The pilot of an Aero Commander 100 did a particularly nice job of setting his faltering aircraft down on Highway 74 near Sandlin Bridge, North Carolina, on July 3. The aircraft, one of just 150 singles with the Mooney-like forward canted tail built in the late 1960s, reportedly had engine problems and five lanes of asphalt was below. A wing-mounted camera captured the story the uninjured pilot, Vincent Fraser, and his passenger will tell for the rest of their lives.
Whatever caused the power loss, it was fixed and the same pilot took off from a closed highway. There’s a YouTube video of the landing, recovery, take-off and interview of the pilot:
I have no idea what happened. However, assuming it was not a stunt as suggested above, I maintain that giving up flying due to a single mechanical issue is silly. Why not take steps to mitigate risk, as there are many one can take when operating a single engine airplane. Climbing to cruise altitude over the departure airport is one good method, choose a route and altitude with airports and safety in mind. Chose a plane with sufficient climb power and at least 6 cylinders. That last one is often ignored, but keep in mind a six loses far less percentage of power when a cylinder is lost than a 4 does. In fact, a Lycoming 4 may not run at all with a single clogged injector. Good luck troubleshooting that one in time…
Automatically thinking that any “event” is a publicity stunt proves there is too much doubt in the world. Just because the engine was still running when he landed doesn’t mean it was producing enough power to climb or even maintain altitude. Let’s hear the whole story before before jumping to conclusions and calling him names!
Actually, it’s not really all that silly for one event to cause someone to lose their interest in flying. In fact, it probably happens a lot more than some of us might realize. I know at least two pilots who gave up flying because of a single event (that ended with a safe outcome), and there’s nothing another person can do if they are shaken up enough by it to lose confidence in themselves. In any case, it’s certainly better than the pilots who have close calls and don’t learn from it and then go and get themselves (and possibly others) killed.
The fact that the event caused him to apparently give up flying would seem to suggest that it was not a stunt.
One of the things I do on flight reviews or during emergency training is simulate a partial loss of power. A complete power loss is “easy” in that the decision to land in the first available landing spot is made for you. But a partial power loss now means you have to decide if you continue on to find a better spot (possibly an airport) and risk the engine cutting out completely over less hospitable terrain, or set down now in the first available spot that you know for sure you can make. And landing with even partial power is easier than a complete engine-out landing.
So assuming there was nothing intentional about this, and that it wasn’t just a case of fuel exhaustion as a result of poor preflight or flight planning, I can’t fault this particular pilot for landing where he did.
It was probably just the Aero Commander 100 that caused him to quit flying. My family briefly owned one and was a bad combination of cruise prop and laminar flow wing that has very high drag at low speed, not to mention a lot of adverse yaw. I had the prop re-pitched to give a better climb and that helped some, but “not climbing properly” was just a way of life for that dog. Any loss of power would be a very bad thing.
The engine also pulled him all the way to his shutdown spot on the grass with no apparent problem. Also, the way he landed on his right tire makes me think he’s very lucky he didn’t have a blown tire.
Actually, losing confidence in oneself, as in your two pilots’ examples, is not necessarily the same as losing the passion for flying, as the pilot stated he felt. Doubt his heartfelt evaluation was based on his abilities, which seemed top notch to me.