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Comment by svobodamartin

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Comment by svobodamartin

Having 17y of experience flying military (subsonic) jets and being test acceptance pilot for a few years as well, I feel I can share my perspective on this extraordinary event:

First I was just wow!

Then I read the PDF from 2013 blog and little bit of relief came from knowing that he was qualified pilot too.

But there is a big but! Before that, he flew dramatically different, slower only propeller planes, no jet, no supersonic jet. I can imagine that it kinda might be smth like having driving licence, but being put into an F1 car and asked to handle it properly in order to follow the track in highspeed, but in 3D.

Anyway, I recall my first flight on L-39 after having 20h on Ulla and 50h on Z-142: it was the same flying one is used to, but since releasing the brakes on runway the speed makes the biggest (initial) difference. And then the landing. Otherwise flying is always the same, same flying controls, what changes is the avionics, speeds, g-loads and capability to do certain manoeuvres.

Regarding speed jets are obviously different level fast from propeller engine planes, landscape runs below you way much faster than you are used to. Higher speed means less time for decision and reaction, no time for "wait, I need to think something over", because times flies and jet flies with it, fast. Nobody waits for you and your pondering there. Its totally different workload.

"I needed to get the feel of the aircraft, if I was to get it back on the ground". "..how does one interpolate or extrapolate Tiger Moth, Chipmunk Harvard flying to a two engined, 11 ton, beast like the Lightning?" That is exactly it. Get to feel the aircraft comes with time and experience, especially with final part of the landing (hovering above runway) your brain and eyes need to learn to see proper angle shown to you by instructor.

The most difficult to initially learn is the proper flare phase, when you transition from the approach to the actual touchdown. During final seconds you learn to feel through your butt the rate of descent - you coordinate butt feeling of descending (less speed means less lift, thus more descending) with hand pulling the stick to compensate decreasing speed with increasing the angle of attack (thus increasing lift), you smoothly balance this dynamic imbalance, you slowly decrease speed, increase lift and slowly decrease the height above the concrete in order to land smoothly from desired height. If you overcompensate (pull too much), plane can jump few meter up in the air, which you dont want (being higher with decreasing speed means you can just stall/fall on runway from few meters), if you undercompensate you will hit the ground with sharper descend angle sooner and with higher speed (which can start the sequence of hits and jumps that need to be taken under control). Practice makes you learn from these mistakes, make corrections for the wind aspect, air temperature (extremely cold or hot makes difference) ,take into account different configuration of aircraft, different fuel weight affects this too.

So there is a lot of trial and error and time needed learning to land safely. All in all, it took everybody ~10h before our instructors let us fly first jet solo. Of course we could crashland sooner with less experience.

Well, to conclude, every landing is different and every airline passenger can confirm, that sometimes it can be even adventurous.

I am sharing all this just to show, how extraordinary his landing was! Kudos!

Replies svobodamartin · 2026-09-03
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