So when a friend of yours tells you he is going to land his Mig-21 on a 5000 foot runway and you know that 5000 feet is WAY too short what do you do? Obviously you first try and talk him out of doing such a dumb thing, because if anything goes wrong he’s not going to get a 1960’s era fighter with a 210 knot approach speed stopped before running out of runway. If you fail at talking sense into the knucklehead what’s option 2? Ask a different buddy if he wants to head out to the airport the next day and watch a Mig-21 go off the end of the runway. This is the situation a skydiving friend of mine found himself in last Friday as he set up to take photos on the approach end of the runway the Mig was going to land on. The pilot brought the Mig in on as shallow an approach as possible and touched down right on the numbers. But when he deployed the drogue chute instead of the comfortable tug of deceleration there was a loud POP! as the chute separated from the lines. For a MIG-21 to land successfully on a 5000 foot runway everything has to go perfectly and losing the drogue chute is exactly what you worry about. My friend continued to take pictures as the the Mig ran off the end of the runway in a big cloud of dust but was relived to see it come to rest without an accompanying fireball. A sad end to a great aircraft due to pilot stupidity, what a shame.
