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Too many if's.
The NTSB will make its' determination.
The bottom line is he made a 180 with engine out, landed short and down wind instead of making an upwind, forced landing on the fairway when he had altitude to spend. He made a bad choice and
tried stretching his glide back to the airport stalling and coming down like a ton of bricks. He couldn't have been descending at best glide or there wouldn't be that extent of damage. I'd bet the PT22 is capable of making survivable dead stick landings at best glide and 10-20 degrees of * or the plane wouldn't have been accepted as an Army trainer.
Dead stick landings (stopped prop) and spins used to be taught.
I was.
Accident reports are full of stall-spin fatalities from attempted 180s back to the airport where pilots underestimate altitude lost in a 180 degree turns following engine failure.
If he had a few thousand feet in the area of a golf course, he had very much better options plus time to plan a proper dead stick landing.
I stand on poor judgement and / or insufficient familiarity with the airplane's characteristics
We often here about a pilot being a "hero" because he maneuvered to miss buildings and save lives. That's nice, but bogus. One maneuvers to open spaces because hitting a building is suicide. The pilot's first goal is to save his own life, and then minimize damage to the plane.
Thank you, Rocky Raab. I am sure Harrison Ford is a nice guy and didn't want to kill any civilians, but, if the airplane hits a house it is a death sentence for a pilot.
I have quite a few hours in light aircraft, one time had to make an emergency landing dead stick. I had a choice among power lines, houses, and Lake Sinclair. I took the lake. I can swim good.
I see the airport, the golf course and endless bad options.
Land on a street? Cars, traffic, pedestrians, overhead wires?
Miss the street and hit a house? More bad news.
Coming down silently on some roadway, trying to land clear of vehicles and some mom and kids in a mini-van turns right into the plane?
Land on Venice Beach if he could make the beach? Lots of people on beaches.
LAX? Too far away.
So I'm curious, you are flying around that little airport, the engine quits, where else do you aim for if not the airport or the golf course to avoid killing yourself and others?
Maybe the NTSB or FAA will say different. Well that's their job and they will have all the facts when they have their say. Until they have their say, what I see is Ford put that plane down in the second best spot he could have.
The PT-22 was on the very outer edge of being a primary trainer. Unlike the PT-19 which is docile and forgiving, the PT-22 is anything but. This isn't to say that a PT-22 is difficult to fly as it isn't. That is unless one places the PT-22 in a situation where she will bite. One is best advised to handle the PT-22 carefully and not outside her operating envelope.
The PT-22 has heavy wing loading accompanied by lots of drag and a lazy power plant. The gentleman who taught me to fly was a WW2 instructor and we had a PT-22 and a PT-19 on our field. He called the PT-22 a "Ground Loving SOB! * (mentioned in another post) are mostly decoration and make virtually no difference in stall or approach speeds. 60 mph is the magic number for stalls and the PT-22 tends to drop a wing rather than mush in as might be expected of a PT-19 for example. Further, the PT-22 has an impressive sink rate which very considerably limits engine out options for choosing a landing site.
I don't know the details of this landing other than by what's been reported and the photos taken after the landing. I can share that after a media moron asked whether this plane had a "black box" on board I haven't much faith in the reporting. This plane doesn't even have an electrical system. No battery, no generator, no starter, and I don't see any indication it has been much modified over the decades.
Not having the exact details I can only say that Ford made an emergency landing and survived. Upwind or downwind doesn't matter much when things get quiet up front. As a pilot you have to calculate your altitude, your airspeed, and your landing choices very quickly. And the one thing you cannot do is change your mind once a decision has been made as it's usually fatal.
All I can conclude given what I know is an engine failure and a forced landing as the result. Mr. Ford paid very close attention to air speed as indicated by the fact that he and the plane arrived back on earth with the pilot in control rather than the opposite. We can argue whether he could have done better. In retrospect I imagine Mr. Ford might now agree. There are always things we might have done better after the event.
The bottom line is that Mr. Ford placed a crippled aircraft down without fatalities. Given that he didn't stall the aircraft he was at or about at 60 mph when he touched down. Given the length of his chosen "runway" I suspect a hard landing and the sacrifice of his landing gear was not an issue in his mind. My guess is that the FAA will agree that Mr. Ford acted properly under the circumstances and will not be at all critical of his decisions.
It is a true emergency, a pilot's nightmare, to lose power on takeoff.
Lose power at 6,000 feet, you got a while to think it over.
I think Mr. Ford did a good job.
