Pipers are mercifully easy to fly.
Driver’s response is perfect:
Are you kidding me!?
Aw hell, I was talking on my cell phone and missed the whole thing.
Reminds me of that movie with a Space Shuttle landing on a highway.
It sorely missed a scene of a rastafarian-style driver in a convertible, seeing the low-flying shuttle above him, looking at the shuttle, at the joint he smokes, and saying, with surprised admiration, “wow…”.
…Good stuff!
I think the stall speed of most low wing six seat Pipers is around 60knots, I would prefer to try it in a Cessna 172 where full flaps you can get as low as 33knots. Or rather take it in on a field or golf course; or, you know, a nice runway.
(edit)Sorry, Piper Cherokee stalls at 47knots.
I wish my school had planes!
Good piloting, except for the part about being over a city in a plane that doesn’t run. At least there was no collision.
I was way too close to the 1978 crash of an A-7D in Tucson, seeing the pilot eject as I rode a city bus a few blocks away.
A perfect response would have been to stop a safe distance behind the plane, turn on the hazard lights, get his ass out of the car, ask if anyone in the plane needs help, then call 911 and wait for emergency services to arrive.
Instead he showed typical motorist behaviour: hit the gas pedal and swerve around the incident while gawking at it and haw-hawing. Should have hit the horn a few times to make the full idiot bingo.
What if the light had changed 10 seconds earlier?
I was around when Southwest Flight 1455 overran the runway at Bob Hope Airport and crashed into the gas station on Hollywood Way about three miles north of where I’m standing, but since it happened on a Sunday, I didn’t happen to see it.
Yeah, remember the innocent days of early 2000?
It did not. That’s the important part.
Perhaps then the pilot would have just laid on the horn and flashed his brights.
Those things are way louder than a car horn. Just try riding in one without hearing protection.
OTH An airplane makes a loud airplane noise, and a car horn goes HONK. So yeah.
Yup. Was kidding.
When the engine is running.
When it is dead, it sounds quite like a glider.
Even a 747 will make a glider-like sound without the engines. If the pilots weren’t trained on gliders, which is increasingly common in these days of cost cutting and immediate gratification, they are likely to freak out and screw up further.
That trope has been around since the silent era, but back then it was always a wino doing a double-take at some crazy chase passing by, looking at his bottle in surprise and then either taking a big pull from it or throwing it away and swearing off the sauce.
Considering (a) how much narrower city streets are than runways, and (b) how many vertical objects there are adjacent to city streets, this is an absolutely outstanding job of steely-eyed airmanship, and my goggles and scarf are hereby doffed in salute to the pilot.
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