Real Pilot Story: Crossed Wires
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- Опубликовано: 15 окт 2024
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Commercial pilot and CFI Greg Soter reflects on an emergency landing near Birdseye, Utah, in June of 2013, after discovering an electrical fire in the back of the Cessna 172 he was flying. In this Real Pilot Story, Greg discusses his decision to land on a road, a factor that would have a significant impact on the flight’s outcome.
We examine critical lessons learned and the difficult decisions pilots make in an emergency when faced with limited landing options.
ASI’s Real Pilot Stories allow pilots to share their encounter with a dilemma so others can benefit-while comfortable on the ground-from lessons learned the hard way in flight.
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The best recount of an accident I have ever listened to.
Greg is an amazing person, pilot and CFII. He's been a long time friend of mine and has helped me over my 25 Plus years of flying.. So sad that Gerald didn't make it.
So grateful to the pilots who share these difficult stories, they do save lives.
Thanks for putting this on . I’m sorry to hear that Gerald didn’t make it . Great takeaways from this story about reconsidering other places beside the road to land, shoulder harnesses and having a fire extinguisher.
Having used one IRL on the ground, just wondering what a fire extinguisher would have done in a compact closed cabin, for visibility and breathing.
I wonder if some minimalist helmet would be feasible. Even if it's just stowed, to be put on when things get risky (before landing, emergencies, etc).
watching this reminded me to replace my existing extinguisher on my 182 with new - just ordered it; thanks;
This AOPA podcast stuck with me when I listened to it a few years back. Makes me realize how much safer it is to land on even a bad field than to hit power lines going for a road. Seatbelts and fire extinguishers are paramount to safety in an emergency
@@peterellison2220 it’s not clear unless in retrospect. In an open field you can hit a ditch, a wheel can get stuck, you can hit a boulder. There are risks either way, you can’t make an inspection pass if you don’t have an engine or are on fire. A remote road is not a bad option, but with any emergency off-airport landing you need to at least not get too unlucky.
If you are on fire at 10,000 feet, getting the airplane on the ground will take time. How much time? Several minutes. When seconds count, it is going to take minutes.
Takes a lot of courage to talk about this. Thank you sir. 🙏🏽
A very well produced video, with a great message, thank you for sharing, Greg and AOPA.
My condolences. A tip that hopefully is never needed: As mentioned here, wires are hard to see. Spray pilots know to look for signs of wires in addition to the wires: towers, poles, structures, wells, etc.
Yes, as a glider pilot where we expect to make many off-field landings, we're taught to assume that every pole is connected to every other by a wire we can't see, we're always looking for poles rather than wires.
Even spray pilots can get fooled. We had a Sky Tractor go down at the end of our road, because of an unmarked power line across a plowed field Black wire against black soil. The pilot saw the power pole in the middle of the field, but he could not see that a power line was still stretched across the field (There are a LOT of power poles around here that were left behind in pastures after lines are decommissioned). In fact he made quite a few passes over that field before impacting the wire.
tl;dr A pilot's employer ill-equipped two men on a test flight, nearly killing both in the process. Radar developers should be smart enough to understand risks like electrical fires and train/provision accordingly.
And anyone operating an airplane for-hire should retrofit the bare minimum of shoulder harnesses.
Thanks for sharing this story. Working on my commercial now and I think the next time I go flying with my instructor, we're definitely going to spend some time running through emergency drills.
Thanks for the report. Having experienced a fair amount of trauma, I can corroborate the memory loss. Doc says you will remember in a few days. In a few days he says you will never remember. All your points were good. I had thirteen forced landings. Most were with military three inch wide and four point harness. Ag airplanes had military belts long ago. I was usually in farm country where fields were more likely than roads, but have used both. After action reports help us and others in the future. My only burnt paint but no fire experience was from a crack in the stack on a pipeline 172, but fire extinguisher is appropriate and was provided by the company. Thanks again.
I really enjoyed your book and recommend it regularly. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us.
@@jodyolivent8481 Thanks. I am used up physically, but still can talk/teach. I work with instructors at my local airport, 2H2. We who have had experiences need to pass on what we have discovered. I find myself with more low altitude experience than most and from videos find that poor energy management is causing a lot of grief around our airports. I know I can help with that.
