I was on a night flight touching down at Dulles airport a few years ago, and I could tell as we got close to the runway that we were settling into extremely thick fog. Too foggy for the pilot, it turned out. Before we hit the tarmac he gunned it and soared back into the blackness above. Good man. May have saved my life.

I was also on a small jet in ’98 that was going faster and faster down the runway at Aspen airport, almost at liftoff speed, when the pilot suddenly cut the power and taxied back to the gate, having felt or seen something that wasn’t quite right. My kind of pilot.