I notice in the pic provided by Chris the Pacific Ocean in the bottom left. A water landing would have been a possible option. It is winter, and that water is cold as hell even in the summertime, I have gone swimming out there in August and didn't stay in the water for long.
I doubt there would have been anybody swimming in early March.
You want to put it down in as shallow water as possible. Flare it just before landing and stall it, and just mush it in.
Don't know Ford was high enough, or headed in the right direction to make a water landing.
Anyway, these are things that must run through a pilot's mind any time he takes off, "What if I lose power at 500 feet? Where can I put this thing down?"
Last year, a guy was down in south Florida, lost power, and made a beach landing and he hit two tourists on the beach and killed them.
We discussed that case at length on this forum.
Here is the story on the Florida crash. Makes Harrison Ford look pretty good. This is weird, this fatal crash happened on Venice Beach Florida, and Ford was right at Venice Beach California.
Plane crash kills dad on beach, injures daughter
A small plane was forced to make an emergency landing on a Florida beach on Sunday afternoon, killing a father and critically injuring his daughter. The pilot, Karl Kokomoor, and his passenger, David Theen, were unharmed.
SARASOTA, Fla. - Authorities say a father was killed and his daughter seriously injured when a small plane crash landed along Florida's Gulf Coast near Venice Beach.
Around 2:45 p.m. ET, Venice Airport contacted Sarasota Sheriff's Office regarding a small plane in distress that could not make it back to the airport.
Ommy Irizarry and his family from Georgia were walking on Caspersen Beach, about a mile from the Venice Beach pier, and may not have heard the plane approaching, according to a witness.
"I didn't hear anything, actually," said Zack Arceneaux, and speculated the plane's engine might not have been working when the plane crashed.
Irizarry, 36, was killed. His daughter, Oceana Irizarry, 9, was critically injured and airlifted to All Children's Hospital in Tampa.
Other family members were so traumatized they also sought treatment at a Venice hospital.
The pilot of the 1972 Piper Cherokee, 57-year-old Karl Kokomoor, and his 60-year-old passenger, David Theen, both of Englewood, Fla., were rescued and were uninjured, according to Wendy Rose, community affairs manager for the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office.
National Transportation and Safety Board investigators have headed to the site.
From the condition of that Cherokee I'd call it a good emergency landing, except of course for the pedestrian fatalities.
Fords crash looks like he whipped it into an accelerated stall at touchdown using the PT22s considerable elevator power. Note the
the tail wheel slammed down, wrinkling the fuselage just aft of the number and tearing off the tailwheel. Nose high and stalling, the left wing dropped as it does in a PT22 stall prior to spin and the contraption slammed down, digging in and traveling about 20 feet or so. The vertical (not horizontal) impact collapsed the left gear and wing flying wires with the vertical inertia downwardly ripping off the Kinner engine back to the ist cockpit. Poor brakes don't enter this event at all.
Downwind emergency landings affect outcomes greatly.
Cpt. Fun said Ford historically crashed multiple times.
That's a powerful statement.
Some pilots, and I knew a few, were accidents waiting to happen. One was an airline pilot who cartwheeled a Stearman killing his passenger and finally burying a club P51 at the bottom of a loop.
Statistics of serious crashes conclude these events are the consequence of 2-3 errors not one.
I see here from limited FACTUAL information; an attempt to return to airport, poor selection of landing site, failure to maintain flying speed and landing downwind.
In my book, his history doesn't earn him the benefit of doubt.
On this airplane there is also a possible issue of carbureter ice.
We'll see what the NTSB finds.
Went looking for but do not find much of an accident history.
In 1999 he was a student in a helicopter with an instructor practicing auto-rotations with powered recovery. He was late in applying power, the helo landed hard, skidded on gravel and caught a tree trunk. It flipped over on its side. No people injuries, but he did break the helo.
In 2000 he was piloting a Beechcraft Bonanza in Lincoln Nebraska. Wind shear forced an emergency landing. Some damage to the plane, none to people.
Photo I took a number of years ago driving to the golf course.
Small plane landed on Interstate with traffic and steered himself into the median just before a bridge. Bridge is to my left in the photo, out of the frame.
No one hurt in the plane or on the interstate. A good bit of plane control, IMO.
Freedom and a submissive populace cannot co-exist.
That's plenty.
To be too slow in applying power on the chopper at a critical phase of auto-rotation and again being to slow with power and airspeed in the Bonanza. He was behind both and maybe all three airplanes.
Banging up a Bonanza is hard to do if you're properly ahead of it.
