During my holidays on Lanzarote, I had the opportunity to watch different aircraft land and takeoff using both directions of the runway there at different days and weather conditions.It's possible to get very close to the runway, especially at both ends of it, so one can exactly watch what the pilots do to align the plane with the centerline and get it down.Knowing the approach procedures well, I was more than puzzled by the fact that all approaches without exception were made more by "brute force". That's at least what best matches what I saw, and what I experienced myself during the landing of our charter machine.Coming from wither direction, the planes often made more than 90 degree turns to final, and this only a few NM from the threshold (looked pretty scary sometimes).Since Lanzarote is a very windy island sometimes, landing and take off procedures often are a roller-coaster like ride, I experienced this myself at least two times as I'm a recurring visitor of the Canaries.So, as I already said, the planes came from virtually somewhere and turned towards the runway, and often enough I had the deep impression that the planes were too high on approach.Because of the wind and gusts, they corrected heavily to track the runway orientation (I didn't watch planes for so long so closely before, and I must say that sometimes, especially when a smaller aircraft the size of a Cessna Citation came in (which is a rather rare occasion), the speed with which the corrections around the roll axis were performed were amazing; sometimes it looked like me on FS during an approach in awful weather, yanking the joystick quickly left and right making the plane look like a nervous bee from outside).That all changed my view of airplane operations quite a bit. Looks like approaches are flown more "by the seat of your pants" where almost no maneuver to get the bird down on time is not allowed (what, we do have passengers on board?) and charts don't seem to play any role.If I hadn't experienced that myself when sitting in such a plane myself landing on that very airport, I'd say that things look strange from outside, but I can tell you, they look and feel even stranger from inside.Andreas

Funny you mention this now. I've just done a few landings in bad weather where from inside the cockpit I seem to be jerking left and right, spinning the trim wheel like a bycicle wheel, and compensating wildly with the throttle. But when I watch it in replay from the exterior view, and after my blood pressure has gone down a bit, it all looks relatively smooth. I had always thought the final was long and slow and very controlled. Are these last second pitch and roll changes a common occurence? I guess an obvious answer is that a main factor is weather. Many of these smaller airports only have one runway for landing so you can be fighting crosswinds or even tailwinds on final where elsewhere you'd be coming into a smooth headwind. And sometimes a pilot will land hard on purpose so the wheels grip the surface for immediate braking. Be interesting to see what others have to say about this...billg

The smooth and calm appearance from outside is a phenomenon that I can watch well here at our local international airport: big 747's and small BAe's come in slow like silk, no struggling, no fighting against winds.But the viewing distance is at least hundred meters and up of meters in these cases.At GCRR (when you stand at the fence, an exhaust deflector shield needs to separate you from the plane, so close you can get), things are different because of the vicinity to the aircraft.In fact, I axprienced landings and takeoffs as were the pilots thinking they had small Cessnas under their control rather than MD-80's, B-737's, A-320's and so on. No sign of a big, heavy beast which travels sovereingnly through the air, but rather a bumpy bull ride where the view from outside was no better than the views from inside "my" cockpit in FS during a bad weather approach!The most extreme thing was when a Cessna Citation-sized jet landed there, I swear that the pilot corrected the bank angles by movements taking only a tenth of a second at most. Remembered me of a documentation show on TV where ultralight Rutan planes were presented, the slightest millimeter-movement of the stick resulted in an immediate reaction of the small aircraft. A kart with wings!And I always thought I fly in an unrealistic manner. Man, was I wrong! Reality is much worser than I expected (glad not to be a real world pilot).Andreas