In message <gaouen$4re$1@frank-exchange-of-views.oucs.ox.ac.uk>, at 
18:38:15 on Tue, 16 Sep 2008, Robin Stevens  
remarked:
>> > A good landing is one you can walk away from, an excellent one is
>> > where the plane can be used again afterwards (or words to that
>> > effect).
>> >
>> > I suspect the average Easyjet customer (I'm typing this on an
>> > Easyjet plane as it happens) wouldn't be very impressed if subjected
>> > to a "good" landing under those criteria (walked away but the plane
>> > was a writeoff).
>> >
>> Yeah I would want a free ticket out of that.  And a bed if I was stuck
>> somewhere for the night.
>
>> What would you want?  The airline broken up.  And an island in the
>> Bahama's?
>
>Wouldn't that depend very much on the circumstances?  In the case of
>BA38, the airline don't appear to have been to blame for the
>incident[1], and the pilots appear to have done a superb job in the
>circumstances.
>
>[1] This isn't to say their handling of it was necessarily perfect.

In terms of my original definition it was almost a "good" landing. (In 
fact I was thinking about when I wrote that - examples of "good", rather 
than "excellent", landings are quite hard to come by).
-- 
Roland Perry