What do you do with a GA plane in the road?

deek

deek

New Member
So I was driving to a friends house here in Houston and came across a bunch of cops and news crews, just to find a C152 sitting in the road crosswise (on fairbanks road north of 290 but inside the beltway for the locals) almost like it laded cross traffic and stopped in the two lanes going north, not sure how it happened but looks like everything was okay otherwise.

But I'm wondering what do you do with it now? If it ran out of gas, guess you could fuel it up and wires not with standing, close the road and take off. But what if it was mechanical and the engine is dead. Do you pick it up and put it on the back of a flatbed? Just curious.
 
From my experience(a friend of a friend) they just bring a mechanic out, take the wings off, put it on a trailer and call it a day. From my understanding, it doesn't take much to take the wings off. If you only knew how little the bolts are that hold a plane together. Observing a 100 hr inspection should be required for the private.
 
I might have seen the same plane today. The wife and I were driving north on 249, took our exit on Spring Cypress, and on the feeder with us were two trucks. One TOWING (yes, I said towing, not trailering) the cessna down the road, and the other with a trailer with the wings on it. They were going pretty slow, and I assume they were headed for DWH.
 
Wings were kept on this guy when it landed on the parkway near BLM.

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deek said:
Do you pick it up and put it on the back of a flatbed? Just curious.
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In my case, a State Patrolman puts his arm around you and says "Son, if we have to fill out an air-accident form it will take all day -- this looks like something completely different -- you had a problem and you dealt with it -- in fact it looks like a fine landing to me and you can get this cleaned up before dark ... right?"

The NTSB released the airplane to them, told them they could move it once to some reasonably secure place and we had to call them back.

One of the neighbors calls his brother-in-law and gets a flatbed trailer, wings sticking out, one squad car in front, one in back, and we had to shimmy it around one or two telephone poles. Put it in an automobile impound lot and called AVEMCO the next morning.

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HeyEng said:
I imagine you call your insurance company and they make the arrangements.
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Yes. As odd as the situation seems to the individual involved, the insurance company has dealt with the same problem many times before and has the appropriate contacts.
 
I was actually on final for 35L when this happened and got to here the whole thing which was an amazingly strange experience altogether. Apparently the guy lost his engine on climb out-speculation- and elected for the road option instead of trying to stretch the glide back to DWH, which was a smart decision considering all the people who have died lately while trying to re-engineer there aircrafts glide slope. Anyways hearing the mayday radio call was an absolutely terrifying experience and something I hope to never here again; "mayday mayday Cessna Cardinal 9 miles south going down" Tower "Can you return to the field, is there anything we can do" Cessna Cardinal- "no my engine is out and I'm going downc..I think I'm heading for the road". After that there was nothing but silence and I was so overwhelmed with what was going on that I bounced the dam airplane all the way down the runway. After clearing the active I chatted briefly with ground and told them we would keep everyone in our prayers, she thanked us and said that she was doing the same. It must have been a surreal experience to be a controller on such a call and even more so to have been that Pilot who appears to have done a masterful job. It's just too bad that there not giving out book deals for putting your Cessna down on the highway, damm Sully!
 
I saw the local news report and they showed some people pushing off the road and into the grass, looks like the front nose wheel popped off, the strut was still there, just no wheel, and the right wing tip had some damage.
He's pretty far away from hooks, I would think Weiser would have been closer at that point. Either way good job.
 
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