Originally Posted by
JamesNoBrakes
So you experience a catastrophic engine failure, you land the plane and keep everyone safe. That means you are a bad pilot because you had an accident?
Well...
I didn't know about this and I haven't seen it mentioned it here, but I consider it to be an important piece of information that should be more generally disseminated, because I have seen this observation (or question) before in this forum.
I Just very recently had a catastrophic failure that lead me to the pesky "unscheduled off-field landing".
In this case over a densely packed and fast moving interstate.
The landing was pretty good, but the parking job sucked...
I learned 2 things:
1.- The turbulence generated by thousands of cars 100-200 ft apart moving at 70-80 MPH in a virtual canyon when you are negotiating a gap in the traffic is enough to make your life pretty (and interestingly) busy in those final moments.
Pretty, pretty busy...
But most importantly yet, number:
2.- There is a box in the FAA accident investigation form for the pilot information. That box gets filled only when the pilot had any influence over such accident. In my case, it was obvious from the get go (and merely hours after the NTSB inspected the aircraft) that I had had a major malfunction. The investigator was nice and available, and sent me copies of the form showing the empty box, which rendered the accident anonymous to the eyes of the FAA.
With that said, a couple of crumbs were left behind to link me to the accident: the insurance claim (because I sustained minor injures) and the #$% youtube videos (I had to land in front of a dash cam) and press coverage meant to immortalize my brief predicament for eternity.
Ah well, we will die someday...