C-172 N4928E lands on road, departs again

A stop at the airport to check things out may have been a wiser choice.
 
Landing and departing on public roads permissible in any states? I’m thinking maybe Alaska?
 
bonefishpete said:
Landing and departing on public roads permissible in any states? I’m thinking maybe Alaska?
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I would think he certainly had some law-enforcement cooperation to takeoff again from there. Looks like a pretty busy area to be on the ground around five hours without getting a lot of attention.

On initial reading of this thread, I assumed this happened in the middle of nowhere.
 
Bacho said:
I would think he certainly had some law-enforcement cooperation to takeoff again from there. Looks like a pretty busy area to be on the ground around five hours without getting a lot of attention.

On initial reading of this thread, I assumed this happened in the middle of nowhere.
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I’ve seen plenty of times police allow take offs after forced landings. But as a regular procedure landing on a public road and taxi to your home?
 
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francisco collazos said:
So what happened did they run out of gas?
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Not sure.

He was doing 100kts level, struggling to gain altitude before the engine quit. A stumbling/surging engine should've been a good motivator to head back to the airport (two miles behind him), instead of continuing for another three or four.

Maybe the primer wasn't locked and the engine ran rich and fouled the plugs?
Throttle issues or an intake tube collapsed?

Whatever it was, it was fixable with enough confidence to allow him to fly back to the airport a few hours later.
A bit too much time for just running out of gas, but not long enough to do too much engine maintenance.
 
AV8R_87 said:
A bit too much time for just running out of gas, but not long enough to do too much engine maintenance.
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It might have taken that long to get permission to fly back out. Or to give up waiting for permission and the LEO's back to be turned... ;)

Many years ago I emergency landed my T-Craft in a farm field. The problem turned out to be contaminated fuel from the FBO's brand new fuel truck. After draining out around a bunch of crud I waited a half hour or so for any more crud to settle out, checked it again, and then flew back home.
 
So... I've been thinking about this for a bit.
Easy to Monday morning quarterback things, I know, but it seems to me that whatever the emergency was it wasn't handled very well.

He reports to tower that he's having trouble climbing when he's about 2 miles away from the airport.
At that point he's doing 100 kts (winds are negligible), he's 500 ft AGL. Makes no attempt to slow down to best glide or best climb speed, which would allow him to gain some altitude on whatever power he's still making.
He continues to fly away from the airport, over populated areas, at the same speed and (low) altitude, for another 3 miles or so until the engine quits. Granted, by the time he put it down he was in a less developed part of the community, but still plenty of houses around.

It feels like the best course of action would've been to slow down, climb and try to return to the airport. But I wasn't in that plane.

Anyway, assuming my interpretation is valid, is this something that would result in a 709 ride?
 
IDK there are a lot of assumptions with your theory and none of us were there.

AV8R_87 said:
Anyway, assuming my interpretation is valid, is this something that would result in a 709 ride?
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Are you serious?? People have crashed fiddling around with open doors
 
francisco collazos said:
there are a lot of assumptions with your theory
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I tried to list facts available from ADS-B data. What is that you're considering "lots of assumptions"?

francisco collazos said:
Are you serious??
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From an avweb article: "In talking with FAA inspectors, we were told that the most common pilot competence events that triggered 709 rides were running out of fuel, a groundloop (with damage) or inadvertenly landing gear up".
 
AV8R_87 said:
From an avweb article: "In talking with FAA inspectors, we were told that the most common pilot competence events that triggered 709 rides were running out of fuel, a groundloop (with damage) or inadvertenly landing gear up".
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None of which seem to resemble this event. I can’t say as I’ve ever heard of a 709 ride for “this turned out fine, but I’d have done it differently.”
 
flyingron said:
Are they still doing it on fuel exhaustion?
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That depends on the situation.

Let's say Joe Pilot takes off and runs out of fuel and plants his pride and joy in a field with the tanks empty. FAA investigates and finds out that Joe Pilot can't give coherent answers when asked about fuel burn, reserves, etc. ASI recommends Joe Pilot for a 44709 and in the letter he has to reference which part of the ACS (PTS) that Joe Pilot will be evaluated on.

A 44709 doesn't necessarily involve a checkride with an aircraft. It can be an oral exam on the subject area. So Joe Pilot shows up at the appointed time and sits down with an ASI and the evaluation begins. And BTW anything is fair game during the evaluation in that say a question is asked about weight and balance with regards to fuel and the applicant can't answer or any other subject that comes up during the evaluation, and the same on a flight check, i.e the 44709 is for aircraft landing but the applicant demonstrates lack of preflight planning, non use of checklist, etc. So it's not a one and done type deal.

After the evaluation is the ASI determines the applicant doesn't met the standards he can have his certificate removed. If he does meet the standards the exam is considered successful and it's no different than any other checkride for a rating as the 44709 is a confirmation the applicant does indeed met the standard.

The FAA moved away from doing 44709's on gear up landings as it didn't really accomplish anything. Demonstrating someone can manipulate a gear handle? Besides, the airman is busy beating himself up over his goof up as well as dealing with his insurance and maintenance bills. Of course in the matter of investigating the gear up the ASI suspects competence that could possibly trigger a 709, but that's rare.
 
Maybe he just likes really, really long runways that also have cars on them?
 
bonefishpete said:
Landing and departing on public roads permissible in any states? I’m thinking maybe Alaska?
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Varies widely by state. MT code below- anecdotally, I’ve heard that in rural counties permission can be as simple as phoning the county sheriff’s office.
 

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