In 2013, I went to the largest aviation gathering on earth, Airventure in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. My friend Felix (also a pilot) and I flew in with a Cessna 172 we had rented in Chicago, Illinois.
We camped in a tent under the aircraft wing for a few days to attend the show.
The show was amazing, and it continued into the night.
On the way back, we filed a VFR flight plan and decided to land in Chicago O’Hare (KORD), one of the largest airports in the world. Initially, ATC passed us around from one frequency to the other and did not clear us into Class B airspace (so that we had to stay clear), but after a few frequency changes a controller cleared us into Class B and vectored us towards runway 27 R. Ordinarily, on approach to landing, one aims to be fairly slow, at, say, 65 knots (around 120 km/h). But here, at busy O’Hare, with a small business jet behind me, I barreled down towards the runway pretty much as fast as possible, at 130 knots - faster than the little Cessna 172 can fly during level flight :-)
Going twice as fast leads to quadruple the energy, and (assuming the same constant deacceleration) four times the landing distance – that’s why one (generally) tries to land slow.
However, with runways designed for jumbo jets, there was plenty of space for our cozy Cessna to slow down. Ground control was very helpful to get us to our parking spot (“see the United 707 in front of you? Follow them, then turn left at Foxtrot”).
