Not even 20% complete and already, MANDATORY PLANES!

Landing in the farmer's field next to the airstrip doesn't count. Neatly landing at slightly too great a speed and skidding into the rock at the end of the runway doesn't count. Landing damn near perfectly but clipping out one little antenna doesn't count. If Ron gets ahead of you (which admittedly requires some markedly sucky flying) you can forget the entire project right there, since after landing he just nonchalantly leaves his plane in the middle of the runway. When I finally touched down "successfully" my wing tip hit a pylon and I was fucking amazed to not see the whole thing go up in flames again. I won't spoil the last phase of the mission (it's wild), but suffice it to say I managed to wreck the plane one more time for good measure. I haven't been so tempted to skip a mission, nor flashed back so unpleasantly to NES Top Gun, for many a year. At least there is a skip button, should the next plane missions be entirely beyond my skill - I was stuck on the flight school in San Andreas for two weeks!