No because we fly in a rural area that is mostly agricultural land, some suitable for a quick rolling ditch (corn fields, etc.), but it's just as easy to drop into a cornfield than to plow into it and through it at 85mph with a half-tank of watery gas and a dead engine, and then hit the rolled hay bale the size of a small RV in the next field. Boom.
My hat is off to you for sure, LA Basin and general aviation? No thanks. I saw what happened to Kobe when his helo pilot got itchy and impatient. I see what happens when Harrison Ford gets into anything that flies.
“...we fly in a rural area...”
I’m from the central valley of California and a whole lot of agriculture, also. Best place to stick one at speed, right at stall, is alfalfa or milo. Worst places are plum, walnut, peach, orange trees and grape vineyards. Rice patties are a close second.
But with a forced landing you have a chance to make a choice what not to hit, also. So they both have their goods and bads. I’m old school and I have not been at the controls since 1985 in an S model Bonanza coming back from Beach Craft West and north from Van Nuys in L.A. Even at that time LAX was a mess and John Wayne was starting to take a lot of their commercial traffic shortly after 1990.
“My hat is off to you for sure, LA Basin and general aviation? No thanks.”
You’re always going to have a certain amount of pilot error. My problem down their is the commercial airlines using IFR approaches to ILS are not always reporting themselves where they actually are to get to a gate quicker. So a target 5 miles away can quickly get to be a couple of hundred yards coming out of the smaze moving a whole lot faster, and just as blind, as you are. And a 737 can take out a Bonanza real easy. Even something as stable as a King Air. Bug on the windshield.
But I fear San Francisco International more than LAX with bad cross winds to 28 left and 28 right, their main active runways. And ATC guys will pass the card to terminal parking too early and loose track of who is over each one. So all you can do as the little guy is kick the throttle to the firewall, jerk up the flaps and gear, reset the mixture, and try to stay alive at whatever the aircraft can give you until the tower figures it out or the big guy goes by you on the other runway. And for a 747 up or DC 10, it wouldn’t even be a bird hit to them and it would ground loop the little guy from the vortex alone if there was no actual contact.
wy69