If you're not, it'll bite you in the *. Being so easy to fly, it earned the title,"Doctor Killer" because it killed so many who thought they were better than they were and didn't stay ahead of it.
Does anyone know the PT22 best glide speed and rate of descent being under gross with one pilot?
Sometimes one needs to take an issue to extremes for a proper perspective.
Capt Sully having only one option, put a large jet, under no power, in the river at at least 150-175 knots without breaking up the airplane or seriously injuring anyone.
It was skill and good, timely decision making under pressure, not divine intervention.
What did he have, 1000 feet or less altitude?
Many pilots have made safe emergency landings at golf courses.
I wish him well but I wouldn't fly with him.
Rate of descent with engine out on a PT-22 is going to be pretty drastic. I've looked around a bit and not much data is available. At least none that I've found. With its high wing loading the 22 isn't much of a glider under the best of circumstances. My instructor and dear friend (Joe Costa) was both one of the early aviators and an instructor during WW2. His opinion of the PT-22 was that it was not inherently dangerous if always kept within its operating envelope. All the same his take on the PT-22 was that it was slow to leave the runway and eager to return.
As to stall speed it seems that 60 mph is the magic number. This may actually be 60 kts as some modern references are unreliable and I have no flying experience with the PT-22. * are reported to make very little difference in stall speed or added lift.
Certainly Ford's PT running light would stall at slightly slower speeds than a fully loaded example. All the same he was moving at freeway speed when he touched down.
I do agree with others here that I'd be somewhat reluctant to fly with Mr. Ford. Perhaps he's touched with just a bit of bad luck and has been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or perhaps Mr. Ford has been very lucky considering the messages he's been sent and accidents survived. In any case I doubt I'll ever get that invite and perhaps suggest a nice gentle 172 for his next steed.
His past low and slow helicopter experience, taking speed cues from
outside the cockpit and which may also true from open cockpit operation, may be wrong for aircraft that need to be flown by the numbers.
Let's accept this Ryan was not an AT or advanced trainer but a basic, primary trainer, designed and specially reinforced to take a beating from inexperienced students.
Wing angle was designed to be intolerant of mishandling & bad speed control.
At stall it purposely falls off into a spin to prepare students for heavier airplane
As such, trainers are intended be spun, landed dead stick plus all the primary maneuvers.
Having a golf course available is a gift.
Note there was no fire which raises the fuel question.
Many WW2 fighters and bombers made survivable landings as did Capt Sully whose rate of descent had to be greater that the PT's.
His vertical speed and degree of damage under his apparent conditions looks to me excessive. It wasn't an F4.
I believe again he was too slow with not enough forward speed to round out and arrest an excessive sink rate. If this airplane was so bad it would have killed off half the AAF student pilots.
PS: I just read he had 3,000 ft of altitude, buying him more options than with an engine failure at takeoff.
An open question is: Where was he at engine failure?
Comments
'...and terminate the Colonel's command.'
Brad Steele
The NTSB will make its' determination.
The bottom line is he made a 180 with engine out, landed short and down wind instead of making an upwind, forced landing on the fairway when he had altitude to spend. He made a bad choice and
tried stretching his glide back to the airport stalling and coming down like a ton of bricks. He couldn't have been descending at best glide or there wouldn't be that extent of damage. I'd bet the PT22 is capable of making survivable dead stick landings at best glide and 10-20 degrees of * or the plane wouldn't have been accepted as an Army trainer.
Dead stick landings (stopped prop) and spins used to be taught.
I was.
Accident reports are full of stall-spin fatalities from attempted 180s back to the airport where pilots underestimate altitude lost in a 180 degree turns following engine failure.
If he had a few thousand feet in the area of a golf course, he had very much better options plus time to plan a proper dead stick landing.
I stand on poor judgement and / or insufficient familiarity with the airplane's characteristics
Thank you, Rocky Raab. I am sure Harrison Ford is a nice guy and didn't want to kill any civilians, but, if the airplane hits a house it is a death sentence for a pilot.
I have quite a few hours in light aircraft, one time had to make an emergency landing dead stick. I had a choice among power lines, houses, and Lake Sinclair. I took the lake. I can swim good.
I see the airport, the golf course and endless bad options.
Land on a street? Cars, traffic, pedestrians, overhead wires?
Miss the street and hit a house? More bad news.
Coming down silently on some roadway, trying to land clear of vehicles and some mom and kids in a mini-van turns right into the plane?
Land on Venice Beach if he could make the beach? Lots of people on beaches.
LAX? Too far away.
So I'm curious, you are flying around that little airport, the engine quits, where else do you aim for if not the airport or the golf course to avoid killing yourself and others?
