Landing on Highways

If I have to choose between trees and a road with light or no traffic where I think there’s minimal chance of hitting a car… road wins. As I would if I had an out of control car, I’ll do my best to avoid hitting anyone, but… into every life a little rain must fall.

If it’s a choice between trees and certain or near certain collision with people on the ground (highway or no) I think the trees win. I’ll try to avoid hitting one head on.
 
Himayeti said:
...It NEVER crosses my mind to land on a highway if I lose my engine...
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Himayeti said:
...The point is that oversimplification is a big enemy in this discussion...
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It sure seems like you're way oversimplifying to me. If you had to put down a Cherokee Six filled with children and your choice was dense 60' trees or a highway with only an occasion car in sight, you would be putting many more lives unnecessarily at risk. Making blanket statements is easy for sailplane pilots with many off field landings, but unrealistic. As Tarheelpilot points out, it’s a balance, it might not be just you dying in a tree beside a nice road.
 
Himayeti said:
I'm amazed by the sense of righteousness and entitlement that a few people have here. Being trolled now means not agreeing to be selfish and even a single life matters.

It NEVER crosses my mind to land on a highway if I lose my engine. I have many thousands of landings without an engine, so losing one is not something I panic about. I fly often over the Sierras where highways are non existent and any small pasture o lake is game. So please don't teach me about off airport landings or what a plane can do without an engine.

And no, I will not place the lives of others in peril to save my rear end. That gene of selfishness I don't carry.

End of discussion.
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It's easy to play "what if" on the internet. Come back when you've actually placed yourself at greater risk for the greater good during an emergency. You'll have something worth listening to at that point.
 
Re Marsh - I read "marsh" as "swamp", and the ones around here, from what I can tell, are impassible without something like an airboat. And very few have airboats around here. Given a choice between trees, lake, and swamp, I'd almost always pick trees first, then lake, then swamp. Now if it was a plowed field that just had areas of standing water on it? Sure, different story. But as many have pointed out, there often aren't many options when you're flying something with the glide ratio of a sewing machine.
 
This thread has been fun.
Big thanks to Ron for the real facts.

Personally I try to avoid roads (in my practice and daydreaming haha haven't had to actually land off airport yet) but mostly because roads almost always mean power lines.
IMO a large 4 lane is a decent option as it's wide enough to avoid the lines (except where they cross), but a 2 lane is sketchy to me.
Where I fly there are usually a lot of open fields which make the decision easier.
Flying over heavily forested areas east of me though I think a road is probably the best option, power lines or no, trying to and in a 100 foot tall hardwood forest just seems ill advised.

Morally I agree, you have to do everything in your power to avoid hurting people on the ground. After all, they didn't' choose to be in an airplane and take the risk, you did.
Practicing engine fire the other day I just happened to be over a large 4 lane. There were almost no cars in sight and it would have been an easy, safe, and uneventful landing.
Throwing these options out the window just doesn't make sense. It's all about each particular scenario.
 
Justin Brady said:
This thread has been fun.
Big thanks to Ron for the real facts.

Personally I try to avoid roads (in my practice and daydreaming haha haven't had to actually land off airport yet) but mostly because roads almost always mean power lines.
IMO a large 4 lane is a decent option as it's wide enough to avoid the lines (except where they cross), but a 2 lane is sketchy to me.
Where I fly there are usually a lot of open fields which make the decision easier.
Flying over heavily forested areas east of me though I think a road is probably the best option, power lines or no, trying to and in a 100 foot tall hardwood forest just seems ill advised.

Morally I agree, you have to do everything in your power to avoid hurting people on the ground. After all, they didn't' choose to be in an airplane and take the risk, you did.
Practicing engine fire the other day I just happened to be over a large 4 lane. There were almost no cars in sight and it would have been an easy, safe, and uneventful landing.
Throwing these options out the window just doesn't make sense. It's all about each particular scenario.
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I came here to write pretty much the same as you. As pilots we assume risk for our flight, we should work as hard as we can not to put anybody else at increased risk due to our flight. It's pretty simple and as pilots we should all have considered this in advance. That said, ruling out ever landing on a road doesn't make sense to me. If in an emergency there is a large open road with little to no traffic I would pick the road. However a road with lots of traffic wouldn't be a good choice in my mind. The risk for a collision is too great. Contrary to what some imply here, it is not cool to risk hurting someone on the ground to save yourself, even if you have 4 young children on board. This isn't a saving 5 lives is worth taking out one on the ground type of deal. Personally I would not be able to live with myself if I made that type of decision.

