History Main / ImprobablePilotingSkills

* In ''Series/{{Firefly}}'', if it weren't for Wash's piloting skills the crew of ''Serenity'' would have been captured, dead or worse several times. Mal even calls him a 'genius pilot' at one point, and it's noted several high-profile people courted him before he signed on with ''Serenity''. He's done a flat spin in atmosphere, successfully docked the ship with a space station, unpowered, from 6000 miles out, barnstormed down a snowy canyon, and in the movie ''Film/{{Serenity}}'', he flies their tiny ship through a titanic battle without a scratch and manages to crashland it safely, even after losing one engine and getting hit by an EMP weapon.

** Lastly, and most memorably, landing the LEM manually to avoid landing on top of a boulder or in a crater, all while the landing computer keeps setting off the master alarm. The movie, in fact, downplays the precariousness of the LEM landing as the error codes displayed by the computer required more serious intervention than just turning the alarm off each time. This was displayed with some accuracy in ''Series/FromTheEarthToTheMoon''.

* Creator/WillSmith gets an If it flies in ''Film/IndependenceDay'' with the alien space craft. [[SubvertedTrope Then he crashes]].

*** Somewhat subverted in this case, as Russell Casse described flying combat missions in Vietnam before his crop dusting job, so his ability to handle a military airframe isn't exactly improbable...but his ability to adapt to a fighter that doesn't even have analog instruments kind of is.

* ''Film/TheMatrix'' justifies this trope: Trinity turns into an InstantExpert at helicopter flying after having the knowledge directly uploaded to her brain. However the helicopter does end up crashing.
** Some of the maneuvers with the real-world hovercrafts fall into this trope as well.

Planes and most flying things tend to be fragile: if an [[RedShirt unnamed character's craft]] or a [[DisposablePilot or a minor character's cargo plane]] is so much as nicked by a slingshot's pebble, it will explode in a fiery conflagration. Not so the hero's craft, of course. Once he climbs aboard, any Personal Plot Armor he happens to be wearing is transferred to it and indeed quite possibly boosted. His craft may be [[ArtisticLicenseEngineering missing a wing, so full of holes it looks like a sieve, and with one engine out]], and he'll still manage to shoot down five enemies with it before making an emergency landing. (Note that the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:B-17-battle-casualty1.gif B-17]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LveSc8Lp0ZE&fmt=18 Zivi Nedivi]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-10_Thunderbolt_II the Warthog]] are TruthInTelevision.)

* '''If it flies...''' \\
It doesn't matter what sort of machine it is - so long as it can fly, he can pilot it like a pro. Be it a glider, ultra-light, single-engine Cessna, Mach 50 transforming super fighter, or alien spacecraft, [[InstantExpert just give him five minutes and he'll figure it out]]. This also applies to when the pilot receives their mid-series upgrade. There's never any mention of the months of retraining needed to fly it... At best he's maybe a little clumsy for one episode, or if not, just as likely to blast off in it to save the day against impossible odds [[UniversalDriversLicense five minutes after he first sees the thing]].

* '''Flying Computer'''\\

* '''Aerody-whatsit?''' \\
The hero's plane is not bothered by concepts such as drag, stall, or lack of thrust. He can throw his craft about the sky in an often [[ArtisticLicensePhysics physics-defying manner]] with no repercussions. This also applies to ships that are an aerodynamic nightmare which would, in reality, have trouble getting off the ground, never mind back flipping at Mach 2.

* '''Reinforced Plot Armor.''' \\
Planes and most flying things tend to be fragile: if an [[RedShirt unnamed character's craft]] or a [[DisposablePilot or a minor character's cargo plane]] is so much as nicked by a slingshot's pebble, it will explode in a fiery conflagration. Not so the hero's craft, of course. Once he climbs aboard, any Personal PlotArmor he happens to be wearing is transferred to it and indeed quite possibly boosted. His craft may be [[ArtisticLicenseEngineering missing a wing, so full of holes it looks like a sieve, and with one engine out]], and he'll still manage to shoot down five enemies with it before making an emergency landing. (Note that the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:B-17-battle-casualty1.gif B-17]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LveSc8Lp0ZE&fmt=18 Zivi Nedivi]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-10_Thunderbolt_II the Warthog]] are TruthInTelevision.)

