Originally Posted by
Dashdog
This guy deserves lots of criticism, but give him credit for one thing: He kept the plane flying. Most of these accidents end in a stall and/or spin close to the ground, and are usually fatal. The fact that the plane was under control right up until it hit the trees is probably what saved their lives.
Random chance is what saved their lives once they were going for the trees. Yes, he could have made it worse by attempting to turn, but consider a hot-running engine during a crash, pour some fuel on there and it ignites and people die fast as the avgas explodes. What if they did die, would we still say the same thing? I think it was just random chance at that point, so much had already gone wrong. Despite what I just said, "flying all the way down" is obviously critical.