Here's the deal, we choose to get into these machines and fly. We (hopefully) understand the risks involved and work hard to mitigate those risks. We understand that just because we choose to accept these risks, for ourselves and for our passengers, we have no right to knowingly endanger an innocent or innocents on the ground to saves ourselves. Or at least we should understand this. We, pilots, chose to accept the risk, we have an obligation to those we fly over to not unduly endanger them if we have an issue.

To me this means if it's a choice between a crowded highway or trees in an emergency, I choose the trees. If someone is willing to take another life to save his own, that person probably should not be flying.
 
Not to completely derail the thread... But here's something that I see often:

"trying to and in a 100 foot tall hardwood forest just seems ill advised." And "if you have a choice, land in softwood and not hardwood".

I really don't know if it's that simple. There are some very weak hardwoods (balsa) and some very strong softwoods (redwood). And I would think that going into relatively, low height, large canopy hardwoods with lots of smaller branches would be preferable to a bunch of tall pine trees which can be like a field of telephone poles. And then there's trying to determine what kind of trees they are at an altitude where you still have time to choose.

I wonder if Ron can pull up some statistics on crash survivability based on what type of trees the airplane crashed into?
 
donjohnston said:
Not to completely derail the thread... But here's something that I see often:

"trying to and in a 100 foot tall hardwood forest just seems ill advised." And "if you have a choice, land in softwood and not hardwood".

I really don't know if it's that simple. There are some very weak hardwoods (balsa) and some very strong softwoods (redwood). And I would think that going into relatively, low height, large canopy hardwoods with lots of smaller branches would be preferable to a bunch of tall pine trees which can be like a field of telephone poles. And then there's trying to determine what kind of trees they are at an altitude where you still have time to choose.

I wonder if Ron can pull up some statistics on crash survivability based on what type of trees the airplane crashed into?
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Barring being a arborist at 5kft there's a visible difference in a pine forest and a southern hardwood forest which is what I was getting at.
Land in the light green patch with small trees if at all possible. Otherwise avoid any and all trees lol.
 
donjohnston said:
I wonder if Ron can pull up some statistics on crash survivability based on what type of trees the airplane crashed into?
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Looks like there aren't a lot of NTSB investigators with a horticultural background. Of the 70 accidents where trees were involved, I found about five reports where the species of tree was identified (searched for pine, oak, maple, and redwood. My own horticultural background ain't that great, either).

Result: Four pine, one oak. The oak case *was* a fatality, but can't really make any assumptions based on one case.

The fun part was getting rid of the false positives for "oak." Two airports mentioned (Live Oaks Fl and Flying Oaks TX). "Soaked" triggered hits, too, but adding a space after the first wild card took care of it.

Ron Wanttaja
 
donjohnston said:
There are some very weak hardwoods (balsa) and some very strong softwoods (redwood).
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Having worked with balsa wood ever since I was a kid (model airplanes etc.) and reading Kon Tiki, I just couldn't wrap my brane around balsa being a hardwood. Well, I just had to look it up and found this: "Being a deciduous angiosperm, balsa is classified as a hardwood despite the wood itself being very soft; it is the softest commercial hardwood".

Sorry I ever doubted you Don.

Oh, to get back on "threadtrack", I still consider roads to be a viable consideration when selecting an emergency landing site.
 
Capngrog said:
Having worked with balsa wood ever since I was a kid (model airplanes etc.) and reading Kon Tiki, I just couldn't wrap my brane around balsa being a hardwood. Well, I just had to look it up and found this: "Being a deciduous angiosperm, balsa is classified as a hardwood despite the wood itself being very soft; it is the softest commercial hardwood".

Sorry I ever doubted you Don.

