Intro
The CRJ200 has a different sight picture and flare than many other airplanes. If you’re a visual learner who likes detailed instructions, this article will help you with visual cues to get stabilized more consistently and land the airplane on target.
Design Background
The CRJ200 was designed as a minimum-change stretch of the Challenger 600. Basically, Bombardier made it long enough to cram 50 seats in, and started selling it as a 50-seat regional jet. Many of its quirks are attributable to this design history.
Approach speeds: what happens when you stretch an airplane and increase its landing weight? Your ref speed ends up in the high 140s at MLW. If you’re going into a wet, short, or contaminated runway, figure out what your most restrictive constraint is between required distance, TDZ length, and brief your last touchdown point accordingly.
Sight picture: the no-slat Challenger wing gives the CRJ200 a -2.5 (sometimes even 3 or 4 when fighting updrafts) degree pitch attitude on final. This will scare jumpseaters, and make learning the CRJ200 tough if you come out of a slatted-wing airplane where you’re used to level or nose-up attitudes. If you come out of a Seminole, you’ll feel right at home.
Flap ADs: the CRJ200 had a number of issues with flaps failing. Originally, you could use the rubber speed brakes at 250 and flaps right at 230. This put lots of stress on those components, causing failures, and led to a speed limit of 200 for the flaps, 220 on the gear.
Approach speeds: what happens when you stretch an airplane and increase its landing weight? Your ref speed ends up in the high 140s at MLW. If you’re going into a wet, short, or contaminated runway, figure out what your most restrictive constraint is between required distance, TDZ length, and brief your last touchdown point accordingly.
Sight picture: the no-slat Challenger wing gives the CRJ200 a -2.5 (sometimes even 3 or 4 when fighting updrafts) degree pitch attitude on final. This will scare jumpseaters, and make learning the CRJ200 tough if you come out of a slatted-wing airplane where you’re used to level or nose-up attitudes. If you come out of a Seminole, you’ll feel right at home.
Flap ADs: the CRJ200 had a number of issues with flaps failing. Originally, you could use the rubber speed brakes at 250 and flaps right at 230. This put lots of stress on those components, causing failures, and led to a speed limit of 200 for the flaps, 220 on the gear.
Arrival into the Terminal Area
Hand-flying the CRJ200 is quite fun in my opinion. The control feel and nimbleness in pitch and roll are a welcome change from the E175. As you add flaps, you’ll need 2-3 degrees nose-down per stage at constant airspeed to hold altitude. The lack of slats means that the camber line rotates trailing edge down, leading to a ballooning effect with each stage if you don’t fight it with nose-down pitch, much like a Cessna 172.
Slam Dunks
The CRJ200 requires careful planning if you get slam-dunked on a tight base turn. If your operation requires Flaps 8 and 20 before gear, then you’re effectively boxed out of those tools until you’re <200 KIAS, leaving you in a dicey spot if you’re faster:
Slam Dunks
The CRJ200 requires careful planning if you get slam-dunked on a tight base turn. If your operation requires Flaps 8 and 20 before gear, then you’re effectively boxed out of those tools until you’re <200 KIAS, leaving you in a dicey spot if you’re faster:
The CRJ200 gives you fewer options to slow down relative to the E175 and CRJ700.
Compared to the CRJ700/900, E175, and many other types, you have a smaller toolbox between 200-250 KIAS. In the E175, you had three options on a slam dunk:
- The low route: dive down at 240ish with gear (boards if really needed), then shallow out and grab flaps on schedule
- The mid route: point the FPA laser at the marker, eyeball your deceleration need, and then dump gear and flaps as needed
- The high route: stay level, dump gear, get in the flap arc, then flaps on schedule, and stick the nose down
The flexibility and effectiveness of the rubber speed brakes makes the E175 forgiving of energy-management errors and tight vectoring.
In the CRJ200, your low route requires boards only and then a quick configuration under 200 KIAS, which will get busy. If you misjudge the distances, you’ll get stuck fast and need to try again. In many situations, the high route is the easiest: pull boards until 200ish, then flaps 8, 20, gear, nose down, then flaps 30 and 45 as you decelerate on profile. A dirty CRJ200 will come down like a brick, but you need to slow it first.
