Summary: Video featuring incredible landings of airplanes and helicopters in dire situations.
The most intense instant in most airplane trips is the moment of truth when the venture is over and the plane must make contact again with the runway. We’ve seen the Hollywood cliché about the unlikely passenger who must be radioed the instructions on how to land the plane.
The pilots in these videos required more acumen than could be communicated over a runway radio. Some of them had to call on all their years of expertise to cope with the plane acting unpredictably, missing landing gear or bouncing along the runway. We see some crashes; we see a helicopter wreck itself.
The first plane comes in at a 30 degree angle, hopping along on its back landing wheels before evening out to let the front wheels tap down. The third hops along like a rubber ball, tapping up and down before finding a way to even things out.
We also see a plane whose front landing wheels failed, which landed with the help of a Nissan Frontier pickup truck, which zipped into place and brought the plane to safety.
The overall effect of the video, which juxtaposes so many nerve-wracking plane and helicopter landings, makes us nervous about our next flight. We should remember, therefore, that these are amazing landings, and are almost never called for.