I love how he deals with the loss of his collegue by talking about what needs to happen moving forward instead of acting fearful to talk about it. A tough and sad lesson for us all to pay attention to. The off road landing is a good conversation.
Great video ASI. Thanks Greg for sharing your story and condolences to Gerald's family.
A man more of us should listen too. Sincere and always learning.
Love the suggestion to engage and "role play" your training! It is important to simulate the emotions you will feel so that you learn to control them.
Really good story and good message. Thanks for sharing what was a painful incident that clearly still haunts the pilot to this day but imparts some useful lessons. I was always taught not to land on roads for exactly this reason - wires, signs, dividers, vehicles that maybe you couldn't see when you were checking the stretch out before landing on it, all good reasons to avoid a road unless the alternative is literally a mountain or you're somewhere like Alaska where the road network has also been deliberately designed as a set of alternative runways (I guess they run the wires underground there or something!).
I'm not sure that a standard fire extinguisher would have put out the fire for good given that an external battery was involved that couldn't be shut off with the master (you can see it in the post-crash investigation photos), but at the very least it might have bought some time to consider other landing sites!
They have power lines above ground. Lesser population with more open ground gives you less power lines to conflict with.
A battery disconnect switch would have helped him.
Thnk you for sharing . I know from personal experience that sharing this story was hard. You made a very important point that I also learned the hard way. Power lines follow roads and are very hard to see.
Thank you for producing these, which we all benefit from. The courage it takes to recount a tragedy like this is not easily come by. Pilots are one of the few groups that "have what it takes" to step up and share their story.
You probably won't see wires but often you can see the poles and towers they are strung from.
Thanks Greg for sharing your story. We all learn from unfortunate events like these. Condolences to the family.
Thank you so much for your video and honesty. I'll carry forward the knowledge you've shared.
Thank-you for putting this important message out there for existing pilots and future pilots. Please don't beat yourself up trying to go over what you could have done, you did the best at that moment, place and time as you could.
I have told my kids nothing is a mistake if you learn something from it and don't repeat it, this was most definitely not a mistake by you in trying to land on what appeared to be a safe stretch of road. With this message, I am sure some lives will be saved. Thank you !!!!!!
Sharing this experience was not easy for this fellow pilot but I am thankful for his courage. I have changed my thinking and personal emergency procedures to avoid landing on highways no matter how tempting it might be.
Thanks for this story and especially thanks for having captions on point for hard of hearing viewers!
God Bless Gerald's family. Thank you for this video. Seeing this stuff always stops you in your tracks, and gives you pause. Thanks Air Safety Institute.
Good video, and good lessons. I'm happy you let Greg tell his story. The challenge in moments like this is that we'll fall back on our training, and if we don't train this, who knows what our reaction will be. The temptation to land on a road is huge. I have no idea what I will do if faced with a situation like this, but having stories like this will trigger thinking and discussion, and hopefully a better outcome should it happen. Thanks for sharing the story, and deep condolences to Gerard's friends and family.
I question why the equipment in back wasn't properly fused. Fusing the power wiring would have prevented the fire. A fire extinguisher may not have helped much in this case as the ignition source remained although it might have cut down on toxic fumes by inhibiting burning of plastic cases. PVC wire used here, like many materials when they burn, emits very toxic fumes (and why was hardware store wire used in even a test setup in aircraft?). So getting down was the right thing to do.
Touching wires may not cause a fuse to trip. Elec Engineer here.
Why didn’t they use shoulder harnesses?
@@herwigstoeckl1448 EE here as well. Burned wires would have opened a properly sized fuse. That is the entire reason for fuses and they will open before wire burns if sized for gauge and insulation, as an example, start with NFPA 70.
Absolutely. The engineers at this company would've been familiar with the standards for aircraft equipment, including military standards. And they used a car battery in a plastic box, held down with ratchet straps, and NO FUSE! Absolutely reckless.
@herwigstoeckl1448 It's mentioned at 8:45 -- there were no shoulder straps installed in the (presumably company-owned) plane. I think this means the plane was manufactured before 1980 or so, when it became a requirement for newly manufactured planes.