Canadian Clearing Turns
The CRJ200 autopilot often has an aggressive localizer capture, especially in crosswinds, so many pilots prefer to join in LNAV, then once rolled out, go into heading mode, swap to green needles, and arm approach. As it grabs, you often get a rocking motion affectionately referred to as “Canadian clearing turns.” Much like the “drunken sailor” or “pirate ship” in the E175, this is annoying and a minor discomfort to passengers. If we don’t have a strong crosswind, I like to set heading and swap the needles as we’re still rolling out the last few degrees of the turn, so that it doesn’t rock back the other way.
approach
Slowing
If you fly into places like Denver, O’Hare, etc. that give you speed assignments like 210 to the penultimate fix and 170 to the marker, then you’ll need to decelerate on profile with boards. When heavy, you won’t have much margin between the bottom of the boards range and the 200-knot flaps speeds. I like to get flaps 8, 20 in right around 195 and trending, then stow the boards. Flaps 20 should give you decent deceleration, otherwise you can always drop the gear early. When hand flying, plan for the ballooning and get some nose-down trim in to stay on profile. Brief the sequence ahead of time so you can do it promptly.
The boards-flaps switch can get busy. One workaround that preserves spacing is to make a Faustian bargain with the approach controller: “Airline 123 requesting to slow to 195 just outside [PFAF] then 180 to the marker.” Chicago Approach will often grant that, or just give you “Slow now, 170 to the marker.” If you get 195 at the PFAF, you just go idle at glideslope alive and 210, then as you hit 195 on glideslope capture, flaps 8 and 20, and you’re set. Start marching in the power when your trend vector gets to the bug, usually it should stabilize around 45ish N1.
Final Approach Segment
If you need to be 170 or 180 to the FAF, then your final approach will be a bit busy. Gear down and flaps 30 will need about 55-60 N1 to hold those speeds on glideslope. It’s tempting to “sneak” the slowdown by half a mile, and some places tolerate that. Chicago is not one of them. I’ve heard crews get torched on frequency for slowing early. I like to watch the decimals on the DME, drop gear about 1.5 back, and flaps 30 shortly thereafter. If the FAF is 5 nm back or 1500 AFE, you’ll have 40ish seconds to get it all squared away and be stable by 1000. You can usually pull power to 40ish N1, get a trend going below 170, then flaps 45, nose-down to fight the balloon, bug your bottom speed, and get your checklist done by 1200-1300 AFE. As the trend arrow nears the bug, gradually march power in to stabilize speed at 63-65ish N1. Doing this gradually is usually less stressful, and you end up with more time than you thought you had. There are several techniques out there, so it’s a good idea to discuss your planned sequence with your PM ahead of time. If you do need to be more aggressive (e.g. 180 to the marker, empty airplane with Vref in the 120s), go ahead and pull it closer to idle, but make sure both of you watch the trend.
Inside the marker, the autopilot will aggressively maintain profile on an ILS. As a result, updrafts and downdrafts will get fought with pitch changes, leading to airspeed fluctuations. Hand flying, you can dampen these changes a bit more gracefully, and adjust power as needed. Generally, you’ll want to fight the losses with as much power as needed to stay in or above the bug. If you catch yourself going above 75 N1, plan to pull it back quickly once out of the downdraft. In a gain, I like to pull it back to 60ish (or 5 points below whatever baseline I had) to gradually bleed it back off. As a general rule, keeping it in the 60-70 N1 bracket at medium weights should work out. A quarter to half a knob width (for kinesthetes) or 3-5% for N1 watchers works in most cases to avoid overcontrolling. Going below 50 N1 risks getting slow rapidly when the updraft switches to neutral or a downdraft.
Maintaining your -2.5-degree pitch angle further out is fairly straightforward if you aim your eyeballs at the captain bars, follow the glideslope, or reference the FD command bars. The command bars will suggest aggressive glideslope corrections. As you pitch for them, the command bars will come back at you, so it’s often a good idea to make about half the input they’re suggesting to be back on target and avoid overcontrolling. If that behavior looks weird, you can switch off the flight director or more prominently reference the glideslope diamond.
Some operators specify a minimum approach speed additive of 5 knots. This energy needs to be bled off in the last 100 feet. I like to ease power about half a knob width at 100 to be at the bottom of the bug at 50, then chop it completely. If you’re fast and you chop it higher, be ready for a slow spool-up on a go-around and keep the backpressure light until you get a positive speed trend.
Dive and Drive Approach Setup
Something new for me in the CRJ200 was the “dive and drive setup,” which involves leveling at the FAF altitude on a non-precision approach, getting fully configured, and then descending to the runway using a CDFA. Gear and flaps 45 will create an enormous amount of drag. If that configuration setup coincides with your level-off, you can get an alarming speed trend vector. Plan an N1 of about 70-75 to hold speed while level prior to starting down, and keep a close eye on the speed vector in your scan.
