Hard Landings Force S7 to Limit First Officer Landings

A Russian carrier has reportedly removed a routine responsibility from one half of its cockpit crews. According to publicly reported information, S7 Airlines, one of the largest operators in the country, has restricted its first officers from performing landings at most airports, assigning that task to captains. The stated driver is a pattern of hard landings that has been causing damage to aircraft. FlySafe analysis shows that procedural changes of this kind, while unusual, sit at the intersection of two well-documented operational concerns: aircraft structural integrity and the long-term development of pilot skill. This bulletin examines what a hard landing is, why repeated occurrences matter, and how the decision fits within standard airline safety practice.

What a hard landing actually means

In commercial operations, a hard landing is not a subjective judgment made by passengers. It is defined by measurable parameters, primarily the vertical acceleration recorded at touchdown, expressed as a load factor in g. Each airframe manufacturer publishes a threshold above which a touchdown is classified as a hard landing and a structural inspection becomes mandatory. The reference material maintained by SKYbrary describes hard landings as events in which the aircraft contacts the runway with a vertical speed and load sufficient to risk structural stress to the landing gear, wing attachments, and fuselage.

When an exceedance is recorded, the consequences are operational rather than dramatic. The aircraft is typically removed from service for a manufacturer-mandated hard landing inspection. Depending on the severity, this can range from a visual check completed within hours to a more extensive examination of the landing gear, wing spars, and fuselage structure that takes the aircraft off the line for a longer period. Each inspection carries direct maintenance cost and indirect cost in the form of lost aircraft availability and potential schedule disruption.

Why a cluster of events draws attention

A single hard landing is a normal part of operating an airline fleet and is handled through established maintenance procedures. A sustained pattern is a different matter. Repeated exceedances across a fleet generate recurring inspections, accelerate component wear, and raise the probability that cumulative stress contributes to a more serious finding. When a carrier identifies such a trend through its monitoring systems, intervention becomes a reasonable operational response. The intervention can target training, procedures, equipment, or — as appears to be the case here — the allocation of who performs the landing.

How airlines detect the trend

Airlines do not rely on crew self-reporting alone to identify hard landings. Most operators run a Flight Data Monitoring programme, also known as Flight Operational Quality Assurance, which automatically analyses parameters from the flight data recorder after each sector. The framework is described in detail by SKYbrary's Flight Data Monitoring resource. These programmes flag exceedances such as high vertical acceleration at touchdown, unstable approaches, late flare, and high descent rates close to the runway.

This data-driven feedback loop is precisely the kind of evidence that would support a fleet-wide procedural decision. If a monitoring programme shows that hard landing events are concentrated in a specific phase, fleet type, or crew configuration, an operator can act on the pattern rather than on individual incidents. FlySafe analysis shows that decisions of this nature are most defensible when they are grounded in this kind of recorded, independently verifiable operational data rather than anecdote.

The procedural change and what it trades away

Reassigning landings exclusively to captains addresses the immediate concern directly. The most experienced pilot in the cockpit performs the highest-workload, lowest-margin phase of flight at the majority of airports. In the short term, this is a plausible way to reduce hard landing exceedances and the associated maintenance burden.

The trade-off is well understood within the profession. In standard airline operations, first officers and captains alternate as pilot flying and pilot monitoring across sectors. This rotation is not a courtesy; it is how first officers accumulate the hands-on landing experience required to perform safely and, eventually, to upgrade to captain. Restricting first officers from landings narrows that experience pathway. A pilot who lands infrequently may face a steeper challenge maintaining proficiency, which is itself a recognised factor in landing quality.

This tension is the core of the situation. A measure intended to protect the airframe in the near term can reduce the hands-on practice that builds landing skill over the longer term. There is no public indication of how the carrier intends to balance these factors, and it would be speculative to assume one. What can be stated factually is that both ends of the trade-off — airframe protection and crew proficiency — are legitimate safety considerations recognised across the industry.

Contributing factors are rarely singular

Hard landing trends are seldom attributable to a single cause. Industry literature consistently points to a combination of contributors: approach stability, flare technique, gusty or variable wind conditions at specific airports, runway characteristics, autothrottle and autoland behaviour, fleet age, and the specific handling characteristics of an aircraft type. Assigning the pattern to any one factor without access to the carrier's internal flight data would not be supported by publicly available information. The responsible reading is that a procedural change of this scope typically follows a multi-factor analysis rather than a single conclusion.

What it means for the wider picture

For passengers, a measure that reduces hard landings is consistent with protecting aircraft structural health, and the underlying monitoring systems that surface these trends are a routine and positive feature of modern airline safety management. For the industry, the situation is a reminder that flight data programmes are doing exactly what they are designed to do: converting recorded operational data into actionable intervention before minor issues compound.

Recommendation: Operators observing similar touchdown-quality trends are best served by treating Flight Data Monitoring output as the starting point for a structured review covering training, stabilised-approach criteria, fleet condition, and crew rostering — rather than relying on a single corrective lever. Any restriction on first officer landings benefits from a parallel plan to preserve crew proficiency, such as supervised landing currency in training or at lower-risk airports.

Key takeaway

The reported S7 measure illustrates a real operational dilemma rather than a simple fault. Repeated hard landings impose genuine cost through inspections and reduced aircraft availability, and reassigning landings to captains is a direct way to address that. The same measure, however, touches the long-term proficiency of first officers, which is itself a safety-critical asset. The most informative signal here is not the rule itself but the underlying data trend that prompted it — the kind of operational pattern that structured monitoring is built to expose.

FlySafe tracks operational and procedural developments across global carriers, drawing exclusively on publicly available, independently verifiable data published by aviation authorities, academic institutions, and open-data projects. For continued monitoring of carrier procedures, fleet reliability indicators, and airspace conditions, FlySafe provides aviation risk intelligence built on transparent, open sources. Further background on landing safety standards is available through the European Union Aviation Safety Agency.

Disclaimer: Analysis based on publicly available data only. This bulletin does not assess any specific carrier's competence and assigns no blame; it summarises publicly reported information and established industry practice for informational purposes.