When I was taught to fly back in the early 70s, I was told never ever land on na road. 1. Other people in cars 2. Invisible power lines
It seems to me that ruling options out as a matter of policy it's just as liable to hurt as help. There are scenarios where the road is the only option, scenarios where the road is exactly the same level of risk, and scenarios where you have a golf course with no trees and a perfectly flat long par 5 right in front of you.
Thanks to Greg for sharing the story. I am thinking to look for power poles instead of wires.
Sorry for your loss 😔. You did everything you can under those circumstances. God bless you 🙏. Thanks for sharing your story 🙏
Another excellent video, as always. We also get the added bonus of getting to see what it would look like if Southwest ever buys any Airbuses ;)
Nice catch😉
Another superb real life story. Great learning material.
Excellent analysis. Thanks for making this video.
He (and others) should push for power companies to place high reflective flags on power lines that cross roadways.
For fixed wheel aircraft, roadways may still be a better option for landings as unknown fields can present several safety hazards that can cause a plane to flip. What may look like a flat field from the air, can be a tilled or soft field on the ground that can cause a plane to easily flip should the wheels get stuck.
A plane with retractable wheels and high engines can decrease this possibility and slide on such a field however a small plane with fixed wheels can not, making roadways the better landing areas.
Adding high visibility flags to power lines that cross roadways can help to alleviate possible issues in potential areas where planes may use a roadway for emergency landings at minimal cost to power companies.
Thank you thank you, I fly in UT and learn so much from these stories.
Thank you for sharing, Greg.
Condolences to Gerald’s family, and thank you Greg and AOPA for this story. Could a full frame parachute have helped in such a situation? Thank you.
Thank you for sharing your experience 🙏 it’s very much appreciated. Train & more training, sorry to see this Man lost his life, but everything we do has risk. Like this pilot stated as Pilots we try and make the best choices for our passengers and our selves. I believe fire 🔥 extinguishers are standard equipment. But in this case I am not sure it would have made a difference? This is why this video means so much! We all can learn from others mistakes 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏Godspeed 🙏
Good reason to have a fire extinguisher and brief passengers on how to use it.
Sorry to hear your story. However your response in listing all the factors that might have helped avoid the tragic outcome and pushing for sensible changes is the best and most positive way to move forward. Let us hope many people can learn from that and you will have potentially saved lives in the future.
One thing you did not mention and I realise is very specific to your accident, was the (in my view and based on the photographs you showed) utterly unsuitable standard of construction of the equipment that caused the fire in the first place.
I've spent a fair chunk of my life designing and building electronic and electrical equipment for aircraft, some of it 'one off' test equipment and some for standard production parts and no way on this earth should what you showed been allowed on - or even near - an airplane. At the very, very least to permit unfused connections to a battery in that way is close to criminal and the general form of constuction I saw might just about be okay for trying something out in the lab but not ever in the vibration-prone interior of a light aircraft.
I understand why you feel a degree of responsiblity for what happend and all your thoughts and comments make good sense but I feel the root cause of this particular accident was the design and installation of the equipment the company installed on their airplane and then asked you to fly.
This why I don't like to fly with passengers. The thought of being responsible for someone else's life in this risky business is something I don't want to ever have to live with. I'm sorry this happened to you.
Thank you for sharing
Thanks for sharing
The lap belt was one of the reasons I hated the 172 and would not fly one unless it was converted to a full shoulder lap combination.
I owned a 172N. The shoulder harness was equipped, hardly anyone was using it. I always used it for at least TO and landing.
Inflight it took just 5 seconds to add it to the basic Waist Belt.
The phrases "compound cervical dislocation", "contacted the instrument panel", and "blunt force trauma" always come to mind. No thanks, I'm good.
Heartbreaking... but the answer is to do better. Thanks Greg. RIP Gerald.
Greg (and Gerald) - I'm a smarter pilot after watching your video here. Thank you for sharing your wisdom.
Reminds me of the dive boat disaster off Santa Barbara where the existing power system now had added recharge stations for high end camera equipment, creating a lot of heat, demand, and no authorized, licensed install by soemone/AnYHONE who knows what they're doing. In Aviation, there are even procedures for it. It's on the company: using these planes for testing, and NO fire suppression??? No allowance for your adding equipment that demands power???
