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Harrison Ford crash-landing


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Posted by Steve McIntosh on 06/03/2015 21:27:23:

According to Daily Fail its a "Spitfire" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Oh dear... sad

I was hoping you were joking, but I see that you weren't. And all the tired Fleet Street plane-crash clichés appear in print again;

Golfers said that watching Ford bring the plane down, it was clear that he made sure to avoid people's homes. So it's not just because golf courses make a better landing strip than people's rooftops then?

Panic: Golfers at the Penmar Golf Course in Los Angeles looked around in shock then ran as Harrison Ford plummeted from the sky. Ah, plummeting, eh?

Crash landing: Ford, 72, suffered a broken ankle and a broken pelvis after deliberately crashing his spitfire into the course. Hmm, deliberate crash, and a "spitfire" (no upper-case S)

Experts say the spitfire was perfectly landed in a way that all well-trained pilots are taught to handle an emergency. Perfectly landed, say the experts. (Even if it is still a "spitfire" ) But the Daily Wail know better, so it's a plummet and a deliberate crash. sarcastic

 

 

Edited By John Privett on 06/03/2015 22:28:00

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Do all those guys really need to be scrambling all over it?

It's a crash scene, the plane has crashed, it's not going anywhere and I'm sure that the fire hazard would be undercontrol by now if it has been there for long enough for photos to be taken.

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Posted by Martin Whybrow on 06/03/2015 23:01:23:

Another paper reported that the plane stalled just after takeoff when they meant the engine stopped.

There was film taken from onlookers clearly showing it circling back deadstick try to get back to the airfield, if it had stalled just after take off, I doubt he would have been able to do anything like that

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On the beeb earlier they had a subtitle for the radio tx - 'cleared for run A21' - supposed to be runway 21.

It seems he took off, climbed at Vy and got quite a bit of altitude (check the vids of him on downwind approach) when the engine let go. He might have had enough alt to turn back (always dicey) but the drag of that airframe's bracing and undercarriage got him. Check in the aerial shots how close he was to the threshold. I think he was trying to stretch the glide to make it and just came up short, stalling into/through the trees. Hence the short witness marks and high descent rate damage.

Still, he made it, so a modicum of kudos.

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He probably made the best of the available glide distance. It should be remembered though that all pilots (including us) should be considering eventualities and keeping an eye on potential landing sites in the event of an engine failure is one of them. I reckon there's a strong likelihood that he knew of the presence of the gold course before he took off and in formulating his plan for attempting to land on runway 3 he included the option to put down on the golf course if necessary. Those are the matters that make it an expert landing and I suspect that as someone mentioned earlier the soft ground prevented an even better outcome.

Well done I say.

As for 'the media', as usual they are a discredit to their followers and it doesn't matter because the media knows how good and important it is so can carry on regardless in the happy belief of it's own self imposed infallibility. Oops got a bit carried away there, well I'm fed up with it.

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For some reason this has stuck in my mind: I was watching a WW2 documentary and a civilian said how impressed he was that a British fighter pilot steered his crippled plane away from a housing estate. "He made sure he didn't cause any more deaths, a very brave pilot". The pilot, who survived an encounter with a bf109, who was also interviewed, said that he had no idea where he was coming down, and that as far as he remembered,all he was looking for was somewhere was flat and safe.

I quite often fly as passenger in a micro light, and I will say now, that should our engine quit, my primary concern would be to look for somewhere flat and safe,and I would hope our pilot would avoid housing estates, hospices, hospitals just out of common sense! Not out of bravery, just because a housing estate would be probably be fatal to us.

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When me and my dad were flying in the helicopter, he said, also, you are always looking every few seconds for a place to land, or fly route that could permit a landing to be made, so therefore avoiding dense build-up areas or mountains - especially on a single engined machine.

As were were flying towards Caarnarfon, the golf couse was a potential, no, over flown that, the beach, over flown that, ok, next looking forward is a flat bit of land on a side of a hill, passed that, and so on...

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Posted by Simon Chaddock on 06/03/2015 23:47:21:

It does make you wonder how much the press ever get right!

I suspect we all have a fair idea how much that is. On the very rare occasions when I've had first-hand knowledge of an event that makes it into the papers I've been alarmed at how much they get wrong.

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About Anglia, Our local new s program achived a remarkable score.

Someone had hired an aircraft to film them while they had a party in aDC3 Dakota.

About Anglia reported that they had hired: "A World War II jet fighter to film them."

The aircraft that they actually hired was a YAK 18.

1) Not a WWII aircraft.

2) Not a jet

3) Not a fighter.

None out of three can't be good!

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You cannot trust anything the press report. In my time flying SAR they always wanted a "Scoop" and were fed up by my "just another day at work" quotes. They always sensationalised their reports and gave "Facts" clearly from their *********** enhanced dreams. They don't want to know the facts, they are ignorant and would rather make them up instead. It's not their fault I suppose. *********************************************.

Harrison did all he could in the circumstances - a professional emergency handling event. Well done him.

 

Edited to keep within the rules by DC!

 

Edited By Dane Crosby on 07/03/2015 10:04:24

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Posted by Ian Jones on 07/03/2015 00:52:04:

He probably made the best of the available glide distance. It should be remembered though that all pilots (including us) should be considering eventualities and keeping an eye on potential landing sites in the event of an engine failure is one of them.

I have to wonder about that - the aircraft looks fairly close to the stall and I doubt it's anywhere near the best lift/drag speed, although my experience is from gliders and I don't know how all the draggy bits affect this on something like the Ryan with a windmilling (or stopped) prop - I suspect to achieve the most efficient angle of attack there would need to be quite a pronounced nose down attitude...

But idle speculation doesn't alter the outcome that he survived with relatively minor injuries and didn't involve anyone else in the accident so the outcome was a reasonably happy one - thank goodness there was no fire.

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