Plane lands on CA freeeway....happy ending

[Phoenix45]

Bad decision making, IMHO. Roads are for cars, and it's a minor miracle somebody didn't die. All it would've taken is one mom on a cellphone in a Montero and they'd be scraping up little bits of crispy flesh off the freeway with a putty knife. For everybody that thinks landing on a freeway is a good idea, think harder. Many people have died doing this sort of thing, including innocent motorists. You signed up for the risk when you departed in your light single over an inhospitable area, you take the fall when the engine dies. Trees are in fact softer than cars.

In the pilot's defense, after passing him by on the freeway, there was no other place to put it down. It was in a mountainous area, with very few trees. It was either put it down on the freeway (best choice) or crash and die.

:smash:

 

[starchkr]

He did the right thing for a plane that can fly slow enough to "almost" fit in with "normal" traffic flow. Yes i realize this is CA, and "normal" traffic flow is slower than a human can walk, but i believe you get my point. Now if he was flying something with some get up and go, say a Lear for instance(i am biased at this point in time) then yes, he might have made a bad decision to land it on a highway since landing speeds are much faster than "normal" traffic flow, let alone CA traffic. Odds are that if he took that lear down on the highway, he would not have made it, and yes he probably would have taken some motorists with him, but HE WASN'T IN A LEAR! He made a smart choice for the a/c he was in.

And yes, 6 months is a long time for one of those little things to be in the air...must be some new kind of mid-air refueling procedures approved for the pipers.

 

[bugchaser]

You knew there would be some fool on here that would say the pilot did the wrong thing. Maybe he is basing his opinions on his many thousands of hours or maybe he has many emergency landings under his belt? Like someone else said, until you have been faced with this type of situation, it is best to not offer your opinions on how it should be done.