I live for these videos.
I believe (from industry) that fire onboard is a serious emergency.
🛩️🔥
Really?? Thanks for that, champ!
Great video
Been There, the smell of avgas used to bring me back but does not any more, it has been 20 plus years.
Great video!
Great Lesson !!!~~~~~~~ Like Jack Roush flying into power line.......
What could we have done better?
I owned a 172N and I and my Co ALWAYS wore the shoulder strap of seatbelt for TO and landing.
We know from automotive crash tests since 50 years that you can survive a crash with a shoulder harness.
Everyone flying with me wears them, or they step out of my plane.
You plane had them, this one didn't.
There's a reason shoulder belts are required by law in cars and have been since 1968. It's astounding that the FAA hasn't required retrofitting better restraint than a lap belt even in older planes.
Great story but cursed Southwest A320 at 7:16
I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed 😅
Given that it was an in flight fire, looking for asphalt for egress and access to emergency services is completely understandable. You don't want to breach your tanks.
It's inexcusable that non-aircraft components did that. Light aircraft are dangerous enough as it is,
Thank you, Mr Soter.
You can't be serious. A company loaded a crapload of powerful radar equipment (which had to have its own power source, surely it wasn't powered from the airplane), and they didn't load a fire extinguisher? This can't be real. Did they even recalculate weight and balance? I'm in shock. At least brief the pilot on how they can throw that crap out of the door if it catches on fire.
And they didn't have an extinguisher on-board?
That test equipment which caught fire looks incredibly janky - a simple fuse would have prevented a dead short from ever catching fire in the first place.
I wonder how many lives could have been saved by the installation of shoulder harnesses. Can't believe how many of these videos I've seen where people die from lack of proper restraint. I'll definitely be recommending them to be installed in my customer's aircraft that don't have them
As an electrical engineer, I can say that electrical box would never have passed a UL or IEC inspection. A simple fuse could have prevented this accident, as could have self-extinguishing wire insulation, or a power cut-off accessible to the passenger. Unfortunately, there's no good way for an individual pilot to know how to pre-flight cargo like this. I think the FAA or AOPA could help pilots (and companies who hire them) by publishing guidance what standards engineers should follow, and what pilots need to verify during pre-flight. I'm sure any of the big companies already have that in internal documents, it just needs to be made accessible to everyone.
If Greg could have said "AOPA says UL compliant or it doesn't fly", Gerald might have grumbled about rebuilding it but he'd still be here.
The FAA is very lenient on small aircraft safety. Allowing lap belts in 2024 is beyond belief.
I really don’t enjoy the Real Pilot Stories series, although they are very informative and useful.
But it must be very painful for these pilots to relive their tragedy.
😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢
I had a 172 that was manufactured a week earlier in 1974. They all came with a basic shoulder harness and it looks like there is one in the crash photo. ???
I bet it started as a loose connection, this caused the wire to heat up and the insulation to fail leading to the short. Prayers to the family.
i lost my instructor 31oct2023. We don't know what happened. We suspect fire. Fire was the one thing he was most afraid of. I'm sure he did everything to get it on the ground quickly. They were at 6000 feet in a cherokee 6. It takes time to descend from up there. He had fire extinguishers. Maybe they became incapacitated by the time they got lower. They ended up going straight in. It is a dangerous sport.
The survivor's guilt is so strong.
With a fixed gear airplane you need to consider the ground you are landing on. In an RG plane, if you are going into an off field landing, on ground you are unsure of, it's better better to land wheels up incase the ground is full of holes and or is very soft.
Sometimes in life yo have a choice between bad options and worse options.
2nd guessing after the fact has limited usefulness. Landing in some other spot, you may have hit a hole and flipped the plane over.
Looking at the Concord Crash, what the pilot should have done, all things considered was to try to reject the take off. This would have caused a crash as the plane reached the end of the runway but that crash may have been survivable for at least some of the passengers.
As it was, the fire was so bad that it caused the wing spar to fail before the plane could get back on the ground.
