A nighttime emergency highway landing in Utah left an instructor and student pilot uninjured, but the subsequent traffic pileup injured several drivers. One of the motorists subsequently died from injuries sustained in the collision.
Busy freeways are not emergency airports.
Sad story. Like all accidents we were not there and donāt have the facts. However, In most states it is the responsibility of the operator of the auto to stop in the assured clear distance ahead because things happen. We have all driven the freeways and we all know that few obey the speed and tailgating laws. On the same day of this pileup there was probably a hundred other rear-end pileups across the country, with some fatal, and caused because of excess speed and following too close.
I once had an āargumentā with a student regarding the choice of landing sites in the event of an emergency. The student maintained that he would pick a road and hopefully an interstate highway because āeveryone knows there are no power lines over an interstateā (???) My argument was that I would not want my emergency to become someone elseās catastropheā¦ and this was a āone and doneā lesson on my part for this and other reasons.
I know that in many areas the choice of emergency landing sites is very limited. We know nothing of the circumstances here and perhaps the CFI chose the only clear option available at the timeā¦ and perhaps there wasnāt much time for choosing. No judgment on my part and my thoughts and prayers are for both the deceased and the survivors.
So you would pass on landing on a highway at night with an engine out? You would rather take a chance landing blind in some other place? Wow
Yeah, I guess heād āaim for the dark spotā and hope nothing was there.
Locally, a couple of decades back, a National Guard doctor ran out of fuel in his rented 150 returning from an on-duty weekend. He was literally a minute from the airport, but without an engine, he put it down on a highway. Going the wrong direction. Hit a minivan with two ladies in it, head on. Three dead. Going the proper direction, I can see everyone walking away.
In the case of this accident, it was someone not paying attention. It usually is.
Everything is your emergency airport if you lose aircraft power.
As far as the collision of cars, you cannot blame the pilot for the 4th driver in a line of cars who was distracted and thus runs into other cars on the road. Thatās on the driver of the truck who failed in his normal duties as a driver.
There have been many freeway landings where no one was injured. Mostly during the day. At night, what are your options? If your engine is dead, they are pretty limited. Iād choose the freeway. Folk on the ground are going to have a few moments of cognitive dissonance as they see someone trying to merge into their lane from above but itās still your best chance. No power lines over interstates? That student must have never flown in California.
And remember, when landing engine out at night, last item on the check list is landing light on. If you donāt like what you see, turn it back off.
If the pickup driver slammed into a car that was stopped on the highway for any other reason (say a flat tire or a deer on the road) it would be a non story or a best a small blurb in the local paper. But because an airplane was involved it is BIG NEWS!
I guess I could see the appeal of the landing site in a hurried decision. Based on the info in this story, hereās what it might have looked like (only darker, of course):
https://i.imgur.com/4CYiNem.png
Northbound I-15 through Payson, UT. Mile Marker 250 would be roughly where the grey-roofed building ends and the white-roofed building begins (left/west side of the road).
While this is a tragedy, itās also the predictable outcome of a chosen course of action. If we choose to use a busy roadway as an emergency landing site, we should know we are increasing the risk of property damage, injury, and death to motorists. Weāthe aviation communityāassume certain risks when we fly, among them the risks from a variety of emergencies that require an off-field landing. We knowingly accept those risks. It is not justifiable for us to transfer those risks to motorists, pedestrians, etc. who did not opt in to the risks of aviation.
I fly a lot at night (62 of my 103 hours over the last 12 months). I rule out a lot of roads as emergency sites at night due to traffic speed and volume. Given the choice of a vacant (or nearly so) roadway, a dark spot which could be anything from an open field to heavy woods, or a busy roadway, Iād take only the first two. Not because landings on roadways always end badlyāthey donātābut because Iām morally unwilling to transfer the risk of single-engine nighttime flying to those on the ground.
āIām morally unwilling to transfer the risk of single-engine nighttime flying to those on the ground.ā
People in 6,000 pound cars are far safer than people walking in parks or golf courses or walking just off the road surface. Itās a nice thing to worry about people on the ground but people in cars on the ground fare much better than people who are not in cars on the ground when you plant an airplane down on them. Just a thought.
Thereās an awful lot of high terrain out there for a single engine airplane flying at night. I sure hope they didnāt run out of fuel.
