What can go wrong just because of an improper flare? This works well for him, and few others who have settled for this more comfortable, though not recommended, seating technique. So what he does is to sit lower than the recommended view point: low enough to make him actually look up to see outside. And for him, with the ATR recommended viewpoint, comes the tendency to flare more than required. If the flare is more than required, and the airplane balloons*, pulling back on the power levers is the last thing one would want to do, as the drag would make the aircraft drop to the runway like a stone! So one would add power to keep the airplane up, and this will eat up more runway: Messy indeed. Another complication is the aircraft itself: having a constant speed propeller means that when you pull back on the power levers, the pitch angle of the propeller blades changes to “fine” (almost perpendicular to the direction of the airplane’s travel through the air), resulting in a significant increase in drag. But with the ATR 72, (and the Q400) one has to be very careful with the flare: the airplane’s fuselage is long and low, and a tail strike is easy. With the eyes adjusted, the view is good, and clean. Apparently, the seat position sight gauge does do its job well, but it isn’t something you’d want to level your eye with on an airplane like the ATR 72-500. Possibly one of the smartest first officers in India told me, after seeing me so diligently adjusting my P1 seat in an ATR 72-212A (500) to the correct viewpoint, that I was too high. The Airbuses, not surprisingly, have a sight gauge similar to that found on the ATR. The ATR 72-500/600’s competitor, the Q400, however, has something similar, called the “ eye level indicator”, as may be seen in the second photo. Interestingly, this gauge is not found in the Boeings, where the recommended method of adjusting the viewpoint is different.
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