However, in this case the pilot actually did do the right thing based on what the pilot knew. "All things considered" means all the facts involved, including those facts that could not be known.
As far as the pilot know they had an engine failure, and so the pilot fell back to his engine failure on tack off training. He didn't know about the fire, and that plane should have been able to come around for landing even after the loss of 2 engines.
So te Concord pilot did as his training said he should. There fore, the pilot did not do the wrong thing.
I often wondered why they don't have balls on those powerlines which cross the road. Those lines are very hard to see from the air.
Agreed that should be mandatory; same logic applies when lines fall and are draped across a road. Perhaps a reflective, colorful spray coating could be developed so that utility companies can comply economically during installation.
I was thinking the same thing... It seems like they do make orange balls that go over the line. I've seen them and don't know if they have other uses besides visibility
@@JasonFlorida I’ve seen them too but don’t know why they have them over some and not all. The FAA mandates lights over over towers and windmills. My only thought is that these towers and windmills are more expensive to replace than a pilots life. I believe lights have nothing to do with the life of the pilots but money.
They are used near airports or other locations where aircraft are likely to be flying near the surface. It wouldn't be feasible to install them everywhere, both because of cost and because the balls increase wind resistance and could cause resonances, making it more likely the lines would come down in a windstorm.
In flying we don't talk about risk elimination; we talk about risk management. We evaluate the risks, mitigate them as best we can, and then decide if the residual risk is acceptable. Having unmarked power lines in an area where aircraft are highly unlikely to be is an acceptable risk.
The onus for this accident is, as far as I can tell, on the company that hired the gentlemen. Their power distribution bus should have been installed by a certificated airframe mechanic and should have been equipped with properly sized fuses and a disconnect readily accessible from either front seat.
How many places do wires cross roads in the USA? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? How many miles of road have parallel wires? It's just not feasible to mark all of them on the off chance that there's an airplane landing there.
I have seen wires marked with orange balls when they cross rivers, or valleys at a higher than normal elevation.
Condolences to the family. I know its easy to say from where i sit, but don't beat yourself up. You do everything you can at the time and thats all you can do.
If we had the benefit of hindsight when some bad was happening, we would surely all be better off...but we dont. We deal with situations as they come. Sometimes unfortunate stuff just happens.
Thank you for sharing your story.
This man is still carrying a lot of guilt and pain inside. I feel for him. However, I have to somewhat disagree with him about landing off road. In the southwest, especially in rugged, mountainous terrain, the ground can look relatively flat and smooth but can hide some pretty rough landscape, containing outcroppings, arroyos, and trees that grow low to the ground. I don't fault him for his decision as he was in some pretty rough country.
Pratice and use AQP
While introducing himself, I thought greg said his name was Grape Soder
Thanks Iam 822 and live in close to Homedale Idaho and learned to fly the back country of Idaho and even flew to Alaska never had a accident . But some close calls ..BUt I belive in JESUS and I know today as I look back at some close calls he kept me safe. this a good man May GOD keep him safe.
The true critical safety failure was in that equipment which wasn't adequately built to function in an aircraft safely. I am hugely grateful to Greg for taking this tragedy and overcoming unimaginable feelings to honor Mr. Wilson's memory sharing this event and working to improve the safety of our flying.
Hi
Electricity, in whatever form, really has it out for this guy
He died because you didn't have shoulder straps.
Or a $20 fire extinguisher.
That piece of equipment looked to be very poorly made. Yep, trim for DMMS and don't hit anything that won't move..
God Bless You Sir Sometimes 🙏 You Can't Ever Understand When Someone Losses Their Life In The Same Moment In Time You Where In. I've dealt with similar situations but not in an aircraft. Wish You The Best!
I See So Many Comments These Days Where Every Word Is Capitalized Like This For Some Reason. Is It Being Done Manually Or By Some Accessibility Software?
15;56 the wiring setup looks like something grandpa would "haywire" together on the farm back in the previous century, NOT 2013. More like 1913, before the war. the first war.
Finally a new video and not a third and forth repost
Whatever happened to removing the source of electrical energy to control an electrical fire? Does your aircraft need power from the battery and generator to fly? Granted that night and IFR changes the calculation somewhat, but day VFR seems to have prevailed in this accident.