I notice some moral pontifications from those who have never had to make an emergency landing. Daytime or night time, I suspect most pilots who have experienced the need to make an emergency landing gave little thought to what was on the ground but did everything that they could to get down safelyāāsafelyā being to save themselves, and maybe their airplanes. Thereās a big difference between arm-chair piloting (I would do this if that happens) and actually living the experience.
Bottom line: until it happens to you, you really donāt know what you will do. Hopefully your training will kick in, and youāll do everything the way you should. I know what I did each time I had to do it, and each time was successful. But my circumstances werenāt the ones in the article. I donāt know what I would have done or what I would do, faced with the exact same circumstances.
Iām one of those pontificators you refer to in your comment, lucky enoughāso farāto have not had to make an off-field emergency landing. Saving yourself and your airplane is not an incorrect response to an emergency, but putting your life, your safety, and your airplane above the life and safety of those on the ground may be, depending on your value judgements.
To your point about falling back on training, this is something Iāve given a lot of thought to, and while I canāt definitively say Iād never attempt a landing on a busy roadway, my mental pre-plan points me in other directions. Just like Iām mentally pre-loaded to reject the 180* turnback in my brick of an airplane, I canāt say that circumstances wonāt get the better of me, but the mental preparation (training? arm-chair piloting?) should be pointing me towards other options.
Through my comments, Iām hoping others will think a little deeper about how much risk theyāre willing to transfer to drivers, pedestrians, and other road users. Iād be very troubled if I walked away from a roadway landing which directly or indirectly killed or maimed others. And I donāt think you have to have bought the proverbial tee-shirt to participate in conversation about this.
As one who has done this for real (a few times) over the last 50 years, my experience each time was that prior training was largely irrelevant.
There are 2 things that can get you killed:
Given that your intent is to influence othersā course of action should the circumstances arise, you seem oddly prescriptive on something that you havenāt done and are not sure will do yourself. In todayās environment of the internet where your words can circle the globe in the blink of an eye, where you have neither the control over who subscribes to your words nor the context in which they are received, the vastly increased public ability to guzzle information in order to be or appear informed and the ability and willingness of ānewsā agencies to regurgitate your words under color of authority and veracity, having bought the t-shirt MIGHT temper and confer at least some necessary validity to the advice given.
Good morning, Pete. Iāve gone back and re-read my comments to look for what might be taken as prescriptive. The only portion Iāve found which is not my thought process of what I plan to do is the sentence āIt is not justifiable for us to transfer those risks to motorists, pedestrians, etc. who did not opt in to the risks of aviation.ā Perhaps I should have noted that as my personal opinion based on my personal value judgements.
Paul Bertorelli has an AvWeb video āHow to Crash Land An Airplane On A Freeway With Style and Grace And Survive,ā Paul opines [paraphrasing] that drivers have accepted the risks of objects falling from the skyāwhether a meteor or a Bonanzaāwhen they take to the roads, and that damages to road users from emergency landings come with the territory. He and I appear to disagree on this point but I canāt find any information indicating his opinions are coming from personal experience with the topic either. Iād welcome input from those who have chosen the busy road option and have caused damage as a result, but there seems to be an absence of their stories.
My intent with my comments remains to get pilots to consider the question of risk transfer, nothing more. If youāre worried that Iāve āsaid the quiet part out loudā and drawn attention to the fact that aircraft using busy roads as emergency landing sites increases risk to those on the ground, I donāt think thatās exactly a revelation to the news media.
Pete, thanks to you, Alburn, and Foyt for thoughtful and civil discourse on this.
This reads like high-horsing and monday morning quarterbacking to me. Too many variables. There are lots of areas, especially around airports, where theyāre so developed that your options are:
Which do you choose then? How do you make the value judgement so quickly? You can go for the sleepy and probably poorly lit residential street, then find itās too short, or has a bend, or too many poles, easily resulting in crashing a home with a sleeping family inside. The buildings might have a loading area or parking lot you can manage, but they might not, and they also may be occupied at night. Then thereās the highway, where you might find a gap in traffic, or you might not. But at least youāre less likely to hit something stationary and lose control there. Thereās the variable of the drivers like what happened here, but at least itās most likely a place with more room for everyone to react. They might be paying attention and stop or go around you, or someone might be distracted, sleeping at the wheel, etc. The point is, you make a lot of assumptions, and there are a lot of moving parts.