No No.  13 degrees up only if you are flying the Concorde!   As you are flying at a fixed altitude, following your flap schedule, your nose will get pretty high, but that is too much.  Go to the next level of flaps or speed up.  Your Angle of Attack should be around 3 or 4 degrees as you descend  If you are approaching at ~130, you should be descending at about 650 fpm.  You shouldn't be flying straight and level at 130 knots, you should be descending.  If your flaps are set correctly, and you are descending at the proper rate, the AOA will obviously take care of itself

That is why I don't bother with default planes.  Good Payware planes actually come with diagrams-for-dummies that tell you about how fast you should be flying and what your flaps should be at any given point in a "typical" approach.

A real pilot can correct me, but ideally, I don't decelerate to approach speed until right before I intercept the glideslope.  When I am 1 or 2 dots below, I deploy the gear and approach flaps, which should slow you down to where you need to be, at which point, if you have timed it right, you won't have to fly in that nose-high attitude for very long before you can ease off and let the plane descend at a good AOA.  Nevertheless, I used to have the problem of seeing over the glare shield all the time until I started using the VC with a Track IR

Keep in mind that your nose might get near 10 degrees on a straight and level part of the approach, depending on the plane, if you are flying at the bare minimum manuevering speed for that level of flaps.  I normally add a bit of buffer, specifically to combat the problem you cite.  "Flap schedules" make for wonderful conversation among us flight-sim nerds!

Mr._Ryan wrote on Jan 10^th, 2010 at 11:05pm:


I'll agree there's a distinct lack of flap in that picture - an if you were doing an approach with no flap, you fly it considerably faster than a normal approach.

Certainly anywhere below 200kt you want to be thinking about flap, and on the approach ATC will normally be expecting you to keep the speed up in the 150-180kt ballpark, bringing it back to threshold speed in the final few miles of the approach.

Mr._Ryan wrote on Jan 11^th, 2010 at 9:09am:


In my experience warnings like that are likely to be the opposite, such as being too slow, low, or for example not having the gear down (at a certain flap setting an below a certain speed - for example the VC10 has a warning horn if speed it less that 150kts, flaps are at "approach" or "land", and the gear is up).

Yes, that is true about the landing configuration warning horn....

This probably won't be helpful (perhaps someone will think I'm pitching payware aircraft or something... ), but in a real 737 (800?) the Primary Flight Display would automatically display the ranges for the minimum and maximum maneuvering and flap speeds right there on the speed tape for a given aircraft configuration.  The pilot wouldn't have to guess about what flaps he should be at for any speed.

Brett_Henderson wrote on Jan 11^th, 2010 at 10:07am:


Following on from Brett's well made point, also make sure that you're flying the right speed for the weight. On the approach that isn't as critical (as long as you don't go below threshold speed), but your threshold speed could probably vary by anything between 10 and 20kts, depending on the weight (again, I'm no expert on the 737 figures, so this is a rough guess).

Keep asking though. I was fairly unaware of such thing until I flew large aeroplanes for real.

snippyfsxer wrote on Jan 11^th, 2010 at 10:25am:


I bet somewhere in the ether of the internet, if he really wanted to, he could find out.