Or so pilots, instructors et al say. But I've always found landings in 747s the same as any other plane (we're not going to talk about the MD11 here). Now I'm rethinking this. Recently I was lucky enough to fly from London to Sydney and back in first class on Qantas, and all four landings (BKK, SYD, SIN, MAN*) were greasers. Much as it warms the heart of any Aussie to think Qantas pilots are, you know, THE BEST, I have another theory, especially in the light of the Qantas overrun accident at Bangkok of a couple of years back, the pilot of which was the same gentleman that flew me from Singapore to Manchester on this recent trip.

What I'm thinking is, the reason pilots, instructors et al think you can't make a bad landing in a 747 is that up front (in first or upstairs in the office), they're so far from the main gear that they don't feel it, and they're up there in their ivory tower thinking they're Buck Rogers while all the schmucks in their back are wishing they'd bought travel insurance to pay for physio, and trying to find their false teeth which flew out and are under someone's seat three rows away.

* - a few snow flakes (I typed 'snokes' for some reason) closed LHR and we landed at Manchester instead, where we were kept on the plane for six hours due to a lack of parking spaces / immigration officials / airside buses (the reason kept changing). Welcome to the third world.

[Edited 2003-03-23 14:00:35]