Slashdot Mirror
Harrison Ford's Plane Crashes On Golf Course
First time accepted submitter dark.nebulae writes Harrison Ford's PT-22 crash landed on a golf course in Los Angeles. From the article: "Actor Harrison Ford was hospitalized Thursday afternoon after a single-engine plane he was piloting crashed onto a Venice golf course shortly after takeoff. Just before 4:30 p.m. a family member confirmed to NBC4 that the actor is 'fine' and suffered a few gashes. Aerial footage of the minutes after the crash showed the small single-engine vintage World War II trainer plane crashed on the ground at Penmar Golf Club, and one person being treated by paramedics and being transported to a hospital. Firefighters described his injuries were described as 'moderate.'"
He said he could fly a plane but not land one.
Thank God it looks like he'll be alright. Imagine how horrible it would be to have lost a main Star Trek and main Star Wars actor in the same week. Geekdom wouldn't have survived.
Flying a PT-22 ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through the walk of fame, or bounce off a golf club and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it.
Never tell him the odds.
Apparently he was flying solo...
All the worlds indeed a
"It's not my fault!"
Just before the crash, Sean Connory popped up in the back seat and tapped Ford on the shoulder, pointing to the tail and saying "Sorry, they got us".
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Rumor has it that shortly before the crash, his chinese copilot jumped out of the plane with only a parachute after saying "goodbye dr jones, muahahaha."
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I believe the new tool to survive all disasters is a fridge.
Glad he's apparently (basically) alright. I fly small planes and they're incredibly awesome, and very liberating and fun, but... yeah, they have only one engine and if it quits you have a problem ("it's a fan to keep the pilot cool - turn it off and watch him sweat!"). Every pilot is constantly keeping an eye out for landing sites, and unlike non-pilots we love heights because it means gliding distance to make it to one. Takeoff is obviously the worst time to lose an engine, and in some ways the most likely - you're really demanding 100% of the performance of the engine, propeller, etc, at a low airspeed (=less cooling) and you're doing it for the first time since you got in the plane. You might think you can make it back to the airport - but that's such a bad idea it's called "the impossible turn" since you'll waste some of your precious lift making the turn. This is why we check our engines thoroughly - regularly with maintenance, and in particular with a "run-up" to high power immediately before takeoff to check the gauges and systems at that high throttle position. But stuff still goes wrong every once in a while, and then you have to do what you can. A bunch of pilot coworkers are in the area and one swung by to check it out. He said that the (wood) prop was intact, which suggests that it wasn't even turning ("windmilling") at impact time, and that he did a bang-up job landing that thing with no engine - golf courses aren't great compared to say an empty field, but if those are in short supply they do quite well. A golf course near my airport is my contingency plan as well - let's hope I never need it.
And lest anybody think otherwise, Harrison Ford is quite an experienced airplane and helicopter pilot, with thousands of hours. He even did his own flying in a movie where he played a pilot (apparently this gave the insurance company a heart attack and he had to fight them on it). So he probably handled it better than most pilots would.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Harrison is such a badass that he survived the crash and was awake and alert when he was taken to hospital.
Looking at the pictures, he glided the aircraft to an open field and landed without the landing gear. This picture shows the cockpit intact, as well as the skidmarks from the belly-first landing.
:)
Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. If the aircraft is still serviceable afterwards, it was an excellent landing.
This was definitely a good landing
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
Looking at the pictures, he glided the aircraft to an open field and landed without the landing gear.
The PT-22 doesn't have retractable landing gear. They were there. They probably broke off in the crash. What he did is pretty much all you can do if you lose an engine at that phase of departure (all fixed wing aircraft departing KSMO on 21 turn to climb out over Penmar - a municipal, public 9-hole golf course - for noise abatement). Here's me departing that same runway over that same golf course, a little bit ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fv0_gLG3C4 He was probably 2-300' AGL, not high enough to return to land on 3.
geek. lawyer.
I saw the incident from my back yard. I was out there working on a Mr. Protocol column when I heard a particularly loud single-engine plane take off. What caught my attention was a sound I've only ever heard in the movies: the engine stuttered once, then stopped dead. I got up and looked to see if what I'd heard was really true, and saw the plane, with prop not moving, bank sharply in a 180 degree turn and start gliding back to the airport. I listened for a crash, since he was rather low, but didn't hear one. I'm glad he made the golf course and missed the neighborhood. (Look at a map: it's pretty obvious that the sole purpose of the Penmar Golf Course is to catch planes that don't make it. It happens often enough that I've wondered if they have course rules for playing around temporary obstacles with wings.)