There's no way to answer this post, without stepping on your CFI's toes. Not in any way suggesting that he's wrong; because he's not..  So take this in proper context.. 

I wouldn't be teaching a new pilot to worry about attitude during an approach/landing. The attitude is like a by-product of the technique.. and suggesting that a certain attitude is the goal can have a student trying to achieve that attitude, instead of it just resulting from proper pitch/power/flaps. I mean.. if your turn to final is at the proper altitude/airspeed, and your flap deployment is properly timed for the winds.. as you stabilize the approach by pitching for approach speed, and powering for rate of descent..  the proper attitude can't help but happen..

I think normally, any plane similar to what you've been flying will "want" to descend with the nose down a bit when it is configured as you describe... the flight dynamics in FSX are not all that realistic (compared to the real thing, LOL).

In the long run, in FSX or real life, I'd say the thing that's best is whatever allows you to descend at a suitable airspeed and descent rate while still being able to see the runway. 

Brett_Henderson wrote on May 6^th, 2011 at 5:55pm:



Oh yes... as Langeweische put it: "the throttle is the up-down control; the elevator is the speed control". Not always true, but definitely true in a glide to the runway.

And as far as descent rate goes, airspeed is related, but there's a lot of possible combinations of airspeed and descent rate, and only one is suitable, really, for landing the airplane you're flying.

If you've done any stalls, you can imagine why he wants to break you of the habit of using elevator to control your descent rate on final. If I'm not mistaken, that's why stall recognition and recovery is taught in the first place.   

I had a similar habit- even after my check ride, I had a tendency to start my final a little high and a little too close to the threshold. That's not necessarily a bad thing- not as bad as "dragging it in", relying on power as you make a very shallow approach- but the reason for it- being nervous about getting low during that last turn- was wrong.
You'll figure it out... one thing that helps many students is to practice the final glide at a higher altitude, pretending that, say, 2000 AGL is actually ground level. Line up with a road or something, and set up the airplane just as you would for landing. I had an instructor who liked to do that, ending the glide with a stall, to simulate "flaring" onto the runway (and cleverly getting me to practice stall recovery at the same time). Very helpful exercise. It's less intimidating than knowing you will be going all the way to the runway.

I have been taught to land both ways.  My primary instructor taught me the way your instructor is teaching you now, and I have learned the high flare method at another flight school.  As to which works better, trust your current CFI, you tend to get a much better touchdown if you do your flare in ground effect and bleed off the airspeed.  If you follow his instruction there you will have great smooth landings, the flare before ground effect tends to get a very firm landing.  Both methods work, but the high flare is much more applicable for larger aircraft.  I had a reluctance when I first learned to pitching the nose down, but as my instructor said, fly it into ground effect.  If you have a nose high pitch that high up and have an engine failure, you may be in for some trouble.  If you keep pitch down and your airspeed under control, even if the engine fails you should be able to glide is straight down with no major control changes. 

So just trust your current CFI, his method works and works very well for small aircraft.