If you have ever ridden in an airplane, chances are that you’ve experienced a landing that wasn’t the smoothest. Lots of times pilots are working against wind and other weather conditions to land a massive plane as gently as possible. Most of the time they do a damned good job no matter the situation they are in but sometimes even despite their best efforts it is a white knuckle ride. Recently I was on a ride down to Florida that had a stop in Washington, D.C. The pilot announced that we were on final approach and then added that it was going to be “exciting” for the passengers and the crew on the plane because the visibility was so bad. He said it with a level of confidence to put everyone at ease and I initially thought that the guy may have been elevating his own stature a little. Well, when I first saw the runway about five feet before the wheels hit it, I knew the dude was completely for real. If there are two systems on a plane that are truly overbuilt to the hilt they are the brakes and the landing gear structure. This video proves it right before your eyes.

You’ll watch a 767 which weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 400,000lbs come into land in crazy winds. The plane looks like it is running at full tilt and essentially falling out of the sky. Not like a free fall but a controlled fall while swaying back and forth and moving in all kinds of seemingly unnatural ways. The pilots had to have been working like one armed paper hangers at the controls. When the 767 finally touches down, it comes down awkwardly and hard on one side. You can see in the multiple replays that the gear it lands on is really working to support all the weight and absorb the shock. It does so amazingly well, and then the other side touches down, the plane jumps back into the air and then lands evenly on both sides and the front. It is amazing how much compression that the gear has and this landing seems to use all of it.

There is an old saying that goes something like, “You never want to see how sausage is made.” The inference of course is that the process is so nasty that you’ll lose your taste for that food. We think the same goes for jetliner landings. We’d really rather not see ’em from the outside. Blissfully unaware inside the aluminum tube is good enough for us.

PRESS PLAY BELOW TO SEE A 767 LAND IN THE MOST AWKWARD WAY POSSIBLE –