* '''My Missiles are Better.''' \\
The weapons on the hero's craft may be identical to the weapons used by other characters, but they will often function in a superior manner - fly faster, be harder to intercept, do more damage, and track better. This also applies to the defensive measures on the hero's craft: they will always distract the enemy missiles, while flares deployed by the enemy will never do a damn thing against the hero's own.

* '''The Eyes of An Eagle.''' \\

* '''[[RoadRunnerPC Three Times Faster]] [[Anime/MobileSuitGundam than a Normal Zaku.]]''' \\
Any craft the pilot climbs into is instantly rendered improbably faster and more maneuverable than others of its type (may coincide with Reinforced PlotArmor by increasing evasion skills). Sometimes this is "justified" with an [[AceCustom Ace Custom]] or by [[RedOnesGoFaster painting it red]] (or both), but other times, the pilot is simply so awesome he can push his machine to an arbitrary speed, technical limitations be damned.

In science fiction a pilot will often fly his spacecraft [[OldSchoolDogfight as if it were a terrestrial airplane]], especially using banking turns. In RealLife, in a vacuum, any controllable acceleration has to come from the ship's thrusters, so changing the ship's orientation alone won't do anything to the ship's speed or direction of movement.

* The ''VideoGame/StarFox'' series picks and chooses which tropes to use. Most common are My Missiles Are Better, Eyes Of An Eagle and White Hole engines. Interestingly, some of the others are subverted - multiple times, especially in 64, you have to boost to catch up to enemies, or brake to avoid them.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Hardwar}}'', you are the only pilot who has the skills to perform crazy stuff with your Moth in the Titan moon, even if you're flying in the smallest and weakest Moth in the game. [[ArtificialStupidity All of the other AI pilots including the police don't have such skills and are restricted to flying predictable patterns of which you can easily exploit even in their best days]]. Unfortunately, your Moth is limited to pitch and yaw maneuvers as the game has no ability to perform roll maneuvers due to the game's programmers not having the time to implement specific codes during their time, meaning that evasive maneuvers are rather limited. In multiplayer, though, expect the other human pilots to utilize the same flying skills as you do so don't get cocky.

* ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales1987'' has Launchpad [=McQuack=], who has the {{Catchphrase}} "If it has wings, I can crash it." He can fly anything -- even live animals, untested technology, and [[Recap/DuckTalesS1E4WhereNoDuckHasGoneBefore alien spaceships with controls not designed for his species]] -- with excellent skill. [[CaptainCrash The only thing he can't do is land]]. He appears to have overcome this problem by ''WesternAnimation/DarkwingDuck'', or else maybe the [[CoolPlane Thunderquack]] just has auto-pilot landing skills, or a thoroughly reinforced hull.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* As mentioned above, such things do happen in reality, though they are not usually by choice.
** One such case was Aloha Airlines Flight 243. Pilots Robert Schornstheimer and Madeline "Mimi" Tompkins suddenly became test pilots when the roof of their 737 blew off, throwing off the aerodynamics of the plane. They now had to fly to an airport and land a plane that seemed on the verge of snapping in half. They managed to get the thing down, and the only fatality was a flight attendant who was blown out when the roof first came off.
** Another incident was Air Canada Flight 143, a.k.a., "The Gimli Glider." Due to UnitConfusion with the refuelling, this plane ran out of fuel over central Canada and had to be glided into land. They couldn't reach the main airport, so they diverted to a former air base, but as they approached they realized they were too high and fast. In order to quickly lose speed, the pilot, Bob Pearson, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slip_%28aerodynamic%29#Forward-slip turned the plane sideways and used the fuselage itself as a giant airbrake.]]
*** This is more improbable than it seems at first glance. Most commercial airline pilots would not know how to perform a forward slip. It just so happens that, prior to becoming an airline pilot, Bob Pearson was a glider pilot with a great deal of experience.[[note]] Although he had never actually performed a sideslip before that day.[[/note]] The passengers were ''really'' lucky. If anyone else had been at the controls, they would've crashed. In fact, in future simulations where the pilot crew taking the simulation were given the circumstances that the Gimli Glider had, ''all'' attempts resulted in failures.
** The most well-known, of course, is Chesley B. "Film/{{Sully}}" Sullenberger, the pilot of US Airways Flight 1549. After losing both engines he pulled off one of the few water landings to not kill anyone, which came to be known as the "Miracle on the Hudson".
*** In an aversion of the trope, Sully explicitly and repeatedly refused to be called a "hero", or acknowledge that he did anything extraordinary; he simply did it all by the book. He was definitely lucky, however; even going by the book, several factors had to come together in a narrow combination for them to be able to pull off a water landing in the Hudson River, rather than struggle to the Atlantic Ocean or - far worse - try to set down on the ''streets of New York City''.
** United Flight 232. A DC-10's rear engine blew its turbine and knocked out the hydraulic lines, which meant the plane had lost all the control surfaces. The pilot and copilot, assisted by a flight instructor who happened to be onboard and was kneeling between the pilots, managed to control the plane just by varying thrust on the two remaining engines, and managed to crash land it in Sioux City. Over half the passengers (185[[note]] initially, one survivor died over a month after the accident, which the NTSB does not consider a fatal injury- only a serious one.[[/note]] out of 285) managed to survive, which is impressive given the circumstances.
*** Particularly fascinating about this incident is that the flight instructor, Dennis Fitch, had a professional interest in the crash of Japan Airlines 123 four years previous, where a failed pressure bulkhead disabled all the hydraulics of a 747 that subsequently crashed with only four survivors. Fitch went so far as to spend time on a DC-10 simulator attempting to control with engine thrust only, [[CrazyPrepared to see if he could develop a method for landing a DC-10 without any control surfaces.]]
** A DHL Airbus A300 cargo plane also managed to safely land in Baghdad in 2003 [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_shootdown_incident after being struck with a surface-to-air missile]] in 2003, which knocked out all flying surfaces.
*** Unlike most pilots on the list however, these guys were heavily assisted by the plane itself. Prior to this incident, Airbus had decided to [[CrazyPrepared install software on some of its planes]] that would assist the flight crew in the event of a total hydraulics failure. While the plane still required balls made of titanium to fly at that point, the pilots still managed to land the thing safely... [[FromBadToWorse only for the aircraft to slide off the runway and into a field of]] [[OhCrap unexploded ordnance]]. Luckily, they had landed at a military base and the firemen knew where all the mines were.
** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gol_Transportes_Aéreos_Flight_1907 A Brazilian Boeing 737 collided with an Embraer business jet being delivered to the US.]] Despite suffering damage to the left wing and horizontal stabilizer, the Embraer's crew managed to keep the plane flying and eventually landed safely at a Brazilian Air Force base. The Boeing, alas, was not as lucky.
** The captain of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TACA_Flight_110 TACA Flight 110]] was preparing to ditch his plane in the canals surrounding New Orleans following a loss of power in both engines when the first officer suddenly noticed a grass levee running beside it that was large enough to land on. With only seconds to react, the captain completely changed the plane's trajectory to line up with the levee and then landed so perfectly that every single person was able to walk off the plane. Furthermore, the plane was completely intact and, after a change of engines, was able to fly out of there on its own. Oh, and in case this wasn't difficult enough, said captain pulled this off while [[HandicappedBadass having only one eye]], having lost his left eye several years earlier.
*** The incident in which the pilot, Carlos Dardano, lost his eye also qualifies. Upon landing on a rural airstrip in El Salvador, Dardano inadvertently ended up in the crossfire of the country's raging civil war and was shot in the face. Gravely injured and with a hole where his eye had been minutes earlier, Dardano nonetheless got back in the cockpit of his plane and flew himself and his passengers 20 minutes to safety. Afterwards, Dardano went through and passed special certification trials to ensure he could qualify continue with his flying license despite his handicap.
** Though it ended with a crash that killed all but 4 passengers, the crew of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_123 Japan Airlines Flight 123]] managed to keep their 747 aircraft aloft for just over half an hour after the entire vertical stabilizer tore off and the hydraulic lines were completely severed. None of the simulator crews (who knew all of the factors affecting the plane, unlike the actual aircrew) could come close to that amount of time.
*** To add to this, the flight crew had no indication that the aircraft had suffered an ExplosiveDecompression, and therefore, were not wearing their oxygen masks. As a result, they were suffering from Hypoxia, which is caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain. Now just think about that for a second. This crew managed to keep a crippled 747 in the air for ''over 30 minutes'' when their brains weren't even able to function properly. That in itself is a major feat of aviation, and even though they died in the crash, they did their best to try and save everyone (even though their actions were only able to save four).
** The Speedbird 9 incident of 1982. British Airways Flight 9 was cruising near Jakarta when it encountered a strange kind of St. Elmo's Fire which seemed to envelop the plane in white lights. Shortly thereafter, all the engines failed. The 747 was now an 800,000+ lb glider. With only so much time before they hit the ocean, the crew abbreviated the engine restart procedure to give them more chances. Finally, the engines started back up and the plane turned back to Jakarta. Not long after, however, one of the engines started backfiring and had to be shut down. As they approached the airport, the pilot noticed he could barely see out the windscreen, and, proving FinaglesLaw is at work, the guidance equipment on the ground was not working. He had to land using only a tiny sliver of glass on one side that was clear enough to see through.[[note]] Captain Eric Moody would later describe it as being "like negotiating one's way up a badger's arse".[[/note]] The reason? They'd been flying through a volcanic ash cloud. The plane had literally been sandblasted at 500 miles an hour!
** British Airways copilot Alastair Atchison managed to pull off a textbook landing in a substantially overweight plane, by himself, at an airport he'd never flown to before, while beside him the flight attendants were holding onto the captain, who had been sucked most of the way out of the plane in an explosive decompression. The only injuries were to the captain himself (though he miraculously survived) and one flight attendant who was minorly injured while holding onto him.
** The pilots of Eastwind Airlines Flight 517 managed to wrestle their plane back to level and land it safely after experiencing a violent rudder hard-over on approach -- a malfunction which in two previous cases had resulted in a total loss of the aircraft and everyone aboard. (The source of the malfunction was identified and corrected shortly thereafter.)
* French AcePilot René Fonck (75 victories) was an example of the Flying Computer variant. He had excellent 3D perception skills, and he could actually ''calculate mentally with trigonometry'' where he had to shoot to bring the enemy down. He was extremely skilled flyer, and survived many fights against overwhelming odds.