Maybe the NTSB or FAA will say different. Well that's their job and they will have all the facts when they have their say. Until they have their say, what I see is Ford put that plane down in the second best spot he could have.
The PT-22 was on the very outer edge of being a primary trainer. Unlike the PT-19 which is docile and forgiving, the PT-22 is anything but. This isn't to say that a PT-22 is difficult to fly as it isn't. That is unless one places the PT-22 in a situation where she will bite. One is best advised to handle the PT-22 carefully and not outside her operating envelope.
The PT-22 has heavy wing loading accompanied by lots of drag and a lazy power plant. The gentleman who taught me to fly was a WW2 instructor and we had a PT-22 and a PT-19 on our field. He called the PT-22 a "Ground Loving SOB! * (mentioned in another post) are mostly decoration and make virtually no difference in stall or approach speeds. 60 mph is the magic number for stalls and the PT-22 tends to drop a wing rather than mush in as might be expected of a PT-19 for example. Further, the PT-22 has an impressive sink rate which very considerably limits engine out options for choosing a landing site.
I don't know the details of this landing other than by what's been reported and the photos taken after the landing. I can share that after a media moron asked whether this plane had a "black box" on board I haven't much faith in the reporting. This plane doesn't even have an electrical system. No battery, no generator, no starter, and I don't see any indication it has been much modified over the decades.
Not having the exact details I can only say that Ford made an emergency landing and survived. Upwind or downwind doesn't matter much when things get quiet up front. As a pilot you have to calculate your altitude, your airspeed, and your landing choices very quickly. And the one thing you cannot do is change your mind once a decision has been made as it's usually fatal.
All I can conclude given what I know is an engine failure and a forced landing as the result. Mr. Ford paid very close attention to air speed as indicated by the fact that he and the plane arrived back on earth with the pilot in control rather than the opposite. We can argue whether he could have done better. In retrospect I imagine Mr. Ford might now agree. There are always things we might have done better after the event.
The bottom line is that Mr. Ford placed a crippled aircraft down without fatalities. Given that he didn't stall the aircraft he was at or about at 60 mph when he touched down. Given the length of his chosen "runway" I suspect a hard landing and the sacrifice of his landing gear was not an issue in his mind. My guess is that the FAA will agree that Mr. Ford acted properly under the circumstances and will not be at all critical of his decisions.
Lose power at 6,000 feet, you got a while to think it over.
I think Mr. Ford did a good job.
I notice in the pic provided by Chris the Pacific Ocean in the bottom left. A water landing would have been a possible option. It is winter, and that water is cold as hell even in the summertime, I have gone swimming out there in August and didn't stay in the water for long.
I doubt there would have been anybody swimming in early March.
You want to put it down in as shallow water as possible. Flare it just before landing and stall it, and just mush it in.
Don't know Ford was high enough, or headed in the right direction to make a water landing.
Anyway, these are things that must run through a pilot's mind any time he takes off, "What if I lose power at 500 feet? Where can I put this thing down?"
Last year, a guy was down in south Florida, lost power, and made a beach landing and he hit two tourists on the beach and killed them.
We discussed that case at length on this forum.
Plane crash kills dad on beach, injures daughter
A small plane was forced to make an emergency landing on a Florida beach on Sunday afternoon, killing a father and critically injuring his daughter. The pilot, Karl Kokomoor, and his passenger, David Theen, were unharmed.
WTSP-TV, Tampa, Fla. 8 a.m. EDT July 28, 2014
Plane crash
SARASOTA, Fla. - Authorities say a father was killed and his daughter seriously injured when a small plane crash landed along Florida's Gulf Coast near Venice Beach.
Around 2:45 p.m. ET, Venice Airport contacted Sarasota Sheriff's Office regarding a small plane in distress that could not make it back to the airport.
Ommy Irizarry and his family from Georgia were walking on Caspersen Beach, about a mile from the Venice Beach pier, and may not have heard the plane approaching, according to a witness.
"I didn't hear anything, actually," said Zack Arceneaux, and speculated the plane's engine might not have been working when the plane crashed.
Irizarry, 36, was killed. His daughter, Oceana Irizarry, 9, was critically injured and airlifted to All Children's Hospital in Tampa.
Other family members were so traumatized they also sought treatment at a Venice hospital.
The pilot of the 1972 Piper Cherokee, 57-year-old Karl Kokomoor, and his 60-year-old passenger, David Theen, both of Englewood, Fla., were rescued and were uninjured, according to Wendy Rose, community affairs manager for the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office.
