Flying low and slow is always the more dangerous part of flying. That’s one thing you always try to get away from as fast as possible. Why is that you might ask if you are not a pilot. The idea that being high instead of low is safer seems to be counter-intuitive. Yet, if you are 5000 feet high and you make a mistake and perhaps unintentionally roll the plane, you have plenty of altitude to recover. If you are only 100 feet high the altitude where you finally recover is probably below sea level, and certainly below the surface 100 feet down.

But there are two times during a flight where low and slow is not avoidable – the transition from standing still at ground level to fast flight high up, and them coming back from up there to standing still on the ground again.

Now imagine that the horizonal space you have to make that transition is short and the plane you are flying is very big, then you might see situations like this…