Is there anything harder for a pilot than to land on a carrier?

Coming from someone who was in the military navy pilots are the best because not only do they land on a moving runway, they do it at night and in all kinds of weather. it is very dangerous and requires a crazy amount of skill, guts and the courage to do it.

They are among the best of the best, but thats not to say there isn't a stray pilot out there with better stick and rudder skills.

Landing a fast airplane on a moving runway at night in bad weather is among the most difficult thing any pilot could do. But thats not to say there aren't other very difficult flying challenges out there.

Look at crop dusters. Sure, its something you do become accustomed to doing but its still a very precise art form.

How about airshow pilots? They have to perform maneuvers in a way that looks perfect to someone on the ground, which means they have to fly in a way that looks wrong to them. It takes a lot of practice. Along with airshow pilots, how about demonstration pilots (blue angles for example, which all happen to be navy pilots. Truly the best of the best) Not only do those guys do similar things as other solo airshow pilots, but they fly in incredibly close formation. Disaster is one blink away.

There are also some pretty impressive corporate pilots. They might not have as tough of a flying job, but they have to juggle several different schedules and make sure the boss is always taken care of and never waiting on anything. No easy feat.

There are also some absolutely incredible instructors out there. Teaching someone to fly is no easy task, and there is absolutely an art to it. There are hundreds of thousands of instructors out there. I think its pretty safe to say there might be a thousand really really good ones.

Yeah, navy pilots have some of the most difficult and probably the most dangerous challenges but it doesn't necessarily make them the best pilots in the world, just extremely good.

It's hard to accurately assess the difficulty of carrier landings, but I've read research asserting that the stress levels of a pilot coming in for a carrier landing are higher than those of a soldier being shot at in combat. This seems plausible since every carrier landing carries a risk of killing the pilot if he makes any mistakes, so the risk to life and limb is comparable to trying to avoid bullets, although a pilot has somewhat more control of the risk than a soldier (but he also needs more specialized skills to avoid death—it's not sufficient to simply stay out of the line of fire).

In any case, pilots who land on aircraft carriers certainly have my respect. I'm always amazed that they are able to do it again and again, in all sorts of conditions, without getting killed.

Seems that landing a plane full of passengers on the Hudson river with no power and keeping it intact is pretty good

It is harder for fighter pilots to be humble than anything else they may do.

;-)

Just a little AF zippersuit humor.

Agreed with jimanddo, nothing beats landing on water.