National Transportation and Safety Board investigators have headed to the site.
Fords crash looks like he whipped it into an accelerated stall at touchdown using the PT22s considerable elevator power. Note the
the tail wheel slammed down, wrinkling the fuselage just aft of the number and tearing off the tailwheel. Nose high and stalling, the left wing dropped as it does in a PT22 stall prior to spin and the contraption slammed down, digging in and traveling about 20 feet or so. The vertical (not horizontal) impact collapsed the left gear and wing flying wires with the vertical inertia downwardly ripping off the Kinner engine back to the ist cockpit. Poor brakes don't enter this event at all.
Downwind emergency landings affect outcomes greatly.
Cpt. Fun said Ford historically crashed multiple times.
That's a powerful statement.
Some pilots, and I knew a few, were accidents waiting to happen. One was an airline pilot who cartwheeled a Stearman killing his passenger and finally burying a club P51 at the bottom of a loop.
Statistics of serious crashes conclude these events are the consequence of 2-3 errors not one.
I see here from limited FACTUAL information; an attempt to return to airport, poor selection of landing site, failure to maintain flying speed and landing downwind.
In my book, his history doesn't earn him the benefit of doubt.
On this airplane there is also a possible issue of carbureter ice.
We'll see what the NTSB finds.
In 1999 he was a student in a helicopter with an instructor practicing auto-rotations with powered recovery. He was late in applying power, the helo landed hard, skidded on gravel and caught a tree trunk. It flipped over on its side. No people injuries, but he did break the helo.
In 2000 he was piloting a Beechcraft Bonanza in Lincoln Nebraska. Wind shear forced an emergency landing. Some damage to the plane, none to people.
That's all I find prior to this incident.
Small plane landed on Interstate with traffic and steered himself into the median just before a bridge. Bridge is to my left in the photo, out of the frame.
No one hurt in the plane or on the interstate. A good bit of plane control, IMO.
Brad Steele
To be too slow in applying power on the chopper at a critical phase of auto-rotation and again being to slow with power and airspeed in the Bonanza. He was behind both and maybe all three airplanes.
Banging up a Bonanza is hard to do if you're properly ahead of it.
If you're not, it'll bite you in the *. Being so easy to fly, it earned the title,"Doctor Killer" because it killed so many who thought they were better than they were and didn't stay ahead of it.
Does anyone know the PT22 best glide speed and rate of descent being under gross with one pilot?
Sometimes one needs to take an issue to extremes for a proper perspective.
Capt Sully having only one option, put a large jet, under no power, in the river at at least 150-175 knots without breaking up the airplane or seriously injuring anyone.
It was skill and good, timely decision making under pressure, not divine intervention.
What did he have, 1000 feet or less altitude?
Many pilots have made safe emergency landings at golf courses.
I wish him well but I wouldn't fly with him.
As to stall speed it seems that 60 mph is the magic number. This may actually be 60 kts as some modern references are unreliable and I have no flying experience with the PT-22. * are reported to make very little difference in stall speed or added lift.
Certainly Ford's PT running light would stall at slightly slower speeds than a fully loaded example. All the same he was moving at freeway speed when he touched down.
I do agree with others here that I'd be somewhat reluctant to fly with Mr. Ford. Perhaps he's touched with just a bit of bad luck and has been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or perhaps Mr. Ford has been very lucky considering the messages he's been sent and accidents survived. In any case I doubt I'll ever get that invite and perhaps suggest a nice gentle 172 for his next steed.
outside the cockpit and which may also true from open cockpit operation, may be wrong for aircraft that need to be flown by the numbers.
Let's accept this Ryan was not an AT or advanced trainer but a basic, primary trainer, designed and specially reinforced to take a beating from inexperienced students.
Wing angle was designed to be intolerant of mishandling & bad speed control.
At stall it purposely falls off into a spin to prepare students for heavier airplane
As such, trainers are intended be spun, landed dead stick plus all the primary maneuvers.
Having a golf course available is a gift.
Note there was no fire which raises the fuel question.
Many WW2 fighters and bombers made survivable landings as did Capt Sully whose rate of descent had to be greater that the PT's.
His vertical speed and degree of damage under his apparent conditions looks to me excessive. It wasn't an F4.
I believe again he was too slow with not enough forward speed to round out and arrest an excessive sink rate. If this airplane was so bad it would have killed off half the AAF student pilots.
PS: I just read he had 3,000 ft of altitude, buying him more options than with an engine failure at takeoff.
An open question is: Where was he at engine failure?