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There’s an old saying in the aviation world: “Taking off is optional. Landing is mandatory.” And apart from the occasional thrill seeker with a secret death wish, pretty much everyone on planet Earth wants those landings to occur with the minimal amount of, shall we say, uncontrolled impact.
Problem is…planet Earth isn’t always cooperative. The turbulent sea of air clinging to the skin of this blue marble often times throws all sorts of turbulent weather into the path of a flying machine. When a plane is hurtling along 35,000 feet above the ground, that turbulence can be annoying, even nauseating, but it’s rarely fatal. But when an aircraft is attempting to land in nasty weather, a moment’s loss of control can lead to dangerous results.
So a heaping helping of kudos, then, for Polish pilot Artur Kielak, who managed to claw his Boeing 737 down to a safe landing with control inputs that look more like those of a race car driver than a commercial airline captain.
The video, posted to Kielak’s Facebook page on March 16th, shows the pilot as he brings his twin-engined Boeing in for a landing in what seems like one nasty bout of weather. He wrestles the controls with the steely-eyed concentration, one hand wrangling the yoke, the other operating what we assume is either the throttles or the flaps. It’s a tour de force of piloting skill…and it makes us awfully glad we don’t normally see what happens in the cockpit.
