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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:

  • While the common perception was that water ditching is the safest, research indicates that controlled emergency landings in both water and trees offer comparably high survival rates (around 90%).
  • The primary difference between a water ditching and a tree landing lies in the injury risk: forced landings in trees carry a significantly higher chance of serious injury compared to ditching in water.
  • For emergency landings on land, open fields present the best outcomes, showing lower injury and fatality rates compared to landing in trees or on roads.
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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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