My CFI Landed her Bonanza on a street in Las Vegas!

dpgtime

Well-Known Member
My CFI Meiko Powers out of Van Nuys, CA, was flying to Las Vegas when on Final she had an engine failure! She managed to land the plane safely on a narrow residential street! She did a great job! She is meeting with the NTSB and FAA today....She has no clue what happened, no fuel starvation thats for sure.

Here is the Link:

http://www.ktnv.com/global/story.asp?s=8702034

I am curious if anyone has any ATC recordings from Henderson Field around the time of the incident.
 
If she was on with Las Vegas approach when this happen and you know exactly when you can look it up in the www.liveatc.net archives. There is a Las Vegas feed there.
 
wow thats crazy. She is lucky and very skilled. In my instrument class, this semester, my teacher played the recording of our head CFI's, and owner of the flight school, dead stick landing 13 miles out of Missoula MT in IMC. it's creepy man. He keeps his cool but you can tell he is nervous. He had a student in the plane as well so he had to stay cool. To this day he will not fly single engine IFR in the mountains.
 
wow thats crazy. She is lucky and very skilled.

Lucky, yes, very skilled, no more than anyone else should be. Any pilot should be able to do the same thing in the same situation/place. If they can't, they shouldn't be flying.
 
well i should of rephrased that. Yah i know you practice engine outs for your private single checkride so you should know exactly what to do but no where do you learn how to put it down on a road and navigate power lines, stop lights ext. If she was out in the middle of nowhere then yah it should of been a textbook engine out. when you bring in residential area's you better hope you have your liability insurance. Having never had an engine out i would not know (first hand) the amount of skill involved in landing on a road. I asume its a lot like landing on a runway. Not saying that luck was not a factor probably more so than unusual skill but i would think when you have the real deal emergency it's a lot different from your CFI telling you to grab a checklist to distract you and cut your throttle. I Know what to do if i had an engine out but actually putting those skills to use is a whole another thing. I don't know what would happen if it happened to me. I'm not anxious to find out ;).
 
yah it kind of sucks getting your instrument rating in the mountains. I have 55 hours of hood and zero actual. Unlike flying in on the coast. The main problem is the elevation. The OROCA's and MEA's are so high you need O2 or the freezing level comes into play and you will ice up unless you have de/anti ice. It is good training but i'm not about to go shoot an approach to minimums! even a light twin does not do very well on one engine at 5000+ feet.
 
wow thats crazy. She is lucky and very skilled. In my instrument class, this semester, my teacher played the recording of our head CFI's, and owner of the flight school, dead stick landing 13 miles out of Missoula MT in IMC. it's creepy man. He keeps his cool but you can tell he is nervous. He had a student in the plane as well so he had to stay cool. To this day he will not fly single engine IFR in the mountains.

I momentarily lost our number one engine on our RJ going into MSO in IMC. When I say that me, my copilot, and our jumpseaters hearts sank to the floor, I'm being modest. I can't imagine it in single engine IMC.
 
He said he was waiting to see trees the whole time. He had flown there many times during the day so he new the terrain and he knew he had to clear a big hill where the "M" is before he could descend into the valley. needless to say he is lucky to be alive. It's funny because on the recording you here the ATC guy in the back ground asking about his next flight plan and the other controller was like "he just dead sticked that thing from 13 miles out, he aint' goin anywhere" You'll have to here it. He'll fly over that spot with a student and say, "see that spot. I don't like that spot." I think thats why we don't do a lot of actual instrument at our school. He also does not let private pilots fly at night w/o an instrument rating in the school's planes. I don't blame him though. A student at Rocky (the 141 flight school in Billings) crashed at night on a cross country. He was scooting around some weather and his terrain alert went off. all he can remember is pulling up and waking up three hours later. The kid was really lucky. It was winter and all he was wearing was a tee shirt and shorts with no survival gear. a couple of days in the hospital but he is alright now. He ended up making shelter in the tail of the plane. The guy from our local FBO in Bozeman had to go over there to excavate the crash (i did not know you had to be rated for that, but there is a rating for everything) only to find it in a pile on the side of the road. Some one lost their job i'll bet. You're not supposed to touch a thing unless some one is in danger with out the proper training. After that happened all the planes our school rents had survival kit's put in the plane. So i guess the moral of the story is bring a jacket even if it's warm out and don't fly at night unless you really know what you are doing. I remember bitching at the owner about not be able to fly at night back when i did not have an instrument rating. He made a point to tell me, after the rocky student crashed, that that's why we aren't aloud to fly at night. any way i'll quit rambling but i can only imagine what would of happened if that kid did not have terrain installed.
 
