forward in the flare or in a balloon.
• Drift toward the runway edge on the takeoff roll is not arrested immediately.
• Bank exceeds 30 degrees below 500 ft AGL.
• A go-around is called and no power is applied within two seconds.
• Either of us is unclear about who is flying the airplane.

Notice that the word "unsafe" does not appear. In the pattern you do not have time to compare a situation against a general standard. Every item above is a single fact you can check at a glance, and the response to all of them is the same.

The 500 ft AGL gate is your standard, not mine. You call the go-around there. I take the airplane at the triggers above, which are lower and later. That gap is deliberate: it is the room you need to make the call yourself, and to get it wrong once.

Positive exchange of controls, both directions, every time, and today we practice it under load in the pattern rather than only talking about it.

Four slots, all currently empty: VS-34-1 Exemplar on AI.VII.B, VS-34-2 Error on AI.VII.B, VS-34-3 Error on AI.VII.N, VS-34-4 Error on AI.VII.A.

This lesson is complete and deliverable whether or not its Video Slots are filled.