When you start down, the same 63-65ish N1 should keep you stable on speed.
If you fly into places like Denver, O’Hare, etc. that give you speed assignments like 210 to the penultimate fix and 170 to the marker, then you’ll need to decelerate on profile with boards. When heavy, you won’t have much margin between the bottom of the boards range and the 200-knot flaps speeds. I like to get flaps 8, 20 in right around 195 and trending, then stow the boards. Flaps 20 should give you decent deceleration, otherwise you can always drop the gear early. When hand flying, plan for the ballooning and get some nose-down trim in to stay on profile. Brief the sequence ahead of time so you can do it promptly.
The boards-flaps switch can get busy. One workaround that preserves spacing is to make a Faustian bargain with the approach controller: “Airline 123 requesting to slow to 195 just outside [PFAF] then 180 to the marker.” Chicago Approach will often grant that, or just give you “Slow now, 170 to the marker.” If you get 195 at the PFAF, you just go idle at glideslope alive and 210, then as you hit 195 on glideslope capture, flaps 8 and 20, and you’re set. Start marching in the power when your trend vector gets to the bug, usually it should stabilize around 45ish N1.
Final Approach Segment
If you need to be 170 or 180 to the FAF, then your final approach will be a bit busy. Gear down and flaps 30 will need about 55-60 N1 to hold those speeds on glideslope. It’s tempting to “sneak” the slowdown by half a mile, and some places tolerate that. Chicago is not one of them. I’ve heard crews get torched on frequency for slowing early. I like to watch the decimals on the DME, drop gear about 1.5 back, and flaps 30 shortly thereafter. If the FAF is 5 nm back or 1500 AFE, you’ll have 40ish seconds to get it all squared away and be stable by 1000. You can usually pull power to 40ish N1, get a trend going below 170, then flaps 45, nose-down to fight the balloon, bug your bottom speed, and get your checklist done by 1200-1300 AFE. As the trend arrow nears the bug, gradually march power in to stabilize speed at 63-65ish N1. Doing this gradually is usually less stressful, and you end up with more time than you thought you had. There are several techniques out there, so it’s a good idea to discuss your planned sequence with your PM ahead of time. If you do need to be more aggressive (e.g. 180 to the marker, empty airplane with Vref in the 120s), go ahead and pull it closer to idle, but make sure both of you watch the trend.
Inside the marker, the autopilot will aggressively maintain profile on an ILS. As a result, updrafts and downdrafts will get fought with pitch changes, leading to airspeed fluctuations. Hand flying, you can dampen these changes a bit more gracefully, and adjust power as needed. Generally, you’ll want to fight the losses with as much power as needed to stay in or above the bug. If you catch yourself going above 75 N1, plan to pull it back quickly once out of the downdraft. In a gain, I like to pull it back to 60ish (or 5 points below whatever baseline I had) to gradually bleed it back off. As a general rule, keeping it in the 60-70 N1 bracket at medium weights should work out. A quarter to half a knob width (for kinesthetes) or 3-5% for N1 watchers works in most cases to avoid overcontrolling. Going below 50 N1 risks getting slow rapidly when the updraft switches to neutral or a downdraft.
Maintaining your -2.5-degree pitch angle further out is fairly straightforward if you aim your eyeballs at the captain bars, follow the glideslope, or reference the FD command bars. The command bars will suggest aggressive glideslope corrections. As you pitch for them, the command bars will come back at you, so it’s often a good idea to make about half the input they’re suggesting to be back on target and avoid overcontrolling. If that behavior looks weird, you can switch off the flight director or more prominently reference the glideslope diamond.
Some operators specify a minimum approach speed additive of 5 knots. This energy needs to be bled off in the last 100 feet. I like to ease power about half a knob width at 100 to be at the bottom of the bug at 50, then chop it completely. If you’re fast and you chop it higher, be ready for a slow spool-up on a go-around and keep the backpressure light until you get a positive speed trend.
Dive and Drive Approach Setup
Something new for me in the CRJ200 was the “dive and drive setup,” which involves leveling at the FAF altitude on a non-precision approach, getting fully configured, and then descending to the runway using a CDFA. Gear and flaps 45 will create an enormous amount of drag. If that configuration setup coincides with your level-off, you can get an alarming speed trend vector. Plan an N1 of about 70-75 to hold speed while level prior to starting down, and keep a close eye on the speed vector in your scan.
