what's it like flying a huge jet?

A 747 is a nice... and easy airplane to fly - It is so stable -

I flew these during 21 years of my life, 1987 to 2008 -

I was a captain and an instructor on the 747 -

The only difficult thing is taxiing the 747 around the airport -

You must "think" where your "rear wheels" go when you make tight turns -

A little like you would do if driving a semi 18-wheels truck -

But once you line-up on the runway, it goes like any other plane, or better -

Before the 747, with airlines, I flew 727, then 707 and DC-8 -

But the 747 is a better flying airplane than all the others -

It does not fall "like a brick" - it could glide 17 times its height -

If the 4 engines quit at 36,000 ft, the pilots could glide it for 187 kilometres -

I flew the older 747 (3 crewmembers) 100-200-300-SP types -

Most of these have 975 switches, buttons, dials, or items in the cockpit -

As instructor, I flew the (real) simulator a lot too (not a stupid FSX game) -

That gave me the chance of doing crazy things to see what 747s can do -

Such as failing 3 engines, and just land with 1 operating engine only -

Or attempting to land without hydraulics using differential power -

I trained hundreds of pilots, co-pilots and flight engineers to fly 747s -

They all said the same "easy plane to fly" and became their favorite plane -

I got private pilots (or even student pilots) to fly the simulator for real -

And tell them how to program the autopilot to make an automatic landing -

See a 50 hrs TT private pilot "landing a 747" all by himself is fun...

You should see the smile on their face when I signed their pilot logbook -

A ".5 hour" 747 familiarization in their "dual received" column...!

Remember one thing -

An airplane is not "more difficult to fly" because it is bigger -

Just tell that to stupid people who know nothing about airplanes -

My opinion, the nastiest (and unstable) airplane to fly is the Learjet 23/24 -

If you can fly these, you can learn to fly anything -

.