The Valdez STOL Competition, the Alaska Bush Pilots, and the Short Takeoff and Landing Machines That Stop in Distances You Would Not Believe

The Valdez Short Takeoff and Landing Competition, held every May at Valdez Airport, Alaska, is one of aviation’s most technically demanding events. Pilots from across Alaska and the lower 48 compete in purpose-modified aircraft, touching down and stopping in distances that routinely measure in double digits. For comparison, a well-flown Cessna 172 requires roughly 900 feet to land and stop under standard conditions. The best competitors at Valdez do it in under 50 total feet.

What Is the Valdez STOL Competition?

Valdez sits at the head of a fjord in southcentral Alaska, surrounded by the Chugach Mountains with glaciers visible from the ramp. The airport hosts the annual competition each spring, drawing the most serious short-field pilots in North America.

The format is straightforward. A line is painted across the runway. A second line marks a measured point downfield. Competitors touch down as close to the first line as possible and stop as short as possible before the second. Touchdown distance plus rollout distance equals the total score. Lower is better.

The takeoff competition mirrors it: roll the shortest distance possible before leaving the ground.

How Do Competitors Score Under 50 Feet?

The aircraft competing here are not stock airplanes. They are purpose-modified machines, some bearing only a passing resemblance to the certified designs they started as.

Oversized tundra tires - sometimes 31 or 35 inches in diameter - act as a suspension system and contribute to ground braking through rolling resistance. That massive contact patch is a core part of the stopping strategy, not just a visual signature.

Wing modifications are equally aggressive. Leading edge cuffs reshape airflow over the wing. Vortex generators - the small tabs visible on modified Cubs and Huskies - trip the boundary layer and keep airflow attached at much higher angles of attack, dramatically reducing stall speed. Drooped ailerons work in concert with high-deflection flap systems to extend the effective lift surface across the entire wingspan. The result is an aircraft flying at airspeeds that seem physically impossible for fixed-wing airplanes.

What Does “Managing Energy to Zero” Actually Mean?

A competitor from Talkeetna with over 20 years of Alaska backcountry flying experience described his approach to the STOL line this way: “I’m not really flying the airplane at that point. I’m managing energy. I want to arrive at that line with exactly enough energy to touch the wheels, and then I want that energy to be zero immediately.”

That framing captures the entire discipline. The approach angle is steep - far steeper than anything taught in primary training. These pilots are not floating in on a long stabilized glide. They dive at angles that look alarming from the spectator line, then flare hard right at the mark.

Come in too fast and you float past the line. Come in too slow and you drop short of it. The window between those two outcomes is measured in single-digit feet. The top competitors thread it there every pass.

What Aircraft Compete at Valdez?

The Piper PA-18 Super Cub and its modern descendants are the heart of this competition. The Super Cub has been in production in various forms since 1949. CubCrafters, based in Yakima, Washington, carries that lineage forward with their Carbon Cub series - carbon fiber construction, modern engines, and decades of accumulated aerodynamic refinement. A Carbon Cub on the ramp looks delicate, assembled from sticks and optimism. It takes off in under 200 feet and climbs at an angle that does not look real until you understand why it works.

Aviat Huskies represent a heavier, cross-country-capable STOL performer. Kitfox aircraft - homebuilt designs with a devoted backcountry following - compete on light weight and short-field numbers. Maule aircraft, the Mississippi-built taildragger family serving backcountry pilots since the 1960s, appear regularly on the Valdez ramp as well.

And occasionally: a one-off experimental build. Something assembled over three winters in a Fairbanks hangar, optimized entirely for accessing places that do not appear on charts most pilots carry.

Why Alaska Bush Flying Produces World-Class STOL Pilots

Alaska bush flying is not a hobby. It is infrastructure.

In a state where the road network does not reach everywhere people need to go, aviation fills that gap. Bush pilots deliver mail and medicine to remote villages, fly patients to hospitals, and carry supply loads to camps no truck can reach. The pilots on these routes are not weekend hobbyists. Their precision with a short-field aircraft carries real stakes.

Some of the working strips in Alaska measure 500 feet or less - not emergency landings, not off-field precautionary stops. Regular destinations with names and frequencies and pilots who fly them every week of the year.

One-way strips where a pilot commits on final. High-altitude strips where density altitude rewrites every number from training. Strips where terrain at both ends means a go-around is a decision made at the departure airport, not on short final. Strips with ground slope that dictates landing uphill and departing downhill regardless of wind - and the energy picture must be sorted out before the pilot ever leaves home base.

The Valdez competition is, at its core, a test and celebration of that precision.

What Valdez Teaches Every Pilot - Not Just Bush Flyers

A pilot from the Pacific Northwest flew his Carbon Cub to Valdez to watch his first competition. He came back with a notebook full of ideas and booked a backcountry flying course within a week. His assessment: he had been flying his airplane like a Cessna 172 his whole career, when it was capable of significantly more. “I didn’t know what I didn’t know.”

Nobody will replicate 40-foot landings without years of dedicated practice and purpose-built equipment. But the underlying disciplines - energy management, approach precision, aggressive and confident use of high-lift devices, steep approach angles - translate directly to safer landings on real backcountry strips in real terrain with real consequences.

The pilots who win at Valdez would say the competition is the celebration. The work happens at home airports, year after year, on careful approaches to runway numbers, in controlled practice, until the airplane is not something the pilot flies but something the pilot wears.

How to Explore Short-Field and Backcountry Flying

Structured backcountry flying training is available through programs in Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Washington, and throughout Alaska. The Recreational Aviation Foundation (RAF) works to preserve and maintain backcountry airstrips across the country and can connect pilots with training resources and local flying communities.

Search for footage from the Valdez STOL Competition. Watch the landing videos. What the camera shows will not look real. It is.

Key Takeaways

The Valdez STOL Competition is held every May in Valdez, Alaska, drawing top bush pilots from across North America to compete on total landing distance: touchdown point plus rollout combined.
Top competitors land and stop in under 50 total feet - roughly the length of a typical residential driveway - compared to roughly 900 feet for a standard Cessna 172.
Purpose-modified aircraft use oversized tundra tires, vortex generators, leading edge cuffs, drooped ailerons, and extreme flap deflection to achieve stall speeds that make these performances physically possible.
Alaska bush flying is working infrastructure, not recreational sport - pilots serve remote communities where 500-foot strips are routine destinations, and precision is a professional requirement.
The techniques on display at Valdez - energy management, steep stabilized approaches, high-lift device discipline - are transferable skills that make any pilot safer, on any airstrip.

Sources: Flying Magazine, Kitplanes, the Recreational Aviation Foundation.