Many things could have gone wrong here, animal/human on the runway, another airplane taxiing, engine failure after take off.
Please help me to understand how any of these things could be “wrong” when even a pathetically underpowered Cessna 150 can take off and land to a full stop in a total of 85 metres (Valdez, 2017, in the hands of a 19 year old 500 hour private pilot).
To my mind, this 400 /1,500 metre Euro-rule is an absurd example of unenforceable regulatory diarrhoea which has no relevance whatever to even minimally capable simple GA aeroplanes and for which we Europeans are justly mocked.
Dimme wrote:
It is very dangerous defending such behavior.
If VFR, then I agree it was dubious, but as other people have pointed out visibility can change dramatically over short distances so it is quite possible that the pilot did have enough visibility for a safe takeoff and possible even as far as regulations are concerned. SERA allows the national authorities to lower the minimum class G flight visibility to 1500 m, but I don’t know if Swiss authorities have. (E.g. Sweden permits 1500 m in the traffic circuit with the airport in sight and MAX IAS 140 kt).
For IFR, I don’t really see any major problems. Sure, in case of an engine failure he would have been toast, but so he would be on a perfectly legal IFR approach with 550 m visibility. It’s all a question of marginal risk. I once did take off IFR from an uncontrolled grass runway with 600 m visibility and I would do so again if I needed to. I prepared carefully by first taxying the full length of the runway, counting runway markers.
Sure, in case of an engine failure he would have been toast
I agree very much with the rest of what AA writes, but this “toast” is by no means a sure thing.
My experience, insofar as it goes, is that landing accidents hardly ever result in personal injury – provided that the pilot does not lose control before touching down.
This general principle would appear to extend from moderately capable light GA to landing airliners on rivers (but not skyscrapers).
Well, a guy I know landed a C340 on a runway with zero visibility and RVR000. He was in full control, and on an ILS, but the impact nevertheless caused a fire. All occupants got out, survived and were brought to local burn units, some still suffer. The plane was ‚toast‘.
Can you elaborate this ‚hardly ever‘ ?
I think we can argue whether you could take off in that kind of fog, but about what you write re. landing it again when you just don’t see the runway we might have to ’agree to disagree’ :)
Every year multi car pile ups occur on motorways around the world because people think they are capable of driving at 70mph plus in fog or forecast fog.
Also many pilots lose control of their aircraft just after take off when all visual references are lost (a white out)
Maybe like on the motorways where often there is no regulation to slow down in fog is a good thing. After all it allows people the choice of whether or not the adrenalin rush is worth the consequences.
But allowing take offs in low visibility, I don’t know. It depends who gets sued by the family of the pilot kills himself.
a guy I know landed a C340 on a runway with zero visibility and RVR000. He was in full control, and on an ILS, but the impact nevertheless caused a fire. All occupants got out, survived and were brought to local burn units, some still suffer. The plane was ‚toast‘.
There is a massive huge and dramatic difference between a low vis departure and a low vis arrival.
So long as you can see the runway ahead well enough to stay on the centreline, a departure is risky only in
A departure in say 500m is a lot less hazardous than in say 200m, but the above points don’t change. I have done ~200m, and did one which was probably a lot less after a chunk of low cloud / fog got blown onto the runway. The latter is an interesting video which I am not posting 
I continued the takeoff, being able to see the centreline.
What was the guy doing landing in zero-zero? Was he out of fuel? That’s a completely different scenario to the thread topic. People do these things, for reasons best known to themselves, e.g. here.
I am still looking for the regulation which says you must be able to land back at the same airport. Does such a thing exist, in any context?
The argument that you need to see ahead 1.5km for takeoff fall short after 10h in Cubs sitting in the rear seat and 10min in Pitts in an seat, for landings I think 2km is a good number
Peter wrote:
I am still looking for the regulation which says you must be able to land back at the same airport. Does such a thing exist, in any context?
Assuming this was VFR, haven’t seen many IFR cubs, the 1500 m vis rule would cover that. No need to have additional regulation for a case that will never happen in VMC.
gallois wrote:
Every year multi car pile ups occur on motorways around the world because people think they are capable of driving at 70mph plus in fog or forecast fog.
That’s not a relevant comparison. Motorway pile ups are not because the drivers can’t see the road, but because they can’t see the vehicle in front of them.
Can you elaborate this ‚hardly ever‘ ?
Well, I‘ve only witnessed half a dozen landing mishaps, including a couple where the aircraft adopted an antipodean attitude and one tree-top touch down. My personal take-away is that although any contest between Sitka spruce trees and light aeroplanes tends to be one-sided, none of the pilots suffered so much as a bruise or scratch.
GA is a broad church, but a cabin-class aeroplane like the C340, with its 70 mph plus (?) stall speed – or any other flying machine which requires half a mile of paved runway – seems to me to straddle the dividing line between private GA and CAT.
I do agree that such machines are, quite reasonably, dependent on elaborate infrastructure and rules for safe operation.
Also many pilots lose control of their aircraft just after take off when all visual references are lost (a white out)
I haven’t head of any, and I can’t see why they should lose control. If someone can’t hold a runway heading by watching the AH for the few seconds it takes to roll and lift off a prepared runway, he probably shouldn’t be flying in IMC.