* The incident known as "Panic Over the Pacific": On 19 February 1985, China Airlines Flight 006 was approaching the Californian coast when the No.4 engine flamed out. While this wasn't any threat to the flight - the 747 still had three fully operative engines - it triggered a series of misjudgments, omissions and errors on behalf of the pilots, resulting in the aircraft literally falling from the sky: the 747 was diving through thick clouds at a rate of 150 meters/second, resulting in a 5g forces experienced by the people on board and the aircraft performing maneuvers that vastly exceeded its operational limits, which resulted in a vast damage to its horizontal stabilizers, main landing gear doors being ripped off, one of the hydraulic systems destroyed and the wings being permanently bent slightly upwards. The 747 fell from 41000 to 11000 feet in less than two and a half minutes. It came out of the clouds slightly under 11000 feet; half a minute later, at 9600 feet, the captain had his aircraft in fully controlled, leveled and stable flight. The NTSB experts described the recovery of the aircraft as "a masterpiece of flying". The 747 landed safely in San Francisco with no loss of life - 24 of 251 people on board were injured (2 seriously). The errors of the flight crew that triggered the incident were found to be caused by a severe jet lag - a factor whose influence on flight crews was not studied before.
* United 811: While cruising from Honolulu to Auckland, a short circuit in an 18-year-old 747 caused the front cargo bay door to open in mid-flight 16 minutes after take-off. The resulting explosive decompression caused a large chunk of the fuselage to be torn off, resulting in 9 passengers being sucked out of the plane. Engine no.3 (inner right) was destroyed by the debris and at least one of the ejected passengers being sucked inside; engine no.4 soon after started burning and had to be shut down. The pilots, having only 2 operational engines on a massive 747 with 346 people on board (both of them on the left wing, which caused the aircraft to roll heavily to the right) and with damaged horizontal stabilizers and wings, managed to turn the Boeing around and return to Honolulu, performing a smooth touchdown. When the simulator crews attempted to repeat the emergency landing, not one succeeded - all pilots crashed the aircraft in the Pacific soon after the explosive decompression, even when some of the factors affecting the actual Flight 811 crew were eliminated from the simulation.
* The crew of [=FedEx=] Flight 705, who had to fight off a suicidal would-be hijacker while all suffering life-threatening injuries. Let us count the ways:
** James Tucker, an ex-Navy pilot who not only flew the plane with a hole in his skull and half of his body suffering paralysis, but did extreme aerial maneuvers with said ''jumbo cargo plane'' (including insane rolls, sharp turns, and a dive so steep that ''the plane nearly went supersonic'') to throw the attempted hijacker off-balance as the man fought with the two other crew members in the galley, eventually trading places with David Sanders to restrain said hijacker. ''With half of his body paralyzed and a hole in his skull.''
** David Sanders, who was ''also'' an ex-Navy pilot, was also hit in the head with a hammer and suffered gashes to his head ([[{{Squick}} requiring doctors to sew his right ear back into place]]), and not only managed to land the extremely weighed-down aircraft successfully, but pulled off sharp turns normally near-impossible with said plane to land it... with his glasses missing and blood flowing into his eyes... ''manually''.
** Andrew Peterson, the crew's flight engineer, who also got hit in the head multiple times with a hammer and had his temporal artery severed, but managed to fight back despite massive blood loss, eventually helping to beat the shit out of and restrain the would-be hijacker. [[ForWantOfANail Also, he was thorough enough in his pre-flight check that he noticed that the cockpit recorder had been shut off by the hijacker in an attempt to cover his tracks beforehand.]]
** A simulation of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_akKKf2o3I this flight]] and many others are avalilable from {{YouTuber|s}} Xplane.
* The real life epitome of "If It Flies..." would have to be [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Brown_%28pilot%29 Captain Eric Brown]], [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships RN]]. He's officially credited with having flown [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_flown_by_Eric_%22Winkle%22_Brown 487 different aircraft types]] in his career as a test pilot (and that's only counting basic models), including everything from Mach 2 jets to gliders and from helicopters to airliners, often hopping between up five separate types in a single day's testing. He even taught himself to fly helicopters with nothing but the instruction manual, [[InstantExpert mere hours after first seeing one]].[[note]]Brown and his companion had assumed that the Americans who were going to deliver the helicopters to them would have a trainer to give them at least a crash course. When this turned out not to be the case, they read the manual, did some practice runs, [[LiquidCourage took a stiff drink]], then got down to business.[[/note]]
