Touchdown tips: how to land softly and score 90+ every time

Read the PAPI lights instead of guessing the height

Four lights sit beside the runway, and they tell you whether you are on the glide path. Two white and two red means you are exactly where you should be. All white means you are too high, all red means you are too low. Anything in between is a smaller version of the same message: more white than red, you are a little high; more red than white, a little low.

The green ring in front of the plane shows the same thing from a different angle: fly through it and you stay on the path. Use the ring for the big picture and the lights for the fine correction. When the lights go red, ease the nose up a touch; when they go white, ease it down. Do not chase them with big movements, because a large correction only flips you from too high to too low.

Small inputs, early gear, late flare

Touchdown is flown with one stick: drag sideways to bank and turn, up to lift the nose, down to lower it. A big bank swings the plane straight past the centreline, so make small drags and let the plane settle before you correct again.

Lower the gear early. The lever flashes and beeps if you forget, but there is nothing to gain by waiting, and a landing with the gear up is an instant crash. Tap the lever as soon as the runway is in sight and then forget about it.

The flare is the last move: just above the runway, drag up to lift the nose and soften the touchdown. Timing matters in both directions. Pull up too early and you float past the aiming bars with the runway running out; forget to flare and the plane thumps down hard. Wait until the final few metres, then lift.

What the score is made of

Every landing is judged on four things: how gently you touched down, how close you were to the aiming bars, how well you held the centreline and how level the wings were. Ninety points and up earns three stars.

That breakdown tells you where the missing points went. A soft touchdown on the wrong part of the runway loses points for distance; a perfect line with a hard landing loses points for sink rate. If you keep getting two stars, pick one of the four and work on it for a few levels instead of trying to fix everything at once.

Why did I crash? The causes, one by one

The card after a crash names the reason, and each reason has a single fix. Gear up: lower the lever earlier. Too hard: flare, and start the flare slightly sooner than you think. Wing strike: the wings were tilted at touchdown, so level out before the wheels reach the ground. Landed short or missed the runway: you were too low on the approach, so watch for red lights and correct early. Off the runway: you drifted sideways, usually from a late or oversized bank.

Read the card before you restart. Most players retry the same approach three times and make the same mistake three times, when the card has already said which habit to change.

Crosswind, gusts, fog, night and windshear

Later levels add weather, and each condition asks for a slightly different habit. In a crosswind, point the nose a little into the wind and let the plane drift straight down the runway rather than steering back to the centreline in sharp turns. Gusts and turbulence reward calm hands: keep your corrections small and wait for the plane to answer.

Fog and night take away the view, so the lights do the work. At night you have only the runway lights to guide you, which makes the PAPI lights the most important thing on screen. Windshear drops you a few metres with about a second of warning, so be ready to lift the nose immediately instead of waiting to see what happens.

Some levels start you off to one side, too high, or on a shorter, narrower runway. Look at where the centreline is before you move anything, and spend the first seconds lining up rather than descending.

Use the guide and the rewind wisely

Stuck on a tricky approach? The guide draws frames along the ideal glide path for you to fly through. You start with three, and a short video gives you more, so save them for the approaches where the weather really changes the picture. A video can also rewind the last five seconds after a crash, once per level, which is best spent when you were a second from touchdown rather than at the start of the approach.

If you like the one-input feel of Touchdown, Sky Rails is a one-button train game where patience on the curves wins more than speed, and Drift Line is one-tap drifting on a zigzag sky road. Both are good for practising the same smooth, early inputs.

Sky RailsDrive a little train over a rail bridge high above the cloudsPlay now

Drift LineOne-tap drifting on a zigzag sky roadPlay now

Frequently asked questions

Guides & tips

• Can You Land? vs Pilot Life: what plane landing games have in common
• Drift Line: how to hold your drift on the zigzag road

Play it here

• Touchdown — Fly the approach and land it soft
• Sky Rails — Drive a little train over a rail bridge high above the clouds
• Drift Line — One-tap drifting on a zigzag sky road