VRef Explained: Why Your Approach Speed Matters More Than Your Flare

23 April 2026 ·Admin ·6 min read

Sim pilots obsess about the flare. It is the glamorous two seconds of the landing, the part that separates the thump from the greaser, and the part everyone practises. But watch a set of scruffy landings closely - your own included - and the flare is rarely where the trouble started. The trouble started fifteen seconds earlier, at the threshold, with a number: your airspeed. Cross the threshold at the right speed and an average flare produces a good landing. Cross it ten knots fast and a perfect flare produces a float, a guess, and an arrival somewhere down the runway that you will blame on your flare timing.

This article is about that number - VRef - where it comes from, how to find it for whatever you fly, and what carrying extra speed actually does to a landing.

What VRef is

VRef - reference landing speed - is the target speed to cross the landing threshold at, in the landing configuration, at your current weight. The classical definition is simple:

VRef = 1.3 × Vs0

Vs0 is the stall speed in landing configuration - gear down, landing flap. Multiplying by 1.3 gives a 30% margin above the stall: enough that gusts, small speed excursions and the deceleration in the flare never bring you near stalling, but slow enough that the aeroplane is ready to stop flying just above the runway. That second half is the point pilots miss. VRef is not just a safety floor - it is an upper target too. The whole landing manoeuvre is designed around arriving with almost no excess energy, so that when you flare and the speed bleeds, the wing gives up flying right where you want it to: a foot above the touchdown zone.

Because stall speed depends on weight, so does VRef. A lightly loaded C172 and one at max weight stall a few knots apart, and an A320 at the end of a long flight has a VRef fifteen or more knots below the same aircraft heavy. This is why "what speed do I land at?" has no single answer per aircraft - the honest answer is always "at today's VRef".

Finding it for what you fly

Light GA. The POH gives approach speeds directly - for a C172, a normal final with full flap is flown around 60-65 KIAS depending on weight and variant. In the sim, the aircraft's kneeboard, checklist or EFB usually reproduces these. As a rule of thumb for anything piston-powered: if you know the landing-config stall speed (bottom of the white arc on the airspeed indicator), multiply by 1.3.

Airliners. The aircraft computes it for you. In an A320 the MCDU PERF APPR page shows VAPP (VRef plus additives, which the aircraft manages); in a 737 the FMC's approach reference page offers VRef for each flap setting. The discipline is not calculating the number - it is actually flying it, rather than the round figure you have got comfortable with.

Turboprops and everything else. Between the two: the EFB, checklist or FMS will have it. If a payware aircraft ships with performance documentation, the landing speed table is the page most worth bookmarking.

What ten extra knots actually costs

"A bit fast" sounds harmless. It isn't, and the physics is worth understanding because it explains almost every floated landing you have ever flown.

The energy an aeroplane carries goes with the square of its speed. Crossing the threshold of a C172 at 75 knots instead of 65 doesn't give you 15% more energy to get rid of - it gives you about a third more. And the flare is a terrible place to dissipate energy: in ground effect, drag falls, the descent is arrested, and the aeroplane simply refuses to slow down at the rate you are used to. So it floats - holding off, nose creeping up, runway streaming past underneath - until the excess is finally gone.

The costs stack up:

Runway. A working figure real-world instructors use: in a light aircraft, every knot of excess speed at the threshold costs very roughly a hundred feet of float. Ten knots fast can double your landing distance. On a 2,500-metre airline runway you get away with it; on the short strips that make sim flying interesting, you do not.
The touchdown itself. Floats end in one of two ways, and both are the "bad landings" pilots blame on flare technique. Either you get impatient and push the aeroplane on - touching down flat, fast, nosewheel-first or wheelbarrowing - or you hold off as the speed decays unevenly and it drops on from a few feet up when the wing quits. That drop is the classic "I flared nicely and it still banged on" landing. The flare was fine. The threshold speed wasn't.
Judgement. A landing at the right speed follows a rhythm you can learn: threshold, throttle closed, flare, settle, touch - a few seconds, every time. A fast landing has a variable-length float in the middle, so no two feel alike, and your timing never gets the repetition it needs to calibrate. Chronic excess speed doesn't just spoil today's landing; it stops you learning.

Slow is worth a word too, because the fix for fast is not "slower is better". Below VRef the margins thin quickly: more of the wing's capability is spent just holding the descent, gusts bite harder, and the sink rate builds if power comes off early. The target is a band a couple of knots either side of VRef - not a limbo competition.

Wind additives: the honest exceptions

There are conditions where you deliberately carry more than VRef, and it is worth doing it the way the professionals do - as a calculated additive, not a comfort margin.

The classic rule adds half the gust factor: if the wind is 15 gusting 25, the gust factor is 10 knots, so add 5 and fly VRef+5. Many airline SOPs also apply a minimum additive (VRef+5 as a floor) and a cap on the total (commonly nothing beyond VRef+15 or +20). The additive covers the airspeed a gust can take away; it is insurance against the lulls, not licence to be fast on a calm day. And the professionals' fine print matters in the sim too: the additive is meant to be bled off in the flare, and on a gusty day you accept a positive, slightly firm touchdown rather than floating in shifting air waiting for a greaser that isn't coming.

The other half of threshold discipline is height: the aim is to cross the threshold at about 50 feet. High and fast is the double error that eats runways - each compounds the other, and together they can turn a comfortable landing distance into an overrun.

The two numbers that tell you the truth

Here is the uncomfortable experiment: without looking anything up, what speed did you cross the threshold on your last landing? Most sim pilots have no idea. The airspeed indicator is the least-watched instrument in the last ten seconds, exactly when its number is deciding everything that follows.

You do not have to guess. My FS Flights records every landing automatically and reports precisely this pair: your speed across the threshold against the reference speed for your aircraft, and your touchdown distance past the threshold - alongside the touchdown rate and centreline tracking we have covered before. Those two numbers together are a lie detector for approach speed. Consistently +8 on the threshold and consistently long? That is not a flare problem, whatever it feels like. It is the same fixable habit, printed in your own data, on every flight.

So before the next session of circuits, look up today's VRef for your aircraft and weight, write it down, and make the threshold crossing a deliberate act: this speed, this height, every time. Fly a stable approach to protect the number, and let the flare take care of the last two seconds. It was never the flare that needed the work.