Fire invokes fear and fear can cause strange thought processes, but we need to continue to think and analyze to choose the best course of action. We need to be able to control our fear and not let it take control.
I do not wish to add to your grief over this situation because we are all human, and we all make decisions that we would like to have made differently.
Your lessons in choosing an emergency landing spot are very appropriate.
To me (Retired Naval Aviator) , this accident falls under the category of improper decisions to land (or eject) immediately!
Sidney... I'm not sure I understand your 2nd sentence, "...need power from the battery and generator to fly?" I'd like to understand; you probably have something to teach me and others. If you're asking if/why the electricity that caused the fire couldn't have just been disconnected by turning off the aircraft's master, the offending electricity was completely independent of the aircraft's engine electrical. And the cause of the fire wasn't known until long (days? weeks?) after the accident.
Also, please help me understand your "...improper decisions to land (or eject) immediately!" In the aircraft I fly, ejection generally isn't an option. And I think I did a reasonable job of getting on the ground as soon as possible (although not in the fashion I'd intended). In your opinion, what would have been the more proper decision?
This reply to your comments is absolutely not intended to be snarky or adversarial. I'm anxious for others (and me) to learn as much as we can from a bad situation.
Thanks.
Greg
If you watch the video again, you will see that the special radar detection equipment in the back had its own power source (it looked like a fairly high-amperage battery setup, probably because the equipment was meant to operate for hours at a time). Given that this was "add on" to the 172, it's also unlikely that it was wired into any of the aircraft's existing switches. Definitely an unusual scenario that most pilots will never experience, and it's not even clear to me that a standard fire extinguisher would have put out an electrical fire like that, but better to have an extinguisher in any case! I'm buying one for my Decathlon in another browser tab *right now*!
Hi Greg, It was not immediately apparent in the video (had to stop motion it later) that the test rig was not wired through the aircraft master switch, but instead was wired directly to the aircraft battery without a circuit breaker or fuse. That was a really bad idea and took away your ability to directly kill the fire. Were you aware of how the equipment was powered? That aircraft was not airworthy.
Since I am very reluctant to make off airport landings with an aircraft that has an operating engine and operating flight controls, I would have maximized airflow around the crew to maintain visibility and acceptable breathing air. I would have also killed all electrical power and disabled the generator/alternator . The location of your fire was inside/on an equipment enclosure located away from from fuel/oil lines and behind the crew. As long as you were not being directly impinged on by the fire and were still able to control the aircraft, and the fire was not spreading significantly I would be high tailing to the nearest airport rather than setting up for an off airport landing. One thing about electrical fires is that they can burn clear, that is, burn away the circuit that is causing the fire. I would also tell the passenger to fight the fire as best he could using whatever he had available. He might have been able to pull out the wire that was arcing.
Your decision to land was apparently made very quickly. I would suggest less haste, so as to observe, to consider, and then decide your options.
My comments about decisions to land or otherwise escape (eject) reflects observations of other accidents such as a new pilot flying in mountainous terrain who encountered severe turbulence and was so concerned that she landed it off airport and lost her passenger's life, or a military crew flying one of my favorite flying machines experienced an electrical fire which caused surging electrical power affecting the stability augmentation circuits. This caused the aircraft to gyrate erratically and they ejected. There would have been at least two ways to regain full control in seconds in that case.
The foregoing discussion is not as relevant to engine fires which are an entirely different situation that must be handled promptly and correctly.
Greg I apologize that I misunderstood the exact nature of your problem, but I am also advocating a very reasoned and deliberate process before doing something irreversible.
Best Wishes
Sid
@@SidneyLevin-d2iWhere do you see that he didn't have a deliberate and reasoned process before doing something irreversible? His intention was to land, which is not irreversible.
Just seems a bit rude, Greg killed a man on accident and you're kinda rubbing it in. My opinion as a 3rd party looking in. Have a nice day everyone
Sidney, your opinion is valid and you have a right to post it; but in that of mine and many reading this, it's naive and unhelpful.
