12/03/2026
Do you think airplane takeoff is more dangerous than landing?
This question came up during one of our Learning Aviation by Accident Q&A sessions and the comments were fascinating. I saw confidence, fear, humour, and some serious analysis.
Some people looked at it from the pilot’s perspective: which phase is more demanding for the crew flying the aircraft? Others looked at it from the passenger’s perspective: which phase feels more dangerous and which one is more likely to lead to an accident if something goes wrong?
Both viewpoints matter, and answering this properly means understanding what actually happens during takeoff and landing.
Now, imagine you were given two tasks:
Task 1
You must ride a bicycle as fast as you can in a straight line directly into the wind. Behind you is a cage of cute puppies secured to the bike, depending on you to reach the end safely.
You know this road well. It is long and straight. Your job is to stay on the centre line and build up speed to ride really fast to the end. But while riding, your strict mother is on the phone giving instructions you must listen to and respond to correctly. She is monitoring everything.
Here is the rule: once you gain high speed, you are not allowed to stop. Not for nerves. Not for discomfort. Not because the wind is strong. Not because you just realized your toxic ex is waiting for you at the other end. The only exceptions are a muscle pull or something that genuinely compromises your ability to continue safely. Everything else, you ride through. The puppies are depending on you.
Task 2
Now imagine riding a bicycle downhill at speed. At the bottom of the hill there is a barricade. Your job is to stop exactly before it. Not close. Not approximately. Precisely. You must stay on the centre line while the wind pushes the bike sideways. The road might be wet from rain. There might be obstacles.
Again you are on the phone with your strict, fast-talking mother giving instructions you must hear and respond to correctly. You must not ignore, mishear, nor misinterpret. And one more detail: you have already been riding for 7 hrs before reaching this hill. You are tired, but you must still perform this final task with precision.
So which task is more challenging? Take off is Task 1. And Landing is Task 2. Your instinct might say the downhill task sounds challenging and more dangerous. But there is more to unpack, stay with me.
🛫Takeoff: The Controlled Explosion
The moment pilots advance the thrust levers for takeoff, the engines go from idle to producing enormous thrust within seconds. Pilots are monitoring engine instruments, checking parameters like Engine Pressure Ratio (EPR) and Exhaust Gas Temperature (EGT), while tracking the runway centreline, monitoring airspeed, communicating with air traffic control, and scanning for warnings. All of this happens very quickly.
Remember when I mentioned in the Task example above that you are not permitted to stop except during exceptions? During takeoff there are significant speeds, in this order: V1, VR, VLOF, and V2.
• V1(The decision speed). Before reaching V1, pilots can abort the takeoff if something goes wrong. But once the aircraft passes V1, stopping safely on the remaining runway may no longer be possible.
Meaning, if something goes wrong before V1 such as an engine failure, tyre burst, or warning light the pilots can abort the takeoff and stop the aircraft on the runway.
But once the aircraft passes V1, stopping safely on the remaining runway may no longer be possible. At that point the crew must continue the takeoff even if a malfunction occurs.
V1 is not where the decision is made. It is the deadline by which that decision must already have been made.
• Vr (Rotate): the rotate speed. This is the speed at which the pilot begins to apply control inputs that will make the aircraft pitch up its nose, after which it will leave the ground. This is the point where the lift generated over the aircraft become higher than the aircraft weight that was keeping it on the ground. Once this speed is reached the pilot will simply call out loud 'ROTATE.'
• Vlof (the Lift off speed) it is the point at which the main landing gear (the main wheels) leaves the ground and the aircraft is completely lifted off the ground.
In simpler words VR is when the pilots tells the aircraft to lift of the ground. VLOF is when it aircraft actually does lift off the ground.
• V2: the take-off safety speed. It is the speed at which the aircraft may safely climb with one engine inoperative. It is the minimum speed at which the aircraft can sustain a safe climb even if one engine has already failed. The aircraft must reach and maintain V2 after lift-off.
V2 is the safety net woven into every departure. It is the answer to the question every crew carries silently at liftoff: if the worst happens right now, can we still climb? V2 is the speed at which the answer is “yes”.
These events happen in less than a minute. Both pilots are fully engaged. The risk window is short, but what happens inside that window matters enormously. This is while I refer to it as The Controlled Explosion.
