Hands-on approach

As is quite obvious, all pilots need to land. As the saying goes, "What goes up, must come down."

What matters for a Colonial pilot is how they land, given the many kinds of spacecraft used in the Twelve Colonies. Some of the hardest of these ships to fly are the vessels of the Colonial military. Since landing on a Battlestar is a very difficult feat requiring much practice, it seems that almost all Battlestars opted to make landings easier through a series of computers that form an auto-landing system. Before the surprise Cylon Attack, the two choices to land on a typical Battlestar were by automatic landing or a hands-on approach, or manually controlled landing.

On Battlestar Galactica, a hands-on landing is the only accepted landing procedure. The policy confused pilot Lee Adama when he was instructed to land his Viper Mk. VII manually. Chief Tyrol noted the landing policy to Captain Adama (Mini-Series).

Commander Adama has banned the use of auto-landing systems aboard Galactica, probably because it would involve the networking of computers that would send data to a ship's autopilot and guide it in for an automatic landing. Commander Adama had maintained (or renewed) the policy of non-networked computers on Galactica in the event of a new Cylon attack. Such automatic systems could be easily infiltrated by a Cylon virus (a tactic used in the first Cylon War). As it turned out, Adama's policy of keeping Galactica free of networked computers such as an auto-landing system was a key factor in Galactica's survival during the Fall of the Twelve Colonies.

Radio calls for a hands-on approach are:

Landing Operator: "Green light for hands-on approach. *Callsign*, call the ball."

Pilot: "I have the ball."

"The ball" refers to a series of lights going from the back of the landing bay to the front. The pilot uses these lights to adjust his/her speed for a smooth landing.

Captain Kelly is the Landing Signal Officer, in charge of all flight operations on Galactica.