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Posted for "Tom Gourley" <tom.gourley@verizon.net>:
Hamid wrote:
Before you throw stones at someone else's actions, ask yourself if you will be willing to accept virtually certain injury and potentially serious injury/disability to yourself and your passengers while resisting the temptation of making it back to the airport with what may be a partially running engine? I know there is no way, sitting in a comfortable chair on the ground, you can make the prospect of severe pain truly imminent or the temptation of making it to the runway as tempting as it would be in the air. But try your best to imagine what that situation would be like and then picture yourself making the right decision.
I was not throwing stones at anyone. If my comments were perceived that way,
I apologize. The point I was trying to make, and I guess I should have been
more specific, is that in an emergency we shouldn't select a higher risk
option because it provides a higher probability of saving the airplane. (And
I'm not speculating that this was the case in the IVP accident.) Select the
course of action that minimizes the risk of injury to the airplane's
occupants. I realize that's easy to say sitting here in front of my computer,
and I also realize that the best option may not be, probably won't be,
obvious. Will I make the right decision if I'm ever in a really bad
situation? If I had been the pilot of that Mooney 231 would I have landed
straight ahead in an open field, or would I have tried to make that turn to an
airstrip? I like to think I would have taken my own advise, but in all
honesty I can't guarantee that. So far the worst thing I've had to deal with
was balky landing gear in a Commander 112 (the backup gear extension worked
perfectly) so I'm not claiming to speak from personal experience. I do try
very hard to learn from other pilot's experiences, both good and bad. That,
training, and practice is about all we have to prepare ourselves for dealing
with emergencies.
Tom Gourley
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