🛬Landing: The Controlled Art Form.
If takeoff is a controlled explosion, landing is a controlled negotiation. You are taking a machine designed to fly and convincing it to stop flying at exactly the right point on the runway.
The aircraft descends along a glide path toward the runway while pilots manage airspeed, altitude, descent rate, aircraft configuration, engine power, and runway alignment all at once while communicating with air traffic control.
And this might be happening in turbulence, crosswinds, bad weather, or low visibility.
There are also strict stabilized approach criteria: at a certain altitude, the aircraft must be at the correct speed, descent rate, and alignment. If it is not, pilots will perform a go-around (abort the landing, climb, and come back to try again). A go-around is not a failure. It is professional judgement. It is a pilot saying the conditions are not right and choosing to do it properly rather than forcing a bad landing.
Landing also comes at the end of a long flight, when fatigue can be a factor. A pilot landing after a long international journey is not physiologically the same person who took off many hours earlier.
‼️So Which Is More Dangerous?
After reading all of the above, your instincts might tell you the takeoff phase is simpler. However, Takeoff is not the simpler phase it is the faster phase. Everything that landing may do over ten minutes, takeoff compresses into two. The stakes and the skill required are not smaller. They are just concentrated.
Landing brings more variables into a longer time window. The margin for error is small. Weather affects the approach more than it affects the climb. The airport environment with its terrain, obstacles, and traffic creates complexity that open sky does not. And critically, fatigue. Commercial aviation has strict rest regulations precisely because fatigue is a known risk factor, particularly during the high-workload phase of landing.
The Statistics
Statistically, landing is the more accident-prone phase. According to Boeing's statistical summaries of commercial jet accidents, about 49% of fatal accidents occur during approach, landing, or go-around, while takeoff and initial climb account for roughly 14%.
But before you start side-eyeing every runway approach for the rest of your life — let me give you context, because numbers without context are just anxiety fuel.
The approach and landing phase accounts for the most accidents primarily because it is the phase where the most variables collide simultaneously. You have the aircraft descending at speed, the pilots managing multiple systems, weather conditions that can change in seconds, traffic, terrain near the airport, and the narrow margin of error that comes with bringing a machine weighing hundreds of tonnes down onto a strip of runway with precision.
From the Pilots' Point of View.
The difference between takeoff and landing is not 'danger versus safety.' It is 'compressed intensity versus sustained complexity.'
Both demand everything from the crew. Both are handled with the same quiet professionalism. And both, on the overwhelming majority of the millions of flights operated every year, end exactly as planned.
Believe me when I say no pilot would want to experience an engine failure or critical challenge at the moment when the aircraft is at its heaviest. Carrying maximum weight, being asked to accelerate to flying speed at full engine power. If anything goes wrong and that energy needs to be reversed or stopped, the physics become brutal very quickly. Nor would any pilot want to experience a malfunction when they are too close to the ground with limited altitude to recover.
And no pilot wants to face a critical challenge on approach when the aircraft is descending toward the ground, close to terrain, with a narrow margin for error and very little time to correct it.
The verdict
To everyone who said landing. You were right. Statistically, the approach and landing phase carries the higher risk, involves more variables, and demands more from the crew over a sustained period.
To everyone who said takeoff, you were not wrong either. Both takeoff and landing are critical phases of flight for a reason. Takeoff compresses an enormous amount of critical decision-making into a very short window.
And to everyone who said 'both scare me' You are brave to fly even though it frightens you, and I respect that.
what you need to know is, Aviation treats both takeoff and landing as critical phases of flight. Aviation does not rank its phases by comfort. It takes every phase of flight with equal seriousness
Every procedure used by pilots today exists because somewhere in aviation history a lesson was learned and the industry improved from it. Training, engineering redundancy, and strict regulations mean that these phases are studied, practiced, and refined constantly. That is why thousands of flights take off and land safely every day.
That is another episode of Learning Aviation by Accident.
Drop a comment and tell me did you get it right? Did your perspective about takeoff and landing change? Also share it with someone who has been asking the same question. Let me know if you have questions or a topic you would like us to dive into next. Let us learn together.
