An emergency landing, and a dead jogger

Schiavo was a former NTSB investigator, not with the FAA. However, her statement about looking out the side window and yelling a warning to someone on the ground while trying to land reveal a horrible lack of situational awareness!

The side window doesn't help one iota looking forward.

Yelling inside your cockpit has no effect and won't produce a noise louder than the sound of the airstream flowing over the aircraft.

Yep, she's an idiot! Perhaps that is why she's formally with the NTSB!

Ken
 
I thought the same thing about the yelling. One could crash an airplane trying to seal their mouth to the pilot's side vent and yell while landing. She was also wrong about how airplanes don't make any noise. An airplane flying 100 feet off the ground at 100mph with no engine makes plenty of noise. Ask anyone who's seen Bob Hoover fly. Even slippery aircraft like gliders whistle. It doesn't matter because the poor jogger was wearing headphones.

Few pilots are ever tested like this, and I'd like to shake the pilot's hand. It's absolutely 100% not his fault that the jogger died. I can't believe that witch talking about all the things he should've done.
 
In many years of aviation, this is the first case I have heard of where someone walking along was struck by an aircraft attempting an off runway emergency landing!

The odds of the event are just astronomically low.

With oil covering his windshield it was a hell of a feat of airmanship simply to save the life of his passenger and his own. The way I see it he saved two lives and through no real fault of his own, a bystander was killed.

I hope over time, the pilot can accept the outcome without feeling any personal guilt.

Ken
 
That is exactly what that vent window is for. I was reading in one issue of a Flight magazine years ago of a guy, just picked up his plane from the mechanic, flying it home, and the oil plug came off. Pure oil on his windshield in seconds, then the engine went.

He saw the runway out that small vent hole, by crabbing the plane in sideways, his copilot friend helping him fly as he was hunched over trying to look out the small vent.

Landed safely.



Bill
 
A unfortuniate end for the jogger...A very stupid comment by that woman.


I agree Bill. I you are good , you could maybe crab it in...But yelling out to (*Look Out Below*) was just stupid....lol
 
This one really tore me. Being an aviation fan... and a runner!

I read it before my lunch run yesterday and actually turned down the volume a bit on the Ipod when I went running afterwards.

Such an amazingly sad story.
 
A tragic situation for sure. How hard is it to fly a plane with no prop, oil all over the wind shield? I don't know...won't ever know...but I imagine it's pretty darn hard! A lot harder than driving a car with a big glob of pigeon poo on the wind shield for sure.

It is unfortunate that the jogger died.....a freak, one in a gazillion thing. If getting run over by an airplane requires luck, he definitely was the luckiest man on earth as I have never read of a person getting run over by a plane making an emergency landing.

I have seen video of gliders in flight....and they don't have engines or props...but they do make some really neat sounds as they slice through the air. Not sure how much sound a plane in a glide would make...but I'm sure that they make noise.

I am not attacking the jogger in this...but so many people isolate themselves from the world around them. I-pods, Cell phones, texting. People need to open themselves up to their environment, to their surroundings. Being aware of what is going on around you is a vital survival tool. Hearing a car coming at you, sensing someone walking close behind you, hearing a plane falling toward your head.....those things can save your life and keep you from being robbed, raped, beaten up, or what not. Turn of the I-pod, turn off the cell phone, stop texting....and enjoy the sights and sounds of the world, of life, that surrounds you.

OBIO
 
Depends so much on the conditions...
If you stand at a runway threshold with a stiff breeze in your face, you won't hear the approaching GA until they are on you, even with engine running.
That guy jogging on the beach, maybe a bit of surf noise - no way would he have heard the gliding plane, ipod or no. Nor would he have been scanning the sky behind for falling objects...
The pilot's agony - for the rest of his life - will be to wonder if he could've done it better.
Tragic story.
 
Now, consider this......

Last weekend in the Tampa Bay area, 5 pedestrians were killed in separate incidents.....didn't even earn a paragraph.

This week, a disabled airplane hits a jogger on a beach...in another state.

It's front page news here.
 
Lionheart said:
That is exactly what that vent window is for. I was reading in one issue of a Flight magazine years ago of a guy, just picked up his plane from the mechanic, flying it home, and the oil plug came off. Pure oil on his windshield in seconds, then the engine went.

He saw the runway out that small vent hole, by crabbing the plane in sideways, his copilot friend helping him fly as he was hunched over trying to look out the small vent.

Landed safely.



Bill
Click to expand...

Bill,

If you touch down in a crab that even lets you see a quarter left view, you will tear the gear off the plane, run serious risk of cartwheeling and killing yourself, and you still could not see anything in the right forward quadrant.

The side window is for ventalation primarily, and for communicating outside the window such as uttering the prop clearance warning prior to engine start.

Ken
 
Ken Stallings said:
The side window is for ventalation primarily, and for communicating outside the window such as uttering the prop clearance warning prior to engine start.

Ken
Click to expand...

Some of it's lesser known purposes include:

-emptying bottles of urine so noone catches you unloading them at the FBO
-ashing cigarettes
-removing trash from the aircraft
-waterballoon attempts
-waterballoon failures
-pure air source in case of a fart
-pretending to throw copilot's sunglasses (or other flight accessory)
-feeling the airstream (yup, just as strong as the last time, man that's cool)
 
It's sad that anyone dies, but it was an accident, that's all. I don't think there is anything more the pilot could have done and he's fortunate to have been able to land at all. The pilot will bear the burden of knowing that he accidentally killed someone for the rest of his life, that's not an easy cross to carry. I seriously doubt that the FAA spokeswoman who said the pilot should have been looking through or yelling through the vent window has ever been in a small aircraft, much less tried to fly one.
 
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