Definition
Aircraft accidents that occur during the final approach to a runway or during the landing roll. This category covers events such as runway overruns, hard landings, undershoots, loss of control on touchdown, and collisions with terrain or obstacles in the final stages of flight. It is one of the most common accident categories in general aviation and a major focus of pilot training and safety research.
Plain English
Crashes or serious incidents that happen while the airplane is coming in to land or rolling out after touchdown.
Context Anchor
Seen in landing training, safety discussions, and energy management material, especially when studying how speed, height, and airplane control affect the outcome of a landing.
Derivation
Approach comes from an older French word meaning to come nearer. Landing means bringing something to land. Together, approach-and-landing points to the final part of the flight: coming near the runway and putting the airplane on it.
Why Pilots Care
These accidents make up the largest share of general aviation mishaps; understanding their causes directly improves the ability to arrive at the runway in a stable, controlled state.
Intuition Check
Do not read approach as just any movement toward something. In this aviation use, approach means the flight phase where the pilot is setting up to land on a runway or landing area.
Example Sentence 1
The instructor explained that most approach-and-landing accidents involve poor energy management rather than mechanical failure.
Example Sentence 2
Energy management training focuses on preventing approach-and-landing accidents by keeping the airplane on the correct glide path and speed all the way to touchdown.