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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:

  • The article re-evaluates the safest emergency landing surfaces, comparing aircraft ditchings in water with forced landings on various land terrains, particularly trees.
  • Research indicates that the fatality rate for controlled ditchings in water and forced landings in trees is surprisingly similar, both yielding approximately a 90% survival rate.
  • However, while survival rates are comparable, emergency landings in trees carry a significantly higher risk of serious injuries compared to ditching in water, with open fields generally offering the best injury outcomes on land.
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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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