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Water or Trees?

When faced with a controlled forced landing, water offers little danger. Surprisingly, the same is true of heading for the trees.

Gemini Sparkle

Key Takeaways:

  • Controlled forced landings, whether on water (ditching) or land (including trees), have similarly high survival rates, typically above 90%.
  • While survival rates are comparable, the likelihood of sustaining any injury, and especially serious injury, is considerably higher when landing in trees compared to ditching in water.
  • Among land options, open fields generally present the lowest risk of injury, while trees and roads carry a higher probability of serious injury during a forced landing.
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If you fly long enough and often enough, sooner or later youll face the prospect of having to put an airplane on the deck in a hurry. If youre lucky, itll be due to just a sick passenger or maybe a rough engine. But it could just as well be a full-up-oil-on-the-windshield forced landing.

In the latter, youre confronted with the sudden and unavoidable question of where to put the thing down. Is a road the best choice? An open plowed field? Settling into a dense pine forest? A nice lake, near the shore?

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