In Australia, a Cessna light aircraft's engine failed, but the pilot managed to steer it away from residential buildings.

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"Fuck the landing gear, fuck the prop, get on the ground!"

Damn fine job, pilot! (And I mean that in all seriousness. Landing gear and prop can be replaced).

No joke! Looks like he was fighting a crosswind on the approach no less.

I saw this on the news yesterday. It was insane. The guy who stepped out was seemed so calm.

From the size and proximity of the projected shadow, how close do folks think that plane buzzed over that last building?
The left wing tip, it looked less than a wing span away in hight. Yikes!

Yea, not very high for sure. Watching his shadow jump up and shrink made me cringe. His shadow was only slightly larger than the plane.

Amazing that such a small plane could fit the massive balls that the pilot has.

That's wild, my heart skipped about a dozen beats!

Bonkers. Perfect video for this community. Thanks for sharing.

Imagine what those drivers were thinking, if they were looking up.

Your basic small-engine pilot nightmare. That last big building was an extra heart-attack.

Glad they walked away safely.

This is why I prefer small planes to huge jets. Smaller planes are more likely to become gliders if the engines break, larger ones are more likely to just become stones.

The glide ratio of a Cessna 172 is about 9:1, video is from a T210N Centurion II, a similarly sized but heavier plane, so its gliding capabilities are worse.

The glide ratio of an Airbus A320 is 17:1.

A huge Airbus is much better at gliding than a small Cessna.

Which is better at barrel rolls?

Near the end of the flight, the aircraft was seen performing a barrel roll over Puget Sound, recovering approximately ten feet (3 m) above the water.

This is the craziest Wikipedia article I've read in a while.

Feel sad for the dudes mental health state, but damn, what a way to go. A well executed barrel roll in a q400, seemingly without prior flight experience. Wild.

Still reading the article, but I felt compled to comment on the level of detail:

Both [fighter jets] [...] reached supersonic speeds, which generated sonic booms on the way to the Puget Sound area. [emphasis added]

Are these sonic booms relevant to the actual incident? Probably not. But the author decided it was part of the events and decided to include it and I find that endearing.

  1. Sonic booms are cool

  2. Could have been a part of the incidence investigation to rule out that the crash was caused by the wake turbulence of the fighter jets going supersonic.

  1. agreed
  2. That may well be the reason they were noted in the first place, but the article makes no further mention of them if they were relevant, so it's still an editorial choice whether to include that detail. There is no informational value to it, it doesn't affect the rest of the article, just a minor note "fast plane make boom" because it's cool.
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But muh intuition says otherwise, so must be false.

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You should prefer the bigger ones haha. The big planes have two engines and complete redundancy, two pilots who have more experience, turbine engines which are more reliable, better glide ratio so they can glide further, higher cruise levels so they can glide even further. I fly that plane in the video for work and I cross my fingers when we go over dense trees or water because those 1980's planes are always giving us trouble!

Out of curiosity, what do you do for work that involves flying a light aircraft like this?

Probably Instructor, to become the big jet pilots you have to start on the small planes.

Ultralight FTW! Some of them have a handle in the cockpit you can pull, that releases a parachute for the entire aircraft!

I wish this was an option for more passenger planes. Not that they need it. But I'd like to know they have it lol

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