MichaLSA wrote:
Ok, so you are one of the old white men as well
He he indeed 
What I always ask myself: why do people do these interviews, so quickly, and apparently without having consulted their lawyer beforehand?
Exposure is the new currency. Fame, spotlight… you name it. It’s stupid and hollow, but it is what it is. Like living off likes (cause the salary sure ain’t providing) when posting uniform selfies all year long.
In the end it might turn out she flew a perfectly fine airplane into (onto) a mountain, perhaps not even realizing it due to high AoA… there are some things you couldn’t pull off if you planned it. Sheer luck.
Or it turns out there was a mechanical failure and she picked that spot and landed there. Amazing skills.
The problem is the media takes all this unreflected crap and circulates it and people get a completely wrong picture („cool, let’s take a PA28, load it up and fly around mountain peaks for fun without any special considerations for what we‘re doing, it’ll be fine!“). It’s ok to share passion for flying, and even collect some admiration, but once the primary objective is publicity and „influencing“ and flying is only a carrier wave for that it seems inappropriate. Here is an example. The motto is „get out the message, it will stick“.
Jurassic Park. Jeff Goldblum. Nuff said.
Pig wrote:
Jurassic Park. Jeff Goldblum. Nuff said.
Burp! 
I was just sent this (completely unverified information):
Our MOU teacher from the area was with a MOU student in a Husky about 1 hour before the accident and flew in the same valley. He reported downdrafts with about 3m/s (600 ft/min.). Allegedly the PA28 pilot was inexperienced. She probably flew too deep into the valley and the mixture was still full rich after the impact. That’s probably where the rough engine run came from. Shortly before the impact point, she then stalled and the right wing dropped. Pictures show a 5m long track and a right bent wing. Allegedly, the pilot obtained her license in the USA and did not have a reasonable Alpine briefing. Heroism looks a little different to me.
Then this would mean that it is not even a mixture of skills and luck. It’s only lucky? Whoa. And that is what we as a pilot community are celebrating?
A typical alpine downdraft and wrong set mixture? That’s all? Not fair for that Archer to make it stop in a mountainside.
Still a pretty big feat to come out of this alive. The stress must have been enormous.
I do speak/understand some Italian, but will not indulge into a direct translation of the edifying interview given by the pilot in
Video
But I now took the time to read the detailed story, as published by different newspaper and resumed by the Gazetta
This account pretty much reflects what she told during the video interview.
Below the direct translation, though I had to correct a couple of mistakes made by the free version of Deepl, here goes:
Who is Silvia, the girl who made the emergency landing in the Dolomites
The 22-year-old holds an Italian and a US licence: when she grows up, she would like to become an airline pilot and has now demonstrated that she has all the necessary skills.
Silvia De Bon is only 22 years old, and in addition to an Italian and an American pilot’s licence, she can now also boast of an emergency landing that saved the lives of two people as well as herself. The young Italian, who has been in the news for the past few hours for her emergency landing in the Dolomites, is doing well and has told the media about her story. In two interviews, one with Corriere della Sera and one with La Stampa, the young pilot told her version of the events, claiming all her piloting choices.
THE DYNAMICS OF THE ACCIDENT
The accident occurred on 28 December, at an altitude of 2,100 metres, on the Lagorai mountain range in the Dolomites of Trentino. On board the Piper PA-28, a tourist plane owned by the Autoclub Belluno, were her, her brother, Mattia De Bon, and his girlfriend Giorgia Qualizza. According to initial information, the emergency landing was necessary due to a drop in engine power. The National Flight Safety Association and the Trento public prosecutor’s office have opened an investigation into the accident, also because the media initially spoke of some engine failures during the climb phase. If they are alive, it is thanks to Silvia, who, thanks to her experience, made an assessment that went against manuals and theories, landing her plane on its belly on mountain slopes. In her view, had she not made that choice, the consequences would have been much more serious.
SILVIA’S NARRATION
“Normally,” the girl told the Corriere, "that movement is wrong, because the more you pull, the more the speed decreases and the plane falls. Knowing I was going against the mountain, I did everything to level the plane against the slope, landing on the belly. If I had crashed straight on, I would have destroyed the nose and the consequences would have been worse. So too if I had tried to turn back: I would have hit the ridge and destroyed the whole side of the Piper. At that moment that was probably the right thing to do. “When the engine loses power the plane starts to fall” she recounts. “As it was happening I thought s..t, now I’m going to crash” Then I just tried to flatten the plane onto the slope…. I was lucky." At that moment, in fact, the girl relates that she had “a blank”. Then when she woke up, she had the left side of her face full of blood, having hit her head against the glass. At that moment, however, she realized that her emergency maneuver had worked, and with the two boys they called the 112 emergency number and managed to get help to reach them.
LOVE FOR FLIGHT
The girl said she was in love with flying. Only last November, according the Corriere, she had returned from the United States where she had obtained her American licence. “To get the commercial licence” she recounts, “you need to accumulate hours of experience, which we call ‘filling’. I went there, flew as much as I needed and came back to Italy”. Her determination is the same that drove her to ‘contradict’ her father, who has always suggested she stops flying precisely because of the dangers she runs.
THE DREAM: TO BECOME AN AIRLINE PILOT
“I’m sorry, but my father, I don’t listen to him” she says. “I always tell him: If all the people who get into car accidents stopped driving, no one would drive any more”. “It is true that when you are in the air things are not the same, but the concept is similar. If I have an accident I don’t get scared, I have the determination, I want to be an airline pilot, like the Ryanair ones. It could have happened to anyone and also on other occasions: if I was on the road, coming home, or if I was heading to the airport”.
Dan wrote:
When the engine loses power the plane starts to fall
Ok now this sounds more like real engine trouble, because with wrongly set mixture power doesn’t drop sharply, it’s simply decreasing over time. Not so easy to spot that in a typical charter PA28 without any good instrument if you don’t have an idea of what is happening with regards to combustion processes. Or could the wrongly set mixture produce such an amount of deposits in short time that it could be the cause for the engine trouble?
However in case of an engine failure reaction is needed really quickly. In the end, any decision taken that leads to a survival has been the right decision in retrospect.
I wonder whether this chapter might turn out to be part of a movie. Quite interesting plot.
I have always wondered if it would be possible to crash land a plane like that if there are no other options left. I guess that question is now answered.