* An Israeli F-15 pilot, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LveSc8Lp0ZE&fmt=18 Zivi Nedivi]], refused to bail out after crashing with another plane during a training exercise, claiming he could still return his plane safely to base and land it. When he climbed out of the cockpit on the runway, he said he would not have hesitated to eject for a single second if he had known that he [[http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2091/2112723594_21abfbfcfc_o.jpg had lost an entire wing]][[note]]there was so much smoke emitting from his plane, he couldn't see how bad the damage was while he was flying[[/note]]. When American technicians arrived to evaluate the damage, they assumed a truck had crashed into it while on the ground.
** There are aircraft designed to stay aloft at least long enough for an emergency landing with that degree of damage. The F-15 is not one of them, although its large wings mean a single wing still provides significant lift. The pilot was, however, extremely lucky as well as extremely skilled; the probability of an F-15 losing an entire wing while suffering little damage to the fuselage and engines is very low.
** The F-15 and its older brother the F-14 also benefit from the fact that a large portion of the actual lift that keeps the plane aloft is provided by the shape of the plane's body, which in essence acts almost like a third wing. Even after losing one wing, the F-15 retained around 60% of its actual lift.
* Aerody-whatsit? Finnish air force pilots show that [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVrCB437uRM laws of aerodynamics do not apply on F-18 Hornet]]
* Werner Voss, a German ace pilot in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, managed to fight ''seven'' British aircraft by himself for over ten minutes, managing to damage all of them before finally being shot down. His opponents were no amateurs: they were led by the Victoria Cross-winning ace, James [=McCudden=] and included 20-victory ace Arthur Rhys-Davids and two other eventual aces. The British pilots all report him doing insane maneuvers on his triplane, including strafing enemies by practically flying ''sideways''. Note that he did this by taking often problematic and unstable aerodynamic properties of the design, which often cause pilots to lose control, and instead using them to his advantage.
* There's the image of a Navy pilot flying sideways with only a few feet clearance between his wingtip and the deck of the carrier. This is especially dangerous because the carrier sways just like any boat, and pilots normally require deck assistance to ensure a proper approach. Also, carrier aircraft landing gear are four times as thick as their land-based counterparts to withstand both dropping onto the deck and the deck rising up with swells.
* UsefulNotes/{{NASA}} had (and probably still has) its pick of the best pilots in the United States. Especially in the days of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, one needed to have Improbable Piloting Skills just to get an interview.
* The presence of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrust_vectoring thrust vectoring]] in some of the world's most up-to-date fighter planes has allowed pilots to perform maneuvers that would have been very difficult, if not impossible, in the past.
** Yes, this means that the SU-35 can, among [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaT4XsWrqSE other things]], ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54fKamyyAF4 backflip]]''.
* During a test flight of the Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II (the VTOL version of the design), a pilot ended up flying the jet backwards at about 400 mph for half a minute before recovering. Due to the stealth design of fifth-generation fighter jets being about as aerodynamic as a flat stone, the maneuver is so easy to pull off as to do it on accident. [[AchievementsInIgnorance The pilot had actually done it in a panic due to a computer malfunction]], causing the jet to do a perfect horizontal rotation with the VTOL thrusters. Though the event was extremely dangerous and stressful on the body, an observer suggested it could be used as a last-ditch maneuver to confront a pursuing aircraft.
