ASHINGTON, May 1 — President Bush landed safely on the deck of an aircraft carrier this afternoon, no doubt to the great relief of his security people, and prepared to speak to the American people tonight about the future of Iraq.
The four-seat, jet-powered S-3 Viking warplane, with Mr. Bush in the co-pilot's seat, touched down uneventfully on the Abraham Lincoln about 3:18 p.m. Eastern time after a short flight from San Diego.
Mr. Bush, himself a fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard in his younger days, was clad in a flight suit and helmet. After alighting from the craft, he spent several minutes shaking hands with officers and members of the crew, who are returning from wartime service in the Persian Gulf, posing occasionally for pictures with them.
At 9 p.m. Eastern time, the president is to deliver a televised address declaring major combat operations in Iraq over and laying out part of his vision for a democratic Iraq.
"This is a marked and important moment," the chief White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said in advance of the president's landing. "The Iraqi people now have freedom. The threat to the United States has been removed."
And the landing of the president on an aircraft carrier was itself a notable moment, and not without risk.
Mr. Fleischer said beforehand that carrier landings of the kind Mr. Bush took part in, while fraught with potential hazards, are not particularly dangerous in practice. Perhaps so, but landing an aircraft on a carrier deck has been likened by the author Tom Wolfe to setting down on a skillet, for a plane touching down on a narrow, pitching carrier deck at more than 100 miles an hour does not leave much margin for error.
The White House communications director, Dan Bartlett, said on NBC's "Today" show this morning that having the president fly to the carrier in the Viking "is actually safer than a helicopter, because you have the ability to eject." Those ejection procedures were not needed today, nor were the three rescue helicopters that hovered around the ship, just in case.
Rear Adm. John Kelly, commander of the Lincoln battle group, said on CBS's "Early Show" today that the Viking pilot "has flown through extraordinary pressure in support of combat operations for months now." He added, "I am very confident that he'll do a great job."
Mr. Bush, beaming and looking not the least bit queasy after the landing, becomes the first sitting president to make what in naval aviation parlance is called an arrested landing on an aircraft carrier — meaning the aircraft is stopped by its tailhook catching a restraining cable. Other presidents have landed on carriers by helicopter.
The successful landing also meant that Mr. Bush did not become the first sitting president to be fished out of the ocean after an aerial mishap — something his father, President George Bush, experienced as a young carrier pilot in World War II, when he was shot down over the Pacific and rescued by a submarine.
