Responded to aviation incident / crash

IndianaPilot

IndianaPilot

Well-Known Member
After 15 years in the fire/ems service, few days ago responded to an aviation incident for the first time. Call came in for an "unknown plane crash", with multiple calls on it. Got our attention for sure, not knowing details or aircraft type. PD arrived before us and advised it was a small aircraft. We got there and found a 172 in the woods, on the side of a hill as seen in the pics. Single pilot had a broken leg, but was walking towards us and not feeling much due to adrenaline. An airport employee had assisted him in getting out. This occured off the end of a short runway, that was 3125x40 feet. Airport is known for being difficult, short runway with woods / trees on both ends as well as sloping ground. Actually got a chance to talk to the pilot later in the day at the hospital, and he gladly shared the story. He said he was in the flare when a deer ran out and stopped. He attempted to pull up to drift over it, but when he got to the other side of the deer he was almost out of runway and didnt have time or room to climb out on a go around. Landed in the grass and then into the woods and down the hill. Was glad he shared the story with me, always something to learn ! It was interesting as well to watch the investigators and see things from their perspective. They got there pretty fast, within an hour surprisingly !
 

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Glad he was okay.
Maybe Indiana should extend their critter-killin' season to help keep our roads and runways safer.
 
Was the airplane intentionally targeted at the most critical point of the flight by a suicide-terrorist deer?
We need to arm all aircraft, just in case.
"Too close for missiles, switching to guns!"
 
modernicarus said:
Was the airplane intentionally targeted at the most critical point of the flight by a suicide-terrorist deer?
We need to arm all aircraft, just in case.
"Too close for missiles, switching to guns!"
Click to expand...

I don't think it was a real deer ..... It was a robot .... with cameras for eyes .....


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Funny word of caution about deer problems. We had a problem at my home airport, so they unleashed some local hunters on them. That was great, but the hunters would field dress the kills out in the woods and leave piles of guts everywhere. We then proceeded to have a huge vulture problem! There would be two or three columns sometimes stacked up a couple thousand feet with the bottom birds peeling off to go feed. Reminded me of the "stack" I've heard about over in the sand box...
 
Oh lovely.....imagine what a vulture would do to a small plane , that would be like a midair


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IndianaPilot said:
Oh lovely.....imagine what a vulture would do to a small plane , that would be like a midair


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In my experience, they seem to want to avoid a catastrophic demise as much as I do. They tend to split s down, so always go above them when avoiding. The most nervous I got was coming up to one from behind and below. Wasn't sure if they knew I was there or not! (This is all back when I was traveling at 90 knts of course.)
 
Well I'm glad to hear the pilot is safe now, and I wish him a speedy recovery from the broken leg.

bucksmith said:
In my experience, they seem to want to avoid a catastrophic demise as much as I do. They tend to split s down, so always go above them when avoiding. The most nervous I got was coming up to one from behind and below. Wasn't sure if they knew I was there or not! (This is all back when I was traveling at 90 knts of course.)
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It's generally best to avoid any birds by going above them, since they're more likely to dive than climb to escape being struck. Naturally it's much easier for a bird to descend rapidly than climb rapidly. I've had plenty of close encounters with vultures and other birds but, at least so far, they've always managed to get out of the way just when you're wondering if they won't. It can be pretty impressive, actually, considering how much faster we are than them.
 
Had a sister wreck a car and just about kill herself because she swerved to avoid a squirrel that ran out into the road. While my dad was glad she survived, he was merciless in his condemnation of trying to kill yourself to save a rodent.
 
Roger Roger said:
Not to MMQB too much, but this is the exact situation the go-around was made for.
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Though it's possible that on such a short runway, a go-around runs the risk of going into the trees at high(er) speed.

Every time I see a crash reconstruction where an airplane attempted to go around and went off the runway at high speed, full power, accelerating, I can't help but think how much more likely survival would have been rolling off the end of the runway at 30kts, or even 60. Pretty? No. Injuries? I'm sure there would be many. But less overall death.

Seems like it's often difficult to reverse the trend return to "takeoff."
 
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