When you start down, the same 63-65ish N1 should keep you stable on speed.
Flare and touchdown
If, like me, you came out of a nose-high approach airplane like the E175 (+3 deg), you may start to get a subconscious urge to pull the nose up in the last 500 feet. The closer you get to the runway, the stronger the urge gets.
If you’re a visual learner who likes to use visual cues for your flare, have been taught the Jacobson Flare technique, or follow the mantra that “the airplane follows the eyeballs,” you may be wondering how and when to flare in the CRJ200. As a primer, I recommend James Albright’s wonderful article on landings and aimpoint flare geometry. Using longitudinal visual points will improve your precision. On a 3-degree path, you travel about 20 feet forward for every foot vertically, so using longitudinal references will give you a 20x magnification and should lead to consistent flare initiation and secondary aiming.
For this technique to work, you need to ensure your eyeballs are aligned with the little alignment balls on the center post, and you can see the bottom of the glareshield.
To land just past the captain bars on stripe 5, you want to aim your eyeballs at the top of the fourth centerline stripe and keep the profile coming until around 25 feet (half a second past the 30-foot RA callout), then gradually round out to an attitude half a degree above level. If you’re a visual person, this means looking at stripe 4, and then continuing until stripe 2 starts to go under the nose. At that point, walk your eyeballs up to the 2500-footers, or some point abeam on a non-precision runway. If your profile is slightly off, adjust your cutoff accordingly. For example, if you’re aimed at stripe 5, use stripe 3 as your flare cutoff:
If you’re a visual learner who likes to use visual cues for your flare, have been taught the Jacobson Flare technique, or follow the mantra that “the airplane follows the eyeballs,” you may be wondering how and when to flare in the CRJ200. As a primer, I recommend James Albright’s wonderful article on landings and aimpoint flare geometry. Using longitudinal visual points will improve your precision. On a 3-degree path, you travel about 20 feet forward for every foot vertically, so using longitudinal references will give you a 20x magnification and should lead to consistent flare initiation and secondary aiming.
For this technique to work, you need to ensure your eyeballs are aligned with the little alignment balls on the center post, and you can see the bottom of the glareshield.
To land just past the captain bars on stripe 5, you want to aim your eyeballs at the top of the fourth centerline stripe and keep the profile coming until around 25 feet (half a second past the 30-foot RA callout), then gradually round out to an attitude half a degree above level. If you’re a visual person, this means looking at stripe 4, and then continuing until stripe 2 starts to go under the nose. At that point, walk your eyeballs up to the 2500-footers, or some point abeam on a non-precision runway. If your profile is slightly off, adjust your cutoff accordingly. For example, if you’re aimed at stripe 5, use stripe 3 as your flare cutoff:
Initiate your flare at 25 feet by waiting until stripe 2 goes under the glareshield.
Your secondary aimpoint should be the 2500-footers or a point abeam to prevent float.
If we’re in an empty airplane with a ref speed in the low 120s, then we ought to flare closer to 20 feet. In other words, wait for the end of stripe 2 to start flaring. Similarly, if you’re going into Denver in the summer, you might want to flare a few feet earlier.
Curious about the derivation of those references? Main Article: CRJ200 Flare Geometry
Looking at the 2500s will limit the propensity to float. If you see them going down in your sight picture, you’re floating and you need to help it settle. Sneak a peek at your PFD: if the pitch cue is above the horizon, you can ease back pressure to help it settle. Be mindful that you are likely to have a flat landing at a level attitude, so ensure you don’t allow a high sink rate to lead to a firm nose gear touchdown. Go around if you float past your last touchdown point.
Curious about the derivation of those references? Main Article: CRJ200 Flare Geometry
Looking at the 2500s will limit the propensity to float. If you see them going down in your sight picture, you’re floating and you need to help it settle. Sneak a peek at your PFD: if the pitch cue is above the horizon, you can ease back pressure to help it settle. Be mindful that you are likely to have a flat landing at a level attitude, so ensure you don’t allow a high sink rate to lead to a firm nose gear touchdown. Go around if you float past your last touchdown point.
This all sounds simple in theory. If you fly the slatted CRJ versions as well, or came out of a nose-high airplane (e.g. E175), the sight picture will look unnatural, especially at high ref speeds like 147 knots, and that urge to pull the nose up will be a full-throated crescendo by the time you get to where you actually need to flare. Your two helpers are 1) keeping the command bars or glideslope indicators more prominently in your scan, and 2) briefing the threat with your PM and asking them to keep you honest on your profile. There are two types of CRJ200 pilots: those who have floated a landing, and liars. Help each other out.
