During my recent visit to Germany I was surprised to hear a friend there mention he’d made a precautionary landing in a field with his C172 Reims Rocket, resolved his issue, then taken off before anybody official showed up. In the US, my sense is that we’d more often use a road for the purpose, assuming the aircraft were suitable. On the other hand, there are an awful lot of suitable looking farm fields in Germany.
Silvaire, I think you’ll find a lot more straight, nearly empty roads in the US than in Europe, especially northern Europe.
Cautionary tale about not doing it:
PA28 pilot got into bad weather, entirely predictable from the forecast, and the mug left it too late to turn around. Airfield within 5NM, easy to find since he could have just followed the motorway through the ridge, but showers everywhere including over the motorway and clouds on the ridge so he put it into a convenient field instead. Aircraft was flown out of the field next day. Only egos were damaged in the process.
A few weeks later. Same area of country, also a PA28 (same club, IIRC), pilot pressed on to the very same airfield, entered cloud on approach, and crashed. Fortunately he survived with “only” a few broken bones. Aircraft obviously totalled.
I’d agree about northern European roads – not many with enough lanes in one direction. On my travels I seem to view the countryside mainly through the prism of ‘could I land a plane there’ (an odd habit!)… Where I fly there isn’t often isn’t a flat, open farm field in many miles but there are multilane highways. In Germany the adjacent fields often look great.
As a matter of fact I remember a report of a UK student pilot successfully doing one a few years back. I can’t remember the details, but remember thinking at the time was it really the best thing to have done? I have a recollection that it was getting dark and she was a bit lost. Report did not say whether she had tried to get help via r/t.
Training is what is lacking within the powerd aircraft community, the reason for this is the elf & safety culture that has crept into aviation, there are two major problems.
Training pilots to land has become an excersise in landing on big airfield with airspeed increments added to the Vat in the name of so called safety, this results in the new PPL only practiced landing his aircraft at speeds well in excess of 1.3 Vs. You can watch this “training” in practice at most small airfields with the majority of landings being preceded by the aircraft floating a long way down the runway before touching down.
Forced landing training both with and without power seems to end at 500 ft AGL on the basis that to go any lower prohibited by law……. It’s is not ! The landing picture from 500 ft is totaly different to that at 100 ft AGL and only by taking the landing practice below 100 ft can a student aquire the confidence to carry out a forced landing of any type.
Once students are given the training in operating at the correct Vat and forced landing practice is carried out with the go-around being carred out at a height that leaves the student in no doubt of the outcome of his practice landing then the chances of him carrying out a successful forced landing of any type are increased ten fold.
Hmm, with our Club’s ATO this is both not the case. And the curriculum especially asks about
> Short and Soft field landings, both of which demand flying way below 1.3 VS0. The first in the approach, the second one controlled over and on the ground.
→ Forced landings with and without power. In fact, I often cut power unexpected on my student during some cross country flight. And usually they do very well. I never end forced landing training at 500ft (exceptions granted) and always fly at least to the point, where the student can see, too, that the landing would be successful. Alas, I very well know at 500ft, if it will be successful. If it doesn’t work, we’ll do it again. Somtimes again on climbout from the field in 700ft, if the student is good.
Oh and we constantly fly from airfields with 700 Meter runway and less. Our home airfield has 600 Meter Grass useable (900 Meter total) with a city on one side and a railway power line on the other. So it clearly varies a lot from ATO to ATO.
Today, very few owners of PA28s and above are going to do it, because they will have a bill well into 4 figures carting the plane out, and that’s assuming no damage.
Not necessarily. My liability insurance from Traffords has a bonus clause covering aircraft removal after an off-aerodrome landing.
Psychologically, it’s not hard to see why people who are surrounded by weather rather kill themselves (fly into terrain in IMC / loss of control in IMC) than put the plane into an unprepared field, from which they probably can’t fly out again.
But the one place I would distrust for an out-landing is a disused airfield (unless I knew the place): at least there will be potholes, and likely as not there will be barriers set up.
As far as I remember, one exercise in the PPL training is a paperclip-like pattern to check whether the surface is suitable for landing and adequate for taking off again. Unfortunately, not many of us would practice it regularly enough.
Malte,
Is your club’s flying school already certified as an ATO?
Not yet, it’s pending. I just used new terminology for ease of communication.
