Get-home-itis

[Forgotten Field]

This guy didn't have it:

http://www6.comcast.net/news/articles/w ... via.Plane/

All passengers survived in an off-airport landing.

I suspect that a pilot here in the US would be fired for such a successful saving of lives and an off-airport landing. My question- how many air disasters in the US would have been palliated/prevented by an off-airport landing? The Florida Everglades Valu-Jet crash comes to mind immediately.

[Rod Schneider]

The ValuJet crash was probably inevitable. The fire was so intense and fast moving that a number of people were dead before the airplane hit the ground. At the altitude that the fire was detected, they couldn't have gotten down any faster.
Trying to land an airplane the size of an airliner off field is difficult due to the speed (140-200 knots depending on flap settings) needed to stay airborne. In 1977 or 78, Southern Airways had a DC-9 that lost both engines due to a severe hailstorm. They attempted to land on a two lane highway in northeast Georgia with mixed results. 70 folks died, but there were survivors. I visited the crash site the next day with a buddy who was on scene shortly after the crash as an EMT. The plane made a perfect touchdown and rolled for a short distance before striking a parked car with the left wing. That turned the plane and it cartwheeled into a grove of trees and came apart.
It sounds like the Bolivian pilots did a good job and had a certain amount of luck on their side!

[Bill Greenwood]

Some years ago they misfueled a flight from Durango going back to Denver it it ran out of fuel. They made a emergency landing in a pasture, gear down and everyone walked away. Of course this was a Convair 580, a tough prop airliner not a jet.