In the event of an emergency with a few passengers on board who do you put first, your passengers or people on the ground?
Let me elaborate.
It is often written we have a resposibility to cause the least danger to people on the ground should we have an engine failure. For example you might have to make a decision between landing on a road, with the possibility of endangering other road users, or the possibility of landing in a boulder strewn field with the greater risk of killing yourself. Please ignore the debate about whether one presents a greater or lesser risk, just accept the hypothetical scenario of a situation where one landing is much better for you, but not as good for those on the ground.
So, does your assessment change where you have passengers with you on board the aircraft or not?
Fuji_Abound wrote:
So, does your assessment change where you have passengers with you on board the aircraft or not?
No.
There is actually research about how people react to this kind of ethical dilemma. I don’t have a reference handy, but I recall that people universally (i.e. regardless of ethnicity) tend to accept the loss of a few lives to save more, unless the ones to be “sacrificed” were “innocent” in the sense of not being involved in the dangerous situation in the first place. So in your example it would generally not be seen as ok to sacrifice a few lives on the ground to save more in the aircraft.
Of course all this presumes that you have time to consider such decisions.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
It is often written we have a resposibility to cause the least danger to people on the ground should we have an engine failure
Is it?
LeSving wrote:
Is it?
Well, I have seen it said whenever their is a similar thread over the years on aviation fora and elsewhere by at least one person.
So in your example it would generally not be seen as ok to sacrifice a few lives on the ground to save more in the aircraft.
I asked the question because I had never seen it asked before, and actually had never thought about it before.
If I were flying solo I had always thought I would take every precaution to avoid threatening life on the gorund.
However, with passengers I am not sure how I feel. As commander I have a feeling that I feel a very strong sense of responsibility to my pasengers to “protect” them and therefore in the event of an engine failure in selecting a landing that was likely to secure the best outcome.
I appreciate in the real world it is perhaps a little hypothetical but thought it was an interesting question which I hadnt thought about before.
Fuji, it’s a well known dilemma which goes beyond flying. I believe it is used in the early days for students for philosophy. Indeed it poses questions for driverless car designers. Should the car be programmed to kill the driver if the alternative risks more lives.
Not that it will help your decision making, but you’re not alone.
Personally I think the human tendency to think all will be okay is what lies behind the decision of many who put aircraft down on streets.
That is an interesting question.
I’ve seen numerous reports from the US about landings on streets. Having lived there myself for a while I know that many streets are well suitable for that. I can’t recall a loss of life on the ground as a consequence of landing on a road. Further, an aircraft landing between cars or a driver of a car loosing control because of something (deer jumping onto the street, etc.) else isn’t much different.
To me the question can be answered pretty simple. As I’m using an aircraft with a parachute I will not hesitate to use it over any kind of surface – be it populated or not. There is experience with that and people video and photograph the aircraft coming down below the parachute. So apparently it can be heard and seen pretty well and people will not stay underneath when it lands.
For an aircraft without I believe that pilots will not fly willingly into a house when attempting an emergency landing. That doesn’t avoid not to see someone working a dog in the darkness and to hit that person or accidents when landing at a beach where one tries to stay away from people and then flipping over with all kinds of things happening due to that.
So I believe everyone will try to stay alive and not steer into something where further harm is likely. After all an emergency landing is done from a great vantage point – usually – and airports don’t have houses 50m away from the end of a runway.
I agree – but I also think it’s highly theoretical. None of the guys who flew into houses did that “intentionally” … and i a real and very dangerous situation very few people will have the mental abilities to think about these things.
I am not entirely sure how theoretical it is.
In reality engines rarely stopped unexpectedly without warning.
I can recall my last rough running engine – I expected it might quit for about 45 minutes, but it didnt. I was constantly aware of where I woudl go and what my options were if it did.
When I shut down the engine down in a twin and thought there might be a fire I was conscious for the whole time if I needed to put it on the ground what my options were.
Flyer59 wrote:
very few people will have the mental abilities to think about these things.
Agreed.
I once had a cylinder breach on departure from shoreham, in an easterly direction, over Brighton. I was about 500ft and just about to start the crosswind turn when it happened. Nose was intentionally dipped quickly and when presented with a town dead ahead my first thought was “F^*K!!!! What is the softest thing I can hit!”… Passengers nor people on the ground crossed my mind, to be honest. Luckily there was still just enough power from the engine to maintain about a 50ft/min descent, at a speed safely above stall, so I elected for a tight circuit and landed back at Shoreham… With very brown trousers!
However, I am one of those pilots who likes to fly high, relative to other spam-can fliers. From 8,000 to 10,000 feet there is plenty of time to do the restart drills, prepare the aircraft for crash landing and then think about the question posed by the OP. I have practiced an engine failure quite a few times, and I would always elect for a brown field, because you know it’s probably freshly ploughed, and therefore minimal deep ruts, plus people don’t tend to picnic in a brown field.
So I wonder if unintentionally it have thought about the topic. But there is a big difference between thinking about it at home, preparing for a drill, and thinking about it in the middle of the action. I will certainly actively think about it before the start of the next flying season, where I take a few hours flying to go over my drills again.
If the road is the only place to land safely then it is the road.