Oh, to get back on "threadtrack", I still consider roads to be a viable consideration when selecting an emergency landing site.
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Yeah. It's a common misconception that hardwood and softwood have something to do with hardness. Easiest way to tell is leaves (hardwood) or needles (softwood).
 
Considering the crashes on You Tube that people walk away from in modern vehicles, I really doubt you are putting people on the ground in much risk.

You are more at risk in your plane, being hit by a car.
 
Pinecone said:
Considering the crashes on You Tube that people walk away from in modern vehicles, I really doubt you are putting people on the ground in much risk.

You are more at risk in your plane, being hit by a car.
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Surprisingly, when you look at the 16 cases of fatalities occurring among people on the ground, only about 4 involve vehicles. Most of the people on the ground who died were in buildings. Probably an indication on how rare hitting vehicles is, vs. controlled or uncontrolled impact into buildings.

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
Surprisingly, when you look at the 16 cases of fatalities occurring among people on the ground, only about 4 involve vehicles. Most of the people on the ground who died were in buildings. Probably an indication on how rare hitting vehicles is, vs. controlled or uncontrolled impact into buildings.

Ron Wanttaja
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Other factors favoring survivability of cars over buildings are relative velocity and cars being able to brake and steer to avoid a collision. I think AvWeb did a whole video on landing with or against traffic, and I wish I remembered their conclusion. As a driver, I'd rather have to dodge a smoking airplane on the road than the numerous roustabout drivers who are texting, drunk, asleep, or all three behind the wheel of a one-ton pickup or semi truck and struggling to stay in the lane at 85 mph, not to mention the SUV and car drivers of similar impairment.

If my engine quits, I'm going to do my best for myself and my passengers. Statistically, worrying about what I crash into is only going to drastically decrease my own chance of survival without giving any substantial improvement to the chances of people on the ground. Luck dictates that I would just stall/spin on top of a crowded school playground rather than making a controlled landing on a highway, anyhow.
 
So you have no sense of obligation to not endanger some poor slobs, driving down the highway minding their own business as you guide a powerless missile potentially into their path? Not me, I choose to fly, I'll choose not to endanger others if I can if things go TU.
 
PaulS said:
So you have no sense of obligation to not endanger some poor slobs, driving down the highway minding their own business as you guide a powerless missile potentially into their path? Not me, I choose to fly, I'll choose not to endanger others if I can if things go TU.
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Your premise mandates that you choose not to fly.
 
iamtheari said:
Your premise mandates that you choose not to fly.
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Or drive. Or pretty much anything. Odds are a zillion times higher that you'll kill someone driving your car.
 
Salty said:
Or drive. Or pretty much anything. Odds are a zillion times higher that you'll kill someone driving your car.
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As usual, I had typed up a dissertation on how existing puts other people at risk, then decided not to muddy the waters. But it's true. If you drive perfectly (haha), you may have to choose which other car you crash into when someone else screws up. If you walk, some driver may screw up and have to choose between hitting you and hitting someone else or a tree. If you stay home, the people who bring you food and toilet paper will encounter and create risks to themselves and others. If you're alive, it could cause someone else to die. If you crash into a tree and die, someone might rubberneck and crash or get hit by a fire truck. If you pull CAPS, you will prolong the duration of motorists looking up rather than at the road compared with landing on the road, not to mention how it takes away your ability to crash into a tree instead of landing hard on a playground full of kids.

It's all a risk calculus. Imagining that you can control the risk enough to transfer it all to yourself and off of bystanders doesn't impact the calculus, although it may help people sleep at night when they pass moral judgment on others and make exceptions for themselves.
 
iamtheari said:
Your premise mandates that you choose not to fly.
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Salty said:
Or drive. Or pretty much anything. Odds are a zillion times higher that you'll kill someone driving your car.
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Not at all, I drive, I understand that I may have an accident with other cars or commercial vehicles. As should all other drivers out there. What I don't sign up for driving is a pilot, who chooses the extra risk of flying, thinking his putting a disabled airplane in amongst me and other drivers is an increased liability I should accept because , you know, I as a pilot decided this for you.
 
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