The 747-8I is the longest 4-holer Boeing ever built — 76 m of fuselage with the main gear positioned where your forward CG demands a feel for where you are in 3D space that the 737 just doesn't require. Tail strikes happen on the 747-8 at pitch attitudes airline pilots wouldn't touch on the original -400.
Landing technique
- Pitch limit is around 9° — meaningfully less than the -400 because the fuselage is 5.6 m longer. Don't rotate past it on touchdown.
- Cross the threshold at Vref + 5. The Queen is so heavy that a few knots in either direction translates to enormous changes in flare timing.
- Touchdown is well aft of where the cockpit is — you're sitting ~30 m forward of the main gear. The wheels touch about a second after your visual cue says 'now'.
- Crab the crosswind approach; this aircraft is too long for wing-down technique on landing.
- Reverse thrust on all four engines, but watch the asymmetric thrust feel if one engine is slow to spool — the 747's rudder authority is enormous but you'll need to use it.
Common mistakes
- Over-rotation on touchdown causing tail strike — the most-reported real-world 747-8 hard-landing event.
- Insufficient flare due to the visual lag — pilots accustomed to shorter airframes initiate too late.
- Floating into long landings — at MTOW, every extra knot of speed translates to ~300 ft of float.
Aircraft data
- Manufacturer
- Boeing
- Model
- 747
- Variant
- -8I
- FAA approach category
- D
- MTOW
- 447700 kg (987008 lbs)
- Vref reference
- 150 kt
- MSFS source
- Default Std
- FLARE matches
- Boeing 747-8I · 747-8I · 747 -8I
Related reading
- → How FLARE grades a landing — the composite formula behind every score
- → What "stabilized approach" actually means — the 1000-ft gate, four criteria, technique
- → Wide-Body Quad Airliner scoring thresholds — per-category curves applied to this airframe
- → Full scoring methodology reference — complete breakdown in the help docs