https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgQAiG3 ... 18ImnJWolk

Scary experience. Well documented with a camera. I definitely need to review my water ditching procedure. I think in the 180 I am opening the door and putting the lock down so I can get out. I make the flight up to Eastsound and Friday Harbor a couple times a year from Portland and there is a short run over water. When I first got my private pilot I flew from KMYF (Montgomery field) to Catalina in C172. I climbed to 6500 feet for a 52 nm flight from Oceanside to Catalina airport (KAVX). My friend leaned back to get something out of his bag in the back seat. I didn't realize but he hit the fuel selector from being on both to slight to the right. I didn't notice it at the time but the engine quit about 5 minutes later. I had about 65 hours of flight time. I went through my emergency check list and of course checked the fuel. I switched the fuel selector to the left tank and power came back on. I have been scared of flying over water since. One thing I take from this incident - is that any plane fresh out of repair work needs to be flown over flat terrain. He probably shouldn't have been out 2-3 miles out to sea but overall I think this guy did a great job staying calm.

Josh

Next time you fly to the San Juans just cross south of Anacortes at 4500’, should be more than enough to glide to land from the halfway point.


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The A36 makes a good single use seaplane as it turns out.

When I fly across large bodies of water, like going out to Catalina, I also keep an eye where the ships are so if needed I could ditch alongside one and get picked up rather than run over.

Keeping an eye on surface ships was what I did when I flew up the Chesapeake Bay. That bay is huge.

No floatation stuff onboard .? Nothing ? That far offshore without anything to float with after ditching ? Yea ok , good job on the landing I guess .

I watched this video right after it happened and was more in awe of how he stayed calm and made a really nice water landing. The whole social media and video in real time was interesting but also raised some questions about intent. There is a huge discussion on Beechtalk right now about whether or not he staged the event for publicity. I will give him the benefit of the doubt on this one because I just don't think anyone would be stupid enough to risk the life of another person let alone themselves. For me - the accident is about reviewing my ditch procedures. I found this article to be a good read.


http://d113-cloud.d11nr.info/documents/ ... odule9.pdf

I'm pretty new here and debated on posting this here as it may not pertain directly enough to the backcountry flying focus of the site. But, the PIC in this ditch situation was accused earlier this year of creating a bit of a ruckus in the Colorado backcountry community. He was accused of blatant out of bounds snowmobiling in July.

https://www.postindependent.com/news/fo ... ial-media/

As I'm sure you folks know motorized wilderness access is on the chopping block in many areas, guys like this sure make things harder for that issue. And here I am giving the fella more attention which seems to be his goal.

Glad to see the guy and passenger made it just sure hope it wasn't staged. Probably should have staged a flotation device or two.