Harrison Ford Saved Lives by Crashing Plane on Golf Course!

Ryan PT

Nonsense.  What is the strongest human instinct?  Bingo if you guessed "survival."  When an engine fails, (or some other malfunction that requires immediate action), a pilot's training kicks in -- and hopefully he or she has been trained well and the checklists and responses practiced.  One of the first things you do in a light aircraft after an engine failure is to determine what the best potential emergency landing site is -- within the gliding distance you have available.  Harrison Ford picked a likely one, and he made the wise choice to land on it apparently without any equivocation (which was probably also very important -- it's no time to be wishy-washy). 

Then you fly the airplane, without getting distracted from that most important task. Those who say that he "saved lives" by not hitting any place (like a building) where people could have been hurt show a complete lack of understanding of pilot training and flying realities -- you don't hit things like that because you get killed doing it.  And that's not in anyone's flight plan.  You want to get down safely, and you also don't want to prang up your flying machine (which is notoriously fragile and expensive). Picking a place on the ground that is hopefully smooth and good enough to get down on in one piece is primary - so you can walk away from that "perfectly good landing."  Worrying about people on the ground is by human nature, secondary.  So what I'm saying is, if you missed it, Mr. Ford was saving his own butt and more power to him.  Only if your chosen landing spot is on the other side of a crowded playground that you didn't initially see would you worry about "collateral damage."

Harrison Ford's piloting qualifications:  When I first saw the reports on Mr. Ford's forced landing, there were those whose first thought (and comments) were "what was he doing flying that pre-WWII vintage aircraft and was he qualified to do so" (?)  The first two letters in that aircraft's type are "PT."  That stands for PRIMARY TRAINER.  That's what raw newbies fly.  *What we might call "whuffos," to borrow a moniker.

Harrison Ford is no novice. He reportedly has hundreds, maybe even thousands of hours (I expect) of flying time in complex fixed wing aircraft (as well as others).  When I saw that question posed in a Hollywood-type tabloid article, as if his wealth and status might have gotten him into a situation that he couldn't "handle," I laughed out loud.  You could teach an 8-year old to fly a PT22 in 6 hours, 30 minutes.  That little airplane is slow, forgiving and built like a brick house (strong where it needs to be strong).  Maybe even overbuilt. Properly maintained, it could still be flying in another 50 or 100 years and it is simple enough to be rebuilt like new any time it needs it, hub to tailskid.  Back in the olden days, people built airplanes like this one in their own little shops. Actually, they still do.  And I'm not exaggerating, I have known men who did.  Think Orville and Wilbur and their brethren and sisteren. 

So, the lessons here are: (1) don't give any credence to what aircraft incident witnesses say about ANYTHING because they don't know what the hell they are talking about 99% of the time -- and -- don't let ANYONE write about aviation news unless they actually know something about the topic, because they invariably make fools of themselves with their sensational ignorance (and then people like me make fun of them). 

Harrison, keep the shiny side up and call me anytime buddy, I'd love to go flying with you.

*Whuffo.  Greenhorn, without knowledge in the topic at hand. "Whuffo you do this, whuffo you do that?"  Asker of dumb questions.