He said he was waiting to see trees the whole time. He had flown there many times during the day so he new the terrain and he knew he had to clear a big hill where the "M" is before he could descend into the valley. needless to say he is lucky to be alive. It's funny because on the recording you here the ATC guy in the back ground asking about his next flight plan and the other controller was like "he just dead sticked that thing from 13 miles out, he aint' goin anywhere" You'll have to here it. He'll fly over that spot with a student and say, "see that spot. I don't like that spot." I think thats why we don't do a lot of actual instrument at our school. He also does not let private pilots fly at night w/o an instrument rating in the school's planes. I don't blame him though. A student at Rocky (the 141 flight school in Billings) crashed at night on a cross country. He was scooting around some weather and his terrain alert went off. all he can remember is pulling up and waking up three hours later. The kid was really lucky. It was winter and all he was wearing was a tee shirt and shorts with no survival gear. a couple of days in the hospital but he is alright now. He ended up making shelter in the tail of the plane. The guy from our local FBO in Bozeman had to go over there to excavate the crash (i did not know you had to be rated for that, but there is a rating for everything) only to find it in a pile on the side of the road. Some one lost their job i'll bet. You're not supposed to touch a thing unless some one is in danger with out the proper training. After that happened all the planes our school rents had survival kit's put in the plane. So i guess the moral of the story is bring a jacket even if it's warm out and don't fly at night unless you really know what you are doing. I remember bitching at the owner about not be able to fly at night back when i did not have an instrument rating. He made a point to tell me, after the rocky student crashed, that that's why we aren't aloud to fly at night. any way i'll quit rambling but i can only imagine what would of happened if that kid did not have terrain installed.

I remember when the Rocky student crashed this winter. My parents read that in the paper and made sure to tell me not to fly in the mountains especially during night. Nevermind the fact that I haven't flown since I got my license in '07 at UND.

Your planes didn't have any of survival gear in them until this happened? And no clothing requirements for winter flying?
 
Yah i know you practice engine outs for your private single checkride so you should know exactly what to do but no where do you learn how to put it down on a road and navigate power lines, stop lights ext.

The power lines and stop lights are where the luck comes in. You can't see a power line effectively, nor stop for a stop sign.

If she was out in the middle of nowhere then yah it should of been a textbook engine out. when you bring in residential area's you better hope you have your liability insurance.

Again with the luck. Haven't seen any extraordinary skill yet.

Having never had an engine out i would not know (first hand) the amount of skill involved in landing on a road. I asume its a lot like landing on a runway.

Of course it's the same. The only difference (that can be affected by something other than luck) is the mental one. If you can't overcome that, then you might want to re-think the piloting thing.

Not saying that luck was not a factor probably more so than unusual skill but i would think when you have the real deal emergency it's a lot different from your CFI telling you to grab a checklist to distract you and cut your throttle. I Know what to do if i had an engine out but actually putting those skills to use is a whole another thing. I don't know what would happen if it happened to me. I'm not anxious to find out ;).

Everybody wonders how they'll do. If your training was effective, you'll do fine. There's an "oh ####" moment, then you do what you've learned to do. Successfully handling an emergency requires only a few things. You first must not be the type to freeze or panic when something goes wrong. Second, you must not be an idiot, and be capable of thinking. There is, of course, luck involved to varying degrees. That's about it really, there is generally relatively little piloting skill involved except in the most extraordinary circumstances, this circumstance not being one of them.

Before you ask, yes, I've had a couple "oh ####" emergencies.
 
maybe they did but i was not told where and what it looked like til after the Rocky student crash. We don't have winter apparel requirements but i have my own now. Gotta have the gloves and hat just in case. I think i might get a hand held Transceiver/VOR as well.
 
She works for Continental Flight School out of Van Nuys, CA. She is in my opinion a pretty good CFI , I would recommend her to anyone flying out of the Los Angeles region. I did my crosswind training touchups with her last week in the Mojave desert with 20 degree off the nose gusting to 30 winds...she kept her cool as well as myself, She allowed me to feel focused. Her Name is Meiko Powers if anyone is interested.
 
I flew her Bonanza N65HP and i have some vids on youtube in this very plane that had the engine failure...you can check it out its under my youtube name: dpgtime

The amazing part is that the Bonanza is high powered and most definitley harder to control with no power...its not a c150 with 3,000:0 glide ratio.
 
OK it was all luck. Jeeze, i swear all people do is argue on this site. You should see my other post. People are ripping me a new one because i can't spell and it has nothing to do with the topic (http://forums.jetcareers.com/general-topics/69931-almost-a-commercial-pilot-what-to-do-now.html). This is what i CAN'T stand about online forms. people post things that have near nothing to do with the original post. I could honestly argue with you all day long about weather it was skill or it was luck. it would just be a wast of my time.
 
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