How to Control Your Aircraft on the Ground

One of the first lessons a fledgling pilot training in a tricycle-gear aircraft learns is how to stay on the centerline during taxi. For the unfamiliar, it’s more challenging than you’d think it would be.

For starters, there’s the tendency for the learner to “drive” the airplane with the yoke or stick. On the ground the aircraft is controlled by a combination of rudder inputs and throttle. Trying to steer on the ground with the yoke or stick is like trying to flush a toilet by flipping a light switch.

Experienced flight instructors have the learners fold their arms on their chests or sit on their hands and steer with their toes while the CFI controls the power. The latter is important because there’s a tendency for the learner to want to jam in the throttle like they step on the accelerator in a car to go faster.

Sometimes a learner gets confused and puts in full throttle and stomps on the right rudder pedal at the same time, leading to something akin to Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride at Disneyland unless the CFI has good communication skills and quick reflexes, and the learner responds appropriately to the stern command of “My airplane!”

For generations pilots have learned to taxi “no faster than a brisk walk,” which has no numeric value. But as Bob Gardner, aviation author, CFI, and my mentor, once cautioned me: “Don’t go any faster than you need to in order to be able to come to a quick stop with minimal brakes.”

Find Your Center

Your CFI may recommend you line up on the centerline by putting it directly under the spinner, or line up with certain rivets on the cowling (or a strategically placed piece of painter’s tape on the cowling). Or sometimes they may tell you to put the centerline under your right foot or between your legs.

Problems occur when the learner can’t see over the top of the panel to view the centerline. Fortunately, many aircraft have articulating seats that allow you to raise and position them so you can see over the nose of the aircraft. 

Pro tip: If you need the seat to be raised, before you get into the airplane crank it all the way up then get in and lower it if needed. This is a lot easier than being in the airplane and trying to crank up the seat while holding a posture that facilitates this process.

If you’re going to use a booster seat, experiment until finding one that works for you and make sure it’s always available—always. I fly with an Oregon Aero SoftSeat portable cushion. Without it, I don’t think I would have finished my training because sans the proper sight picture, it’s very difficult to do VFR maneuvers. You basically get in your own way. 

I have two of the cushions now. I carry a spare in my car because there was one day when a renter at the flight school helped himself to my cushion, grabbing it from my desk thinking it was one of the school’s communal ones. He sheepishly returned it.

Smartphone to the Rescue

Technology can help with sight picture. One of the tools I use with my learners is having them achieve the proper seat placement then using their smartphone to take a photo of their view out the windscreen to help them remember what it’s supposed to look like.

There’s a caveat when you’re flying several different aircraft. Although they may be the same model, they may have different style seats, such as articulating and non-articulating, that may or may not work for you without cushions—or perhaps at all. Be prepared for this.

It takes a few hours flying in a new-to-you airplane to develop sight picture. This is why familiarization flights are so important. You may be cruising in straight and level, but you’re also learning and getting used to the aircraft, noting where the blind spots are (like behind a strut) in addition to what centerline looks like from the cockpit.

Right Seat Parallax

One of the first lessons a flight instructor trainee needs to learn is that the view from the right side of the cockpit isn’t the same as the left side. You’ll be looking to your left to see the “six pack” and primary flight display (PFD). The technical term for this is “parallax.” You may find yourself leaning slightly back in the seat to get a better view of the airspeed indicator.

The view over the nose of the aircraft is slightly different as well, and that can result in some slightly off-center takeoffs and landings until you get used to it.

The best way to make this adjustment is to go back to your primary student days. The first time you taxied in a side-by-side airplane your CFI identified when the aircraft was on the centerline and how to use a rivet line on the cowling to verify position. You can do that again, with a different set of rivets now, but the principle still applies.

Tailwheel Challenge

Tailwheel pilots have a different challenge as they cannot see over the nose by aircraft design. They learn to serpentine taxi, moving in S-patterns along the ground so they can see out the side window, and to go slowly as they look for obstacles ahead. 

Learning to taxi a tailwheel airplane is a bit like pushing a shopping cart backward or learning to back up a trailer. Go slow and anticipate the directional changes so you don’t have the back end come up to visit the front.

No matter what kind of landing gear you have, be cautious about applying the brakes. Slamming them on can result in a prop strike or aircraft nose-over in a tailwheel. It’s much better to taxi no faster than a walk—as if you don’t have brakes. Even if you do, always look for a place to go that is soft, unpopulated and, if you have to hit something, inexpensive, should your brakes fail.