Water or Trees?

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

paulb

Wednesday, July 03, 2002 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Edited By: Omar Filipovic

Key Takeaways:

The article challenges the long-held belief that water ditching is inherently safer than land-based forced landings, finding comparable overall fatality rates (around 90% survival) for both, even in trees.
While survival rates are similar, the likelihood of sustaining injuries (especially serious ones) is significantly higher when making a forced landing in trees compared to ditching in water.
Among land options, open fields present the lowest injury rates, making them a more survivable choice than trees or roads; the primary focus in any emergency landing should be occupant survival, not aircraft preservation.

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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?