Touchdowns are typically soft, due to the incredibly forgiving trailing-link main gear, which absorbs all but the firmest carrier landings.
Braking
I don’t know if the brakes were upgraded from the Challenger, but they do get warm quickly, especially when heavy. If landing distance and conditions allow, plan idle reverse and light braking until 60-90 knots. Go ahead use them more aggressively if needed (e.g. slowing in puffy crosswinds), but have a plan to cool them later if it’s a short turn.
Crosswinds
Crosswind landings in the CRJ200 require more A-game than other types: the low wing with minimal dihedral gives little roll tolerance before a wing strike, and the soft gear means that the airplane will continue to roll after touchdown with insufficient upwind aileron more so than its oleo-strutted brethren.
Relative to the E175, I found the CRJ200 ailerons twitchier, and the rudder softer. Instead of a nudge of rudder and a crank of aileron, the CRJ200 requires a bootful of rudder and a nudge of aileron.
If you’re curious how far upwind of centerline you should be, you can figure it out using the following formula:
Touchdowns are typically soft, due to the incredibly forgiving trailing-link main gear, which absorbs all but the firmest carrier landings.
Braking
I don’t know if the brakes were upgraded from the Challenger, but they do get warm quickly, especially when heavy. If landing distance and conditions allow, plan idle reverse and light braking until 60-90 knots. Go ahead use them more aggressively if needed (e.g. slowing in puffy crosswinds), but have a plan to cool them later if it’s a short turn.
Crosswinds
Crosswind landings in the CRJ200 require more A-game than other types: the low wing with minimal dihedral gives little roll tolerance before a wing strike, and the soft gear means that the airplane will continue to roll after touchdown with insufficient upwind aileron more so than its oleo-strutted brethren.
Relative to the E175, I found the CRJ200 ailerons twitchier, and the rudder softer. Instead of a nudge of rudder and a crank of aileron, the CRJ200 requires a bootful of rudder and a nudge of aileron.
If you’re curious how far upwind of centerline you should be, you can figure it out using the following formula:
Where D is displacement, XWC is crosswind component, GS is ground speed, and WB is wheelbase from eyeball to mains. If we plug in XWC=16, GS=141, and WB=35.5 feet, we get D=4 feet. Ok, I know nobody will think about that on final. Playing with a few common values yields a useful approximation:
Much easier.
What helped get the picture and inputs down for me was looking about halfway down the runway when stripe 2 went under the nose. That got the flare started. Then, step on the stripes to get the nose aligned on centerline, and use peripherals to help with the roll nudges. Once straightened out, hold those inputs and look down at the 2500s to keep the sink coming. As soon as you hear or feel the mains touch, double your aileron input and gauge the roll, making adjustments to keep it level. Fly it through the rollout. Avoid max reverse below 90 knots, it may lead to rudder blanking.
What helped get the picture and inputs down for me was looking about halfway down the runway when stripe 2 went under the nose. That got the flare started. Then, step on the stripes to get the nose aligned on centerline, and use peripherals to help with the roll nudges. Once straightened out, hold those inputs and look down at the 2500s to keep the sink coming. As soon as you hear or feel the mains touch, double your aileron input and gauge the roll, making adjustments to keep it level. Fly it through the rollout. Avoid max reverse below 90 knots, it may lead to rudder blanking.
Looking mid-runway will help identify drift errors more quickly and get you aligned.
If you get time in the sim, have your instructor position
freeze you at the beginning of the flare with the crosswind, then practice the
sight picture change with the inputs a number of times to recalibrate your
muscle memory. That repetition will save time versus getting backed up on a
3-mile final. The sim doesn’t twist on the stilts, so kinesthetic learners will
be somewhat disadvantaged by the lack of “butt feel” that you’d get in the
airplane. Flying the sight picture will help bridge the gap.
Taxi In
If you have a long taxi, you risk warm brakes. Shut down the second engine as soon as feasible. If you do need both engines (e.g. congested ramp), let the airplane pick up speed, then favor the cooler brakes unless both are needed for traction. Swap when the cool side becomes the new warm side. The more time the rotors and stators avoid contact, the better.
Summary
Landing the CRJ200 is different from other airplanes. Understanding its design history, limitations, quirks, and getting used to the different sight picture will help make your approaches more stable and your landings more consistent.