I think airline cultures may vary on their perception in this regard.I've flown 737s at two carriers: one in Asia and one in the US. Most of the Asian pilots were trained to be afraid of crosswind landings. They vary rarely could land on centerline with no crab with any amount of crosswind. At the US carrier, the pilots would be embarrassed by some of the x-wind landings posted.Of course the Asians would be embarrassed by the lack of cockpit discipline and Confucian patriarchy, but I digress.

That is very true Matt.Most instructors are Afraid of crosswind landings and so pass that fear onto the students.Plus........level D sims have never been good at simulating how the aircraft really feels during a crosswind landingand this only adds to their fear.The good news is that the Sabena Flight Academy have finally come up with a very realistic feel for pilots to experience in a sim.It is a modification named LM2 and has alreay been implimented in lots of levelD sims around the world.Ryanair are getting this modification early next year.For anyone interested................................http://www.flightglo...ncludeBlogs=166http://sfa-d.com/drupal/Fred.

What was your approach when you were flying Fred?Did you endeavour to decrab, partially decrab, or no decrab at all?Did whether the runway was wet or dry come into the equation?

Hi Martin !Being from the older school we were taught to decrab if at all possible........wet or dry runway.Hard landings and not decrabbing take their toll on the aircraft. I saw this myself a few years ago while taxiing behind another ryanair 737.The whole plane looked as if it was moving sideways. I found out later that it had made one too many hard landings etc.Ryanair these days are noted for their hard landings but I really do not understand why.Matt brought up a very good point a few posts up from here, about a pilots fear of crosswind landings.I agree with him 100% on this. Some student airline pilots think that they have crosswind landings nailed because of lots of xtra sim timebut are shocked/frightened when they encounter it for real.......even with the captain sitting next to them.Fred.

My first landing at Samos... No decrab and pretty bad!

??????? Yes, it's much, much better to keep the wings level :( but, as for the decrab, the comments made by others below yours make a lot more sense to me.For the record, the original 737 had ....turbofan engines ( P&W JT8Ds). Granted, they were thinner but they were turbofans all the same.Rgds,Bruno

Argh! You're absolutely right about the engines of course, I may have been enjoying a festive drink when I made that post :)Maybe I shouldn't have said "not a good idea" to decrab it. You can but in a heavy crosswind you're going to have to drop a wing into the wind somewhat, but extra care needs to be taken. The 737 NG doesn't even have circular intakes like almost every other jet airliner I can think of, because it would be too low to the ground. There is very little clearance, they moved all sorts of things in the cowling to the sides of the actual engine, which is why the engine casing is eliptical in appearance with a flat bottom. All to improve ground clearance. If you look at a 767 or particularly a 757 with its stork legs, you see how much of a difference there is in ground clearance. For this reason I'm pretty sure the 737 gear is built tough to handle a lifetime of touchdowns at more of a crab angle than other airliners (and of course many more cycles, being a short-medium range aircraft). Only other option would've been to extend the main gear legs, but there's just nowhere to put them when they retract without redesigning the whole wing.Boeing themselves advise maintaining the full crab angle until touchdown on slippery surfaces. I'm not entirely sure why but perhaps this has to do with getting both main gear onto the tarmac simultaneously to establish braking friction sooner. If you touch down with one wheel first, the time it takes to get the other one down may be less than a second but the runway is getting shorter every second too.

Argh! You're absolutely right about the engines of course, I may have been enjoying a festive drink when I made that post :)

Rule #1 : no dinking and flyingRule #2 : no drinking and drivingRule #3 : no drinking ...and posting ?

Boeing themselves advise maintaining the full crab angle until touchdown on slippery surfaces.

I haven't read the Boeing SOP but my understanding of this is :- the proper way to land is to decrab.- if the surface is slippery, not decrabbing is less of a problem (precisely because, as the runway is slippery, the lack of decrab will put less stress on he gear).And as a slippery runway can often mean less than ideal flying conditions (rain, turbulence etc.) I assume the correct thing to do is to concentrate on landing at the right place, even if the landing is not a kiss - or not perfectly decrabbed.Rgds (and merry XMAS to all)Bruno

What boeing say is this...

"The greater amount of crab at touchdown,

the larger the lateral deviation from the point of touchdown

. For this reason, touchdown in a crab only condition is

not recommended when landing on a dry runway in strong crosswinds

."

Basically if the runway is wet, the aircraft will tend to slide in the direction of the runway heading, where you want it to go, rather than deviating to the edge of the runway, due to the greater tyre grip in the dry.

Seems Boeing have no issue with landing crabbed in medium strength crosswinds and no issue in stronger crosswinds when the runway is wet.