A whole lot of luck on display in this clip:



You can see both occupants of the Cessna get out and walk away with minimal apparent injury. I'd have run to the minimart to get a handful of lottery tickets if I were that kid who nearly got hit.

This kind of crash-worthiness is a decent trade off for lot of that cool factor that you give up when choosing to fly a spam can Cessna single.

I think this is the first time I've heard someone praise the crash worthiness of a cessna single.

Look at his attitude when the aircraft hits..... Looks like it's stalling, mid-wing drop, or in a steep turn. Very high rate of descent.

I could not believe how fast the occupants get out, and their apparently unharmed condition. Ideal result!

A Cessna is not an unusually crash-worthy aircraft, this was just an extremely lucky crash where the empennage and wings soaked up all the energy like they were purpose-built crumple zones. They cannot have landed like that on purpose!

I have to say, the way that video is branded is terrible. Click-bait much?

They hit basically backwards. Maybe that’s what saved them. I think this video shows two lucky dudes and one extremely lucky kid.

Yes, he appeared to be trying a coordinated turn to miss the tree. Had the left wing not hit the tree, he would have put the right wing into the ground and cartwheeled. Hopefully the pole vault type cartwheel off the right wing would have taken the tucking engine and windmilling prop over the kid.

Proper techniques would have been a right wings level skid to miss the tree, but that would have got the kid with the prop. Of course there was the nice field they overflew. Small but large enough to get down in, if not going too fast.

No, high winged airplanes do not normally crash well. Load factor had definitely eaten up the extra airspeed. Without the tree impact, the nose would have impacted the ground hard.

All in all a nicely done forced landing. He was going too fast to make the field, used coordinated rather than rudder turn, but stayed with it and didn't lose control. Slow and wings level are generally best at the bottom of a forced landing, but few are trained that way.

asa wrote:I think this is the first time I've heard someone praise the crash worthiness of a cessna single.

It's anecdotal, but I have witnessed a few and am aware of many bad accidents in Cessna singles where the airframe was torn to hell where everyone got out and walked away nearly or entirely unscathed.

It might be that there are more Cessna's out there, so more data points. I fly with my family in my skywagon often and feel pretty well protected if the show were to go sideways for any reason.

propeller26 wrote:They hit basically backwards. Maybe that’s what saved them. I think this video shows two lucky dudes and one extremely lucky kid.

They certainly hit that tree completely backward, empennage first. I just slowed it down and went frame by frame. There must have been a preceding impact before they enter the view to get them turned around like that.

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