MedEwok wrote:
In Germany you are generally allowed to depart from the same field/area where you made an emergency landing
That is not completely true though. You can take off after a precautionary / safety landing. After an emergency landing, you need the approval of the local aviation authority. Obtaining that is possible, although all emergency landings I was part of (either on board, on the chase plane or as retrieval team) has left the aircraft non-flyable. So road transport was the easiest option anyway.
So as he stayed in the left lane (and per the road sign), I take it that he was taking Interstate 40 East to Ashville.
Steve6443 wrote:
The question is, do you know what’s past that bridge and sign?
If you don’t – you should not take off in the first place! It’s not forced landing, but a voluntary takeoff!
It should go w/o saying, that before taking off from the road, you walk the entire takeoff run to check if there is obstacles, road damages, etc….
The risk of accelerating under the bridge is that there might be wind shear, etc. that pushes you to one side of the road. Why would you go for that risk, if after that you have miles of free and straight highway?
Malibuflyer wrote:
The only thing one might be ask to do differently is to taxi slowly under the sign and bridge and start the takeoff run only after these obstacles – but that would have been a great idea in the US as well from operational safety POV…
The question is, do you know what’s past that bridge and sign? Power cables? More signs / overpasses? Sweeping bends? From that point of view, I’m not sure I see the risk of accelerating under the bridge / sign – better to do that than to accelerate after and take off, hitting power cables – one of my friends hit a single power or communications cable whilst he was coming in to do a forced landing; he said he never knew what he hit until in the hospital they told him what he’d done, said they are pretty hard to spot. He can be grateful that he’s still with us after that incident, his plane just dropped out of the sky, fortunately the mud below was soft…
Hmm… not ‘dropped’. Plummeted, as some sensationalist press reporters might claim….. no puppy farms were in the vicinity though….. 
Peter wrote:
AFAIK they would require the aircraft to be dismantled and carted out on a pickup truck. But maybe not in every country…
No reason at all not to start from motorway in Europe. You most probably need to close the road anyways for safe dismantling and putting it on a trailer so a start from the spot would actually reduce interference with the traffic significantly.
The only thing one might be ask to do differently is to taxi slowly under the sign and bridge and start the takeoff run only after these obstacles – but that would have been a great idea in the US as well from operational safety POV…
Other thing is intentional landing on a highway: While my own experience says this is a non issue in Alaska, I wouldn’t try it in Germany ;-)
A_and_C wrote:
In Europe the authorities are driven by an attitude of extreme job protection and the easy answer to any problem in “no”.
Although I too get that impression sometimes, I think LeSving just disproved that (post 07 above).
A_and_C wrote:
In Europe the authorities are driven by an attitude of extreme job protection and the easy answer to any problem in “no”.
Although I too get that impression sometimes, I think LeSving just disproved that.
Unfortunately this is not a technical issue it is a cultural one. In Europe the authorities are driven by an attitude of extreme job protection and the easy answer to any problem in “no”.
The No answer is always the safe one and all sorts of reasons can be found to support it.
I remember a Pa28, experienced PPL, practicing circuits, running out of fuel because the gascolator fuel drain was open.
Collecting our Jodel DR1050 after an Annual while it was a CAA aircraft, there was a large drop of fuel from the gascolator at each hand turn of the prop. I left it to be fixed. With 4 hours fuel, I might have run out on the 1 hour flight home.
Airborne_Again wrote:
It seems like the aircraft should only have been allowed to fly out with a different pilot!
Why? He won’t do that (running out of fuel) again, at least not so soon, perfectly safe!
