Highway to Ruin: The crash of Southern Airways flight 242 (2022)
admiralcloudberg.medium.com
admiralcloudberg.medium.com
There was a fascinating book, called Outside Lies Magic[0], where he talks about these kinds of things.
[0] https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/john-r-stilgoe/ou...
This approach would have resulted in the absolute minimum cost of acquiring the land to build the highway, so it is probably why I-57 looks the way it does. It's pretty easy to imagine that the only reason I-57 exists is as a political quid-pro-quo and therefore they'd try to build it as cheaply as possible. If you wanted to go from Chicago to Memphis & New Orleans, you could take I-55, but then you also have to go through the state capital and St. Louis. So instead, if you live in the politically-powerful areas on the Southside of Chicago (where the first mayor Daley lived - perhaps the most powerful mayor in America back when the Interstate system was started), you could have a highway built specifically for you! You don't have to waste time driving past the people you hate on the west side, you can skip the people you hate in Springfield, you can skip the people you hate in St. Louis, and then the Interstate ends when it connects back up with I-55 north of Memphis.
PS - Chanute got BRACC'ed about 30 years ago.
Brilliant move - suddenly there's an abundance of airstrips all over.
(Finnish fighters landing and refueling from highway stops. Including the US-built FA-16A Hornet.)
[0] https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/motoring/the-h...
<https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Vj_eJxy8ojk>
<https://yewtu.be/watch?v=D0KADbVDkn8>
<https://yewtu.be/watch?v=UUr5KWEQNxc>
Note the full deployment of speed brakes in the 1st & 2nd videos particularly. I've never seen the F-18 Hornet rear brake (between the twin tails) before.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/landing-of-hope-and-glory/
The two biggest arguments against using highways as runways are:
1. Airports are not at all rare, even in rural areas. If an enemy could succeed in making all airports (even in just a single region) unusable, they could do the same to major cities, and have pretty much already won the war.
2. Sacrificing a lot of ground mobility for a little bit of air power is extremely unlikely to ever be a worthwhile trade-off.
It may, indeed, be false, but I'm not sure if that Snopes thing is really saying that. It's talking about a fairly specific example.
* No, interstate highways in the US are not required by regulation to be designed for military use.
* Yes, the military is aware that highways are an option for landing if need be, and they have even trained to do this.
* Regardless, the military doesn't really need highways to be required by law to be designed for landing for them to serve that practical purpose. A scenario in which US military bases and airports are blown up is a pretty extreme scenario to plan for anyway. There are almost 20,000 airports in the US.
* Some other countries do impose design requirements by law for highways to be used as runways.
I think you mean "military aircraft use", because it's a well-known fact that the U.S. Interstate Highway System was conceived and implemented to facilitate movement of troops and materiel in the event of a war on the home front.
The problem, though, was getting it off the ground. Mechanics stripped it of everything they could. Then put just enough gas in to get it to Heathrow. The pilot was one brave mofu, and he got the job done.
In the Netherlands you could drive an entire armored division straight into the capital over the many highways. Some of them you could land a Boeing 747 on. Roads are important Infrastructure that you take for granted like power and clean water.
It’s pretty easy to defend against an invading force if they have to all go nose to tail in one line on infrastructure that you know everything about. You can further limit where they go by disabling choke points like bridges, and just destroying the roads faster than the engineers can repair them.
It used to be that if it took 4 hours or more to drive to a place, it was worth taking a plane. I remember those days fondly. Flying was convenient, enjoyable, and drama free.
Now, with the TSA and the ever longer FAA delays, the cutoff is more like 10 hours.
Or maybe one of the pilots had turned toward it, having spent time in the area during his military service (see earlier in the article). Maybe they turned toward it but the weather in that direction turned out to be terrible so they tried for the recommended airports... Maybe.
https://ashevilleoralhistoryproject.com/2013/07/08/lucky-few...
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/... (page 50)
Nickname, maybe.
Edit: It's one of her middle names, which I learned from her obituary, rest in peace.
Apparently they are uncommon in US? I guess there are enough general airstrips and open space to make them not necessary
I understand that Ukraine put to good use its highways after the initial Russian attack that temporarily put out of order many of its airports.
Sounds like it wouldn't work for an emergency landing?
There’s still the middle barrier etc., so in a planned conversion that would be removed, a control tower of sorts set up etc.
But in todays traffic, you’d probably not find a gap large enough to squeeze an airliner in. And I don’t think these are still maintained as air strips, at least in Germany.
Trivia: Ramstein Air Base was originally also an autobahn air strip used by the nazis during the last months of the war, then the US forces occupied it, and the autobahn had to be rerouted.
Wider runways also make it easier to land/takeoff in a wider range of weather conditions. If you plan to routine use something, it's worth removing the barriers.
The actual "failure" loads are orders (yes, plural) of magnitude higher and most failures aren't the kind of catastrophic thing that people on the internet typically try and imply unless you get really unlucky and your mountainside shelf road turns into a landslide. Failure usually means you park a heavy object somewhere and come back hours/days/weeks/months later and find that it sank or slid slowly downhill in that time.
