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Comment by db65edfc7996 | Hacker News Reader

From the safety of my armchair, it feels reasonable to go to a known landmark? It is a lot easier for search and rescue to find a crashed plane that a guy wandering on the ground. Additionally, the plane might contain salvageable food, water, medkit, etc.

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All else being equal yes. But all else is far from equal here. The plane is on a slope in the brush. There is a clear flat riverbed nearby. When those are your choices, you definitely want to pick the riverbed because that's where water the the path to civilization are.

And indeed he did eventually get himself to the riverbed. If he'd just landed there in the first place he would have shaved many hours off the hike and avoided nearly falling off a cliff.

In the video it sounded like he thought the plane had a water jug in it and was talking about how thirsty he was. That part was reasonable to me. But as a non-pilot the flight itself was pretty sketchy.

It looks like he ditched it on the hurricane deck, that's as close to a landmark as you'll get in that range. It's more or less the midpoint of a 20-mile wide mountain range, pretty sure he could've glided far enough to get to plains on either side.

It's worth noting that there's decent cell service there if you just hike up to a ridge. Fair number of other hikers out on the trails too, his odds of bumping into somebody within a couple hours was high.

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