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following precise instructions, proceeds to the runway. The pilot then waits to be cleared for takeoff, keeping in contact with the control tower. After approval, the pilot decides how the plane should take off. Once airborne, the pilot does everything needed to keep the aircraft, passengers and crew safe and then, when it approaches its destination, brings the aircraft down – often in foul conditions – into the airport. The pilot operates with great discipline within a very strict and highly regulated system. Pilots are not expected to be creative or entrepreneurial. They mustn't do anything out of the ordinary. Right?

Well, not quite.

It's 5 November 1997. Bonfire Night – when people in the UK traditionally have bonfires and firework parties. At Heathrow, staff are awaiting the arrival of Virgin Atlantic's A340-300 Airbus, Maiden Tokyo , from Los Angeles. I'm here waiting to board a flight to Boston on this windy and blustery morning when I get the call. Only one set of wheels had dropped down from the landing gear of Flight VS024.

Maiden Tokyo is coming in for an emergency landing.

At the helm is Captain Tim Barnby – a very modest person and one of the best and most experienced pilots in the UK. On board are 114 people – 98 passengers and 16 crew. I'm listening in on my mobile, keeping my mouth firmly shut as the operations crew and Tim run through their options. It doesn't sound good. A four-engined Airbus landing on one set of wheels in strong crosswinds has all the makings of a major incident.

Tim can't see if the landing gear is down or not so he flies the plane low over the tower of air traffic control to help them visually assess the situation. It just gets worse and worse: not only are the left set of wheels not down – the undercarriage door hasn't opened, either.

Four people now stand between a plane full of people and disaster: Tim, and his two co-pilots, Andrew Morley and Craig Matheson – and our own chief pilot Robin Cox on the ground talking them in.

Tim and his colleagues brought the plane down the runway on one set of wheels. Then right at the end of the runway, he gently dropped the wing on to the ground. Fire crews sprayed the plane with foam and passengers used the emergency chutes to get out on to the tarmac. Nine people were treated for minor injuries but all the passengers got off safely. And the plane? Tim landed it so gently, so carefully, that a month later it was back in the air.

I use this example because it is more dramatic, but the lesson I want to draw from it could just as well apply to a train driver, a customer-service operator, or indeed anyone throughout our business. A self-disciplined employee will have the patience to conduct routine business routinely, the talent to respond exceptionally to exceptional circumstances, and the wisdom to know the difference between the two . In some settings, this is easy to do. For airline pilots, it is incredibly, even crushingly difficult. Pilots operate according to a strict framework, but they cannot afford this strict routine to dull their senses or flatten their reactions.

After the emergency landing, I invited Tim and the whole crew to Necker, our private island in the British Virgin Islands, to say thank you. I'm pretty sure they had a good time, and I'm pretty sure that working for Virgin is more rewarding than flying for other carriers. In the end, though, we can only rely on Tim and pilots like him to look after themselves: to handle the tedium of routine long-haul flying and still be able to react brilliantly when things pack in around them.

For Virgin, it is fundamentally important to give people with the right temperament the freedom and responsibility to do their jobs properly – and Bonfire Night 1997 confirmed our decision only ever to hire the best pilots we could find.

Virgin Atlantic doesn't take on pilots from scratch. We make sure that they have a long track record of experience in military or commercial