Short of maybe, maybe, landing a fully laden C5 on everglade highway or redefining landing to include crashes where the tires happen to be the first bit to crash you are going to have a hell of a time displacing the road bed a meaningful amount with an aircraft without destroying the aircraft. They are simply not strong. They have to be light enough to fly you know.
Never-mind the fact that they used to fly these things off of dirt strips...
At best you might displace the asphalt a little and leave some ruts behind you. Remember, these are vehicles on pneumatic tires. Their point loads aren't high enough to really cut through pavement. All you can do it smoosh it out of the way. And the road bend was made of gravel of particular size and roughness and then gone over with compacting equipment to prevent exactly that from happening, albeit over time.
https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/2721902/a-10...
Later, WWII lead to the construction of even more airfields for pilot training. So many pilots were being trained that the training bases didn't have the capacity for the pattern practice, so many training airfields had multiple "outlying fields" that were just extra sets of runways a few miles away. Some of these turned into municipal airports later, but many more were abandoned for lack of need. By the time the freeway system was built, the US was positively lousy with airports, much denser than seen in most other countries.
Not in the US but in Canada, and technically not an highway but a racetrack.
Technically.
Unless "of a commercial aircraft" is implied. Because a private plane landed on 280 (in the Bay Area) back in the 1980s. I actually met the pilot who did it; his engine threw a rod and he was not going to get back to Palo Alto Airport.
Fortunately, a freeway has plenty of room, if there aren't cars on it.
the biggest risk is still probably power lines, not cars. a small aircraft landing on a road will be going about the same speed as highway traffic, so unless it's really busy, drivers will usually notice an airplane in front of them and have time to slow down.
> Lastly, one other safety lesson which came from flight 242 may not have come about due to any recommendation or research project: among pilots, it seems that the crash permanently killed the idea of landing large airliners on highways. This Hollywood staple makes for good cinema, but in real life it usually ends in catastrophe — and while McKenzie and Keele were not the first to discover this, they were the last, as no passenger jet pilot has tried again since.
I'm sure the author is aware that small planes still occasionally land on highways.
says so right there. The author explains stuff in a way for laypersons to understand. I actually prefer some of the imprecise "color" the author ads to his write-ups of crashes.
as an aside i imagine the damage to the road surface (and probably subsurface) would be astounding.
No - "large airliners" is specifically spelled out. Unless this private pilot was in a 737 or whatever, the statement is still true.
Since you are talking about KPAO, it was definitely a small aircraft.
GA aircraft land on highways often. The only reason that doesn't happen more frequently is that pilots are generally concerned about causing ground casualties. Usually what would prompt this would be an engine failure. A silent aircraft trying to land among high speed traffic makes for a dangerous scenario.
Is it an oversight? Well, I once used a title that was different from the title of the URL, and it got Flagged. Dang upheld the flagging. Now I know better.
In the interest of assuming good faith (as the guidelines suggest) we should assume the ambiguity is an oversight.
https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/local/2023/01/21/small-p...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRUdFOuHvGM
> no passenger jet pilot has tried again since (emphasis added)
As a CFI, and lifelong aviation nutcase.. one who has been described by a few of my instructors in the past as 'morbidly' researching aviation accidents kind of obsessively (other instructors of mine realize on the contrary its a very wise past-time), this is a particular MASSIVE peeve of mine.
Just a few months ago here in Atlanta a small single engine plane made an emergency landing on I-985 (actually on an exit ramp leading off of it), around 5PM .. Anyone around here knows that interstate and exit ramp would be packed around that time of day. But somehow, thankfully, no cars were wrecked and the plane/pilot survived with just a collapsed main gear. Well.. directly adjacent, and in the exact same direction of travel of the exit ramp was a wide opened, plowed, clay field that was being prepped for a building construction.
I don't know if flight simulator (how i started as a kid actually) or something else is to blame, but so many new pilots get this idea in their head of emergency landing on roads/highways .. and that is such a horrible idea with reasons that should be obvious to anyone.. regardless of being a pilot or not.
Imagine for a second your wife/gf or partner were picking up the kids or whatever and driving home on that exit ramp that day.. All of a sudden a plane comes out of nowhere and of course frightens the heck out of them.. they regain focus on the road to see the car in front has slammed on brakes for the same reason.. before they know it.. a high-speed impact has happened, with injuries or worse to the occupants (all the while the emergency landing plane glides effortlessly to a stop on the exit ramp.. leaving a wake of destruction.)
That example is just showing what can happen to everyone else, the story this is attached to is a perfect example of what can actually happen to the plane and occupants itself.
Power lines, tree limbs, cars, power poles, .. all exist around roads. If you are making an emergency landing.. look for a field first, only if everything on the ground is covered by trees and no grass/dirt/field exists to land on should you resort to landing on a road.
In the case of an airliner its the same story, even though yes they are heavier.. and there will be more landing gear "dig" into the turf/soil/grass than in a small plane.. but the fundamental reasons why you want to avoid roads are the same.. you'll just have to compensate with your angle and velocity at landing.. oh btw.. soft grass/turf do also help with absorbing some of the E from the landing.
There's a reason they come in this order, because in a total loss of power situation your best bet is to preserve your gliding ability as much as possible (for which any maneuver could compromise) until you know for sure where you want to touch down.
https://www.google.com/maps/@36.3953268,-104.5952232,3a,75y,...