You make comparatively worse assumptions. It's easy to be an armchair critic afterwards; after the weeks of expert investigation into the root cause, and after years of Greg living with the weight of those decisions and any regrets he may have. In the moment it's more difficult, maybe reckless, to assume the cause of the fire was electrical, to assume anyone could clearly see where it was coming from, to assume it would have been safe and helpful to reach back into a flame to open up the melted plastic and rubber to disconnect the source, to assume that would have extinguished the fire already burning on flammable material, and to assume it wasn't going to spread quickly as fires tend to do. He could have assumed the fire wasn't a threat directly and that the smoke was the only concern, and assumed that opening windows would have helped reduce smoke without worsening the flame(s).
Greg's assumptions around the safety of landing on a straight road with no visible obstructions are a far better bet than the wishful thinking that he could have extinguished the fire onboard or burned precious time flying to a strip. I'm not sure what course of action you think he should have chosen with more time that he didn't have. Fires are unpredictable and rapid. Consider the 1996 ValuJet flight 592 that had an uncontrolled inflight fire in the cargo area. Their crew's initial decision was to return back to their origin, but it didn't take more than a minute for them to realize they needed to get on the ground immediately. Within three minutes of anyone smelling smoke, all 110 people onboard were dead.
There is no indication that Greg wasn't able to, or didn't, control his fear. And if you agree, then saying what "we need to" do isn't helpful. Greg's decision to land immediately was, in his description, meditated. He did think and analyze, and after considering whether it would be practical to extinguish, his decision to remain calm, make the radio call, and land off airfield is commonly taught best practice for that situation and aircraft.
If this is wrong and your comments aren't naive, then they are just stating the obvious; and in either case, they're doing no good and only serve to add grief to a man who already learned, paid it forward, and lives with immeasurable pain over decisions that most rational, well-intentioned people in his shoes would have chosen.
Have some grace and read the room.
Greg, thank you for sharing your story and for helping others to become better pilots.
To the pilot - feces happen. Don't blame yourself. You were between a rock and a hard place. Sad.
I noticed that too that highways are very dangerous and often result in some form of crash. That it superficially looks like a runway is what a lot of pilots get wrong. It helps to have that mentally prepared before an emergency. Sully made similar grave mistake when he concluded that an icy river looked like a convenient big runway. When he should have known from mental preparation that he could easily have glided back to laguardia because airliners do steep ascend and have good glide ratios. Speaking of which, select planes with good glide ratios, it gives options in engine out situations whereas old junk such as bonanzas and cessna 172s are poor. Had the emergency been in VMC it's very nice to have good synthetic vision so you can see where you are going. For emergency landing on terrain, current synthetic vision systems are much too poor to give you an even half decent chance of picking a location. They offer no details about surface quality and type whatsoever and that could relatively easily be much better. I have a pair of light plastic but good quality binoculars which can be used to look at areas for suitability for landing before getting low and out of options. They weigh very little. I also have a 1.5kg emergency parachute from paragliders. Handy to have if you need it, like loss of control surfaces.
A wise man in a steven seagal movie once said: chance favors the prepared mind.
I don't think pilots need an impossible amount of schooling, it's more a case of a handful of good insights that are not all in circulation yet. For instance don't fly old junk and most of GA is old junk.
I think second guessing Sully's decision and calling it a "grave mistake" when everyone on board survived is unproductive and a bit of a bad look. Could he have made it back to LGA? Simulations done by the NTSB determined that yes, had he taken 0 time to process what happened and turned back immediately without assessing the situation, running checklists, etc. he could have made it. After a 35 second delay the attempt was not successful. You can read more about the specifics of the attempts in section 1.16.3 of the NTSB report.
Here's an excerpt from Sully's book:
"I knew that if I chose to turn back across this densely populated area, I had to be certain we could make it. Once I turned toward LaGuardia, it would be an irrevocable choice. It would rule out every other option. And attempting to reach a runway that was unreachable could have had catastrophic consequences for everyone on the airplane and who knows how many people on the ground. Even if we made it to LaGuardia and missed the runway by a few feet, the result would be disastrous."
Airbus's assessment is that he made the best decision with the information he had available to him at the time.
I found this guy quite off-putting and unlikable.......