I wouldn't quite say all those parameters are irrelevant, ever heard of FOQA? Pretty much what latitude does except in the real world if you bust a parameter you get called into an office asked to explain then find yourself out of a job.

True true true

If you do a "slammer" on the runway in which I unfortunatlely did -575 FPM "ouch" - you will get a friendly tyre pressure warning....

I'm also a real world training captain and evaluator at my company. I did this also when I flew in the military. I will say that there isn't a big emphasis on touch down rate. To be honest, we never aim for a touch down  rate. You will find that as long as you applied the proper flare procedure, the touch down rate would be acceptable. Over time you will finesse the procedure and attain consistent normal landings. When training/evaluating, the hot ticket items were approach brief/procedures, airspeed, stability, threshold crossing height, flare procedure, touch down point, and reverser/brake usage. You would evaluate proper airspeed and additive procedures. You would judge how well the aircraft was managed/controlled through out. Was the aircraft stable by 1,000.  Speed and height crossing the threshold. Cross wind procedures. Proper flare procedure at the proper time. Touchdown with in the first third of the runway. alignment at touch down. Position in regard to center-line at touch down. During the full stop we monitored reverser and brake usage.  Notice I didn't mention touch down rate. Usually a very firm landing/touch down resulted from big deviations from the other mentioned parameters. As long as these parameters were satisfactory, the touch down is not an issue. I've only heard of one hard landing back when I was flying DC10s. As in hard landings, I refer to ones requiring a hard landing inspection. Once again, firm/rough landings all ways results from poor performance in other areas. Excessive sink on short final(diving), very late flare procedures, too early flare procedures, botched crosswind controls and being slow across the threshold. Keep these in check and you will get decent landings. In my eyes, you apply the proper flare procedures and take what you get. I've never failed a guy or heard of a guy failing his check because of the landing with all of these parameters performed satisfactory.

When I first started flying for a living I was fortunate enough to be in the right seat for guys who flew the "hump" in WW2 and had forgot more about flying than I'll ever know.   

 

Some of things I learned along the way.  

 

1. "Don't be short."

 

2.  "Put it on the ground so you can get it stopped without too much reverse and brake." 

 

It works for me YMMV. :smile:

 

Billy Bluestar