For Pilots
What Is a Good Landing Rate in MSFS and X-Plane?
We consider about -100 to -200 fpm a good landing rate in a flight simulator: firm enough to put the aircraft down in the touchdown zone, soft enough to feel smooth. Past about -600 fpm counts as a hard landing by real airline standards, and softer than -100 fpm usually means you floated.
Jordan HavardFounder, Skyvex SoftwareA landing rate of -150 fpm means your wheels were closing on the runway at 150 feet per minute when they touched. The number is negative because you are descending, so "a 150 fpm landing" means the size of the number, not the sign. Smaller numbers are softer landings, bigger numbers are harder ones.
What Landing Rate Actually Measures
Landing rate is not your descent rate on the approach. On a normal 3 degree approach an airliner comes down at something like 600 to 800 fpm. A few seconds before touchdown you raise the nose (the flare), which bleeds that descent rate away, and the landing rate is whatever is left at the instant the gear meets the runway.
Landing rate is captured at a single moment in the landing phase, one of the phases of flight. It is one figure that tells you how well you flared, and it is easy to compare between flights, pilots and aircraft. A virtual airline (VA) can record it on every PIREP and use it to score your landings.
The Landing Rate Bands We Use
There is no official scale for sim landings. The bands below are the ones the Stratos Landing Analyser uses by default, and they are our view of what makes a good landing. Your VA can change them, so it may grade differently.
| Landing rate | What we call it | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Softer than -100 fpm | Float | Held off too long, often past the touchdown zone, so it scores lower |
| -100 to -200 fpm | Our target | Firm enough to settle the aircraft, soft enough to feel smooth |
| -200 to -350 fpm | Good | A positive landing with a little more flare to find |
| -350 to -500 fpm | Firm | The flare was late or too small |
| -500 to -650 fpm | Hard | Around the line real airlines treat as a hard landing |
| -650 to -800 fpm | Very hard | Past the real-world hard-landing line |
| Past -800 fpm | Heavy impact | Little or no flare at all |
The one figure in that table that comes from real aviation is about 600 fpm. Real airlines mainly measure touchdowns by the peak g-force the aircraft records, but a touchdown descent rate above about 600 fpm is the conventional hard-landing threshold, and it can trigger a maintenance inspection. Everything finer than that is our grading, not a real-world standard. Real airlines don't grade routine landings on a scale; anything comfortably inside the limits is a non-event.
Light aircraft compared with airliners
A light single-engine aircraft lands slowly and can be flared very close to the runway, so a touchdown softer than -100 fpm comes easily. A heavy airliner carries far more inertia and lands faster, so the -100 to -200 fpm band is a realistic target that takes real work to hit. In both, we'd aim for a positive touchdown in the touchdown zone rather than the lowest possible number. If your VA scores everything on one scale, expect to work harder for the same grade in a heavy.
Why the Softest Landing Isn't the Best Landing
Chasing -20 fpm is a trap. To get a number that low you have to hold the aircraft a few feet above the runway while the speed bleeds off, and that costs you in other ways:
- You land long. Every second of floating at 140 knots uses about 70 metres of runway. A long float can put you well past the touchdown zone markings.
- The aircraft takes longer to settle. A gentle touchdown delays the moment the weight moves onto the wheels, which delays spoilers, autobrakes and reversers on aircraft that wait for that.
- Crosswind control gets harder. The longer you float, the longer the wind has to push you off the centreline.
- On a short runway it can be dangerous. Floating is how an aircraft runs off the end of a short strip.
We'd take a firm, positive touchdown of around -100 to -200 fpm in the touchdown zone over a -15 fpm landing halfway down the runway every time. That's why the Stratos Landing Analyser gives full marks to landings between 100 and 200 fpm by default and scores anything softer than 100 fpm lower: a greaser delays weight transfer to the gear, which delays spoiler and reverser deployment.
Why Different Tools Show Different Numbers
If you have run two landing-rate tools on the same flight, you have probably seen two different numbers. Neither is necessarily broken. They measure different things:
- The simulator's own touchdown value. Some simulators record vertical speed at touchdown in a variable. Not every simulator has one, and X-Plane has no direct equivalent.
- The last vertical speed reading before touchdown. Simple, but one stutter or dropped frame at the wrong moment ruins it, and the simulator's vertical speed is smoothed so it lags behind what the aircraft is really doing.
- An average over the last second. Steadier, but it blurs your flare. Ease from -300 to -150 fpm over the final second and the average comes out nearer -225.
Runway slope adds another twist. On an uphill runway your altitude above sea level can stay level or even rise while your wheels close on the rising runway, so tools that read vertical speed can show a positive landing rate. You didn't climb onto the runway; it rose to meet you.
What Else Makes a Good Landing
Landing rate is one part of a good landing, not all of it. We'd also judge a touchdown on:
- Touchdown point. Landing in the touchdown zone, not 600 metres past it.
- Centreline. Wheels on the centreline, not drifting towards the edge.
- G-force. The peak vertical load on touchdown. A low rate with a hard bang still feels hard.
- Bounces. One firm touchdown beats a soft one followed by two bounces.
- Approach stability. A steady descent rate and wings level on short final.
- Rollout. How much of the available runway you used to slow down.
The Stratos Landing Analyser scores six categories by default: landing rate (the heaviest weighting), approach stability, g-force, bounces, rollout and fuel efficiency. If you want to bring your numbers into the target band, our guide on how to land smoothly covers the flare, trim and sim settings that make the difference.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is -200 fpm a good landing?
Yes. It sits on the boundary between our target band (-100 to -200 fpm) and our good band (-200 to -350 fpm), so it's a smooth, positive landing and well clear of the 600 fpm hard-landing line. In a light aircraft you might aim a little softer.
What landing rate counts as a hard landing?
By real airline standards, a touchdown descent rate past about -600 fpm is a hard landing. That is the one threshold here that comes from real aviation. In our default bands, scores drop sharply from -500 fpm, and past -800 fpm a landing scores nothing for rate.
Why does my landing rate show a positive number?
You almost certainly landed on an uphill runway, or the tool read altitude change rather than how fast your wheels approached the ground. A positive number doesn't mean you climbed onto the runway.
Is a lower landing rate always better?
No. Softer than about -100 fpm you are usually floating, which uses up runway and delays braking. We'd rather see a firm landing in the touchdown zone than a feather-light one far down the runway.
Does my virtual airline care about landing rate?
That's up to each VA. A VA can record it on every flight, score it, or flag landings past a limit it sets, so check its rules. Our guide to what a PIREP is explains what else gets recorded with your flight.
Where Stratos Fits
Stratos measures landing rate from your gear's distance to the runway across the final second of flight, fitting a curve through it rather than trusting a single reading, so it works the same on every simulator and on sloped runways. The Landing Analyser plugin then scores the landing and shows a frame-by-frame replay, and your VA can change the scoring bands. The landing rate detection guide explains the method in full.
Stratos, by Skyvex Software
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Stratos reads Microsoft Flight Simulator and X-Plane directly. Continuous telemetry, a landing score from the raw data, and the PIREP filed before you leave the cockpit.