My dad has a Mooney M20F. He got it for a steal off a former test pilot who no longer had the arm strength to work the landing gear - but not before the former test pilot put $70k worth of avionics in a $60k plane. My dad has no interest in IFR, despite having enough gear to fly blind... but he also likes to come visit, which means landing at Hawthorne Airport (home of SpaceX in Compton). In order to get to Hawthorne, of course, you have to punch a hole through the Class Bravo airspace that is LAX... and we get fog. He was coming in last Thanksgiving and we were pretty well fogged in. He had to communicate with LAX in order to cross their airspace. Tower asked him how, exactly, with a VFR and a Mooney, he intended to land at Hawthorne. "...well, I got a Garmin," my dad said. "Good luck with that," said Tower. "deferring you to Hawthorne, have a nice day." Mooney landings are interesting anyway. Here's the most interesting one I know of, not my dad flying (although my dad insists this guy is doing everything perfectly).
It freaks me out that many commercial pilots probably aren't up to snuff for when shit hits the fan. I wish every flight search came with info about the pilot. I'd pay more to know that the captain was an ex-navy pilot.
A friend of mine is a stewardess. I've spent a few evenings hanging out with commercial pilots (for Southwest and America West). Every single person I've met is ex-Navy. They all have a quiet confidence that gave me absolutely no doubts that they knew what they were doing. It's the regional carriers that start getting squidgy around the edges.
4 hours later a family woke up because they heard some rustling in their living room downstairs. They called the cops and when the police arrived, they found Jonny sitting on the families couch watching a movie.... wigging the fuck out. He later told us that he was passing the house and that it looked so much like his parents house growing up that he had to go in. When he was inside, he just had to watch a movie. He actually took a dvd and put it in their dvd player and turned on their TV. -There are many stories like this about Johnny. He was a crazy sonofabitch. Johnny is now a commercial airline pilot.
Is. Awesome. I have a friend with a similar experience using psylocibin - a rarity in New Mexico as the requisite mushrooms are most assuredly imports. He had gotten so annoying at a party that we locked him in his own closet, where, according to him, he spent an eternity (2 hours) trying to convince a giant, unblinking eye he presumed to be God not to cast him into The Pit. Said friend had, at one point, the best job in the world: drive a modified M1A1 Abrams tank into the desert, make berms out of dirt, then shoot at the berms with another M1A1 Abrams tank. Now he just develops explosives for experimental Navy projects. Small world - my wife's uncle is his boss.
Probably my worst landing ever was coming into Boston's Logan airport. You go out over the bay and then circle back in. It's one of those where it looks like you are going to land on the water, and then the runway appears. You could tell the pilot was really struggling with the crosswind, and we were bouncing up and down a bit as we came in. We landed pretty hard, and bounced from one wheel to the other. I think everyone clapped when we came to a stop. Anyway, the pilot was saying goodbye to everyone as we walked out, and the guy in front of me sarcastically said "Nice landing". The pilot said "It wasn't my fault!" in a surprisingly defensive voice. I thought it was pretty funny.