Fighter jet pilots were the cool kids long before Maverick played volleyball, clad in denim for no apparent reason, back in 1986’s Top Gun.

The pilot of this jet might be getting a ribbing at fighter pilot school after a video of his rather clumsy landing went viral on Reddit, the so-called front page of the internet. The video is actually from last August but had remained on the down-low until a recent posting. Here’s the BBC:

[The video] shows a Russian Air Force Sukhoi Su-35 make a landing during an airshow in Komsomolsk-on-Amur in the Russian far east…

The Su-35 first makes a hard banking turn to the right very close to the runway, before landing. However, the force of the landing bounces the aircraft, causing a dramatic loss of speed. The left wing stalls, and for one terrifying moment the left wingtip drags along the ground before the pilot – or the computers which help control the aircraft – manage to save the day.

I say we shouldn’t be too harsh on the poor guy or girl, they somehow managed to sort out the mess before things went completely tits up. If you ask former RAF fast jet pilot and instructor Graham Flack, however, that might not have been down to skill at all:

I do not think any quick reactions were involved in saving the situation – he or she was fortunate that the aircraft bounced the way it did and maybe the aircraft’s computer would have been working overtime to help correct the situation,” he says. “It is not a good idea to bounce a fast jet on landing!”

Anyone gives this pilot too much grief and I suggest they find the appropriate response below…

[source:bbc]