Narrative:

We were on final into den (16L) and cleared to land. There were some rain shafts on the final approach course that generated turbulence as well as airspeed fluctuations (plus/minus 15 to 20 KTS). We were fully configured and stabilized well before 1;000 ft AGL. After passing the FAF; I could feel the pitch increase and airspeed started dropping. It took what felt like 80% full throttle to maintain my target speed of 151 KTS. Then; the airspeed rapidly increased to 170 KTS and we oversped the flaps 30 configuration. Concerned about the overspeed; I called for a flap retraction. At about 800 ft; we were back in stable/smooth air. The first officer did suggest a go-around; however; I decided to land. My biggest concern was having to circle around and fly through that same weather again. We reconfigured to flaps 30 and landed without any further incident. At no time did we ever get a windshear warning.in retrospect; I believe that my mistake was calling for a flap retraction below 1;000 without initiating a go-around. I focused on the flap overspeed issue and tried to resolve that while continuing the approach. I went from a stable approach to an unstable approach and failed to make the right decision to go-around. The whole event probably took less than one minute. I think that some of the factors that weighed on me and contributed to this wrong decision were the gusty winds and turbulent conditions. At the time; I believed the safer course of action was to land; even though I was not stable until approximately 800 AGL than to have to circle around and try to fly through the turbulence and gust a second time. I was wrong!

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: B737-700 flight crew encounters turbulence and windshear during approach resulting in a flap overspeed but no windshear warning. The Captain calls for the flaps to be raised to 15 initially and when clear of the virga flaps 30 are called for again (below 1;000 FT) and the approach continues to landing.

Narrative: We were on final into DEN (16L) and cleared to land. There were some rain shafts on the final approach course that generated turbulence as well as airspeed fluctuations (plus/minus 15 to 20 KTS). We were fully configured and stabilized well before 1;000 FT AGL. After passing the FAF; I could feel the pitch increase and airspeed started dropping. It took what felt like 80% full throttle to maintain my target speed of 151 KTS. Then; the airspeed rapidly increased to 170 KTS and we oversped the flaps 30 configuration. Concerned about the overspeed; I called for a flap retraction. At about 800 FT; we were back in stable/smooth air. The First Officer did suggest a go-around; however; I decided to land. My biggest concern was having to circle around and fly through that same weather again. We reconfigured to flaps 30 and landed without any further incident. At no time did we ever get a windshear warning.In retrospect; I believe that my mistake was calling for a flap retraction below 1;000 without initiating a go-around. I focused on the flap overspeed issue and tried to resolve that while continuing the approach. I went from a stable approach to an unstable approach and failed to make the right decision to go-around. The whole event probably took less than one minute. I think that some of the factors that weighed on me and contributed to this wrong decision were the gusty winds and turbulent conditions. At the time; I believed the safer course of action was to land; even though I was not stable until approximately 800 AGL than to have to circle around and try to fly through the turbulence and gust a second time. I was wrong!

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.