ORIGINAL: Villa
Every now and then I hear someone at the field mention that they crashed during a landing because “THE WIND GOT THEM”. This looks like a strong downdraft pushed the plane into the ground. That ever happen to you? Since I always insist on determining the cause of every one of my crashes, I kept questioning that “THE WIND GOT ME” reason, since I used it also.
What happens sometimes, when landing against steady headwind, is that the velocity of the wind close to the ground is drastically reduced up to zero next to the ground, due to friction.
Hence, the wind speed that is sufficient to sustain flight at 4 or 5 feet of altitude, is simply not there at 2 feet above ground.
In those cases, the wing does not stall, but the lift that it generates is less than the weight of the plane, and the thing just drops over the strip (remember that lift depends on the square of the air speed).
That is the reason for the advice of keeping the ground speed high when landing against high winds.