** British pilots flying Harrier jump-jets in UsefulNotes/TheFalklandsWar used similar tactics to outwit faster and technically superior Argentinian jet fighters, with the result that no British planes were lost in combat, and Argentinian combat losses soon approached operationally critical levels. One Royal Navy pilot became a recognised ace, shooting down five Argentinean fighters from his Harrier. In this case, the Harrier pilots kicked their planes into hover mode, causing the plane to rapidly decelerate and their pursuers to overshoot. Any plane can attempt this maneuver (by deploying air brakes, flaps, and landing gear, [[GodzillaThreshold in worst-case scenarios]]), but planes not designed for hovering have the not insignificant issue that slowing down too much will cause them to fall from the sky.
* In February 1941, Luftwaffe bomber wings were sent to Sicily to support the Italian Air Force and regain control of the Med from the British. A priority for the Germans was to sink the Royal Navy aircraft carriers whose aircraft had crippled the Italian fleet in its home port of Taranto. When HMS Illustrious was attacked in Grand Harbour, Malta, by ninety German aircraft, an antiquated Swordfish biplane was in the landing circuit and was practically the only British plane in the sky. As landing on the carrier was not practicable, the Swordfish set about being as big a nuisance as it could to the German attackers, despite being obsolescent and slow and outnumbered ninety to one. Exploiting its advantages of slow speed and greater mobility (the Swordfish flew so slowly that typical fighter aircraft over-shot or stalled trying to keep it in their sights for long enough), the pilot, Lieut-Commander Charles Lamb R.N., repeatedly disrupted bombing runs by Stukas, forcing them to bomb wide, while his air-gunner took whatever retaliatory shots he could. Lamb eventually realised, when the aircraft juddered and the whole port-side wing assembly flapped, that the retaining pin securing his port wings (used to fold them back and save space on board ship) had been shot away and the aircraft was on the point of folding up in mid-air. Incredibly, he was able to crash-land and both men survived, even though his biplane presented a lopsided appearance. Lamb, later in the war, shot down three Italian fighters in a single engagement, who appeared to consider an old obsolete biplane easy meat.
* Many so-called "unorthodox" and "unclean" (because the bank indicator will swing wildly) maneuvers will befall on the "Aerody-whatsit?" category. Examples are slips, snap rolls (a controlled spin along the horizontal axis where the tail of the plane will draw a "corkscrew" track), [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lomcovak lomcovaks]] (Czech for "headache" and kulbits. Snap roll is called in Finnish as ''älytön'' ("scatterbrain") as the stick and pedals are actuated in diagonally opposite directions.
* Incidentally, the modern more relaxed requirements for eyesight (i.e. eyeglasses or corrective surgery allowed) have paradoxically opened aviation for Bespectacled Eagle Eye pilots. The reason is that the visus value ("20/20") and refraction value (dioptric value) of an eye are two different values. The visus value measures the ''acuity'' of an eye (i.e. how accurately the eye can distinguish between two lines) while the refractive value measures if the eye is nearsighted (myopic) or farsighted (hyperopic). A person whose eyes have -2.0 dioptric value is hopelessly nearsighted without glasses (perhaps having 20/100 or 20/200 visus bare-eyed) but he may well have 20/10 acuity with good eyeglasses, making him a true eagle eye. Contact lenses are especially suitable for aviators.
* Pan Am 843. Seconds after take off from San Francisco International Airport, the rightmost engine on the Boeing 707 exploded and started a fire that caused 1/3 of the right wing to fall off moments later. The pilots, despite telling air traffic control they weren't sure they could keep the plane in the air or not, managed to keep the plane with 153 people on board flying for 34 minutes and made a safe emergency landing at Travis Air Force Base.
* Kai Tak Airport, the former international airport of Hong Kong before it was replaced with a new airport elsewhere and then demolished in 1998, ''mandated'' this for its unique [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Tak_Airport#Runway_13_approach Runway 13 approach]], known as the "Kai Tak Heart [[RhymesOnADime Attack]]." Due to the airport being surrounded by hills, pilots would have to manually make the last leg of the approach, which included a sharp right turn at less than 1,000 feet, exiting with less than 200 feet above the ground to spare, low enough for passengers and crew alike to get the cold sweats as they notice that they're low enough to even see into the windows of hi-rise apartment complexes. Doing this in strong winds was even worse, as turning naturally changes the wind direction relative to the plane, making it much harder to line up correctly in time to touch down on the runway and